At the outset, let me note that the bulk of this essay was written before the recent Supreme Court decision canceling affirmative action admission practices in colleges. But be assured that it will not be ignored in what follows.
Having mentioned "cancel culture" in relation to the LGQBT community in Part One of this series, let's move on to something simple: Racism. The history of slavery and racism in this country. Did I say, "Simple?" Yes, I did. You wouldn't know it, of course, for all the controversy around the idea that racism of one sort or another has been around ever since Columbus (or whoever) first set foot on the North American continent, and it has never disappeared. At best, it has ebbed and flowed, but it's always been with us. It doesn't matter if we are talking about when the first Black slaves were brought to these shores in 1619 or the assumed inferiority of all indigenous peoples in the Americas by the Spanish Conquistadors, the French, or the English. The "other," the non-European, non-white inhabitants of the Americas, whether native-born or imported, and their assumed inferiority, are an integral part of the American story, of American history. They are an integral part of "our" story.
While we're at it, let's not forget our Ronald Reagan, his Halloween mask, his "shining city upon a hill," and 1950s America.
Do you remember the 1950s in America? Smiling, genial, Ozzie and Harriet didn't live in Harlem, NY, South Central, LA, or the Southside of Chicago, much less in Selma, Alabama. They didn't live in the "inner city" or the "ghetto;" they lived in a shiny all-White suburb (perhaps a ghetto of a different sort).
Discrimination against Blacks was open, universal, and legal, at least in the South. Jim Crow laws were intended to keep Blacks as an inferior class, second-class citizens at best. Segregated movie theaters, lunch counters, bathrooms, drinking fountains, and hotels didn't allow Blacks to rent rooms. Miscegenation laws forbade interracial marriage. A Black man so much as looking at a White woman risked lynching. Separate and entirely unequal schools ensured educational inequality. State colleges were forbidden to admit Black students. Voting regulations made it virtually impossible for Blacks to vote, much less be elected to any public office. Nothing was hidden about this; it was all out in the open; you could literally see the signs everywhere. As George Wallace famously said in 1963, "Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."
In the North, things were more covert but were certainly there. Financial institutions like banks forced Blacks to live in certain areas and charged exorbitant mortgage and loan rates, rates that differed from those charged Whites of equivalent income levels. And you certainly wouldn't find Blacks as loan officers or financial advisors in major financial institutions. Apartment house owners (yes, I'm talking about Fred and Donald Trump among them) wouldn't rent apartments to Blacks. Unions wouldn't allow Blacks into their ranks as skilled workers or apprentices. Corporations wouldn't allow Blacks into their upper management ranks.
And nowhere was there equal justice before the law. It was better or worse in some places, but the disparity was there, just as it always had been. "The talk," Black parents' conversations with their young children about behavior when in the presence of a cop, is not a recent invention. Black parents have always had to instruct their children about their behavior in the presence of Whites.
When we hear of new laws concerning what our children learn about our slaveholding past in places like Florida or Texas, what do we make of them? Or, for that matter, of the struggle to gain equality? Schools in some Red states seek to erase any mention of Black heroes. Too many Whites apparently want to sugarcoat, to whitewash the past, to remember a fantastical past, a past that never existed, where slaves were happy because they could dance and sing. While grudgingly willing to acknowledge the long-past existence of slavery, they seemingly simultaneously seek to render it benign. But if Whites don't want to remember the real awfulness of the past, Blacks certainly do. Why shouldn't they?
In those happy days of Reagan and through the next few presidents, Republicans would proclaim that we lived in a color-blind America. It was never true. At the founding of our country, embedded in the Constitution is the fact that Blacks weren't considered fully human, fully equal in any way to whites. It wasn't until 1868 and the passage of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution that all persons in America were granted "equal protection of the laws." Mind you, that's 81 years after the Constitution was ratified.
No matter what the 14th Amendment says or implies, in today's America, there is little pretense of equality or color blindness, no matter how often it is asserted. Republicans, particularly MAGA politicians, are acutely aware of color. For them, everything seems to be about race. New election laws seek to increase the difficulty for minorities and the elderly to vote. It still seems to be assumed that poor or working-class Blacks, in particular, are lazy and don't want to work without much evidence to support the view.
To be sure, some Blacks see everything in terms of race as well. Though regrettable, who can blame them? I'm White, and my parents never felt the need to have "the talk" with me about how to behave when confronted by a cop or Black people. Black parents apparently feel they have no choice about such discussions with their children. Investigation after investigation of police agencies by the Justice Department provides plenty of evidence of why those talks are necessary. There is no longer any hiding of the division. Again, the extremists on both sides are trying to define and limit the choices that the rest of us can make, regardless of our color.
Is it too intemperate to say that racial integration has failed? Probably. But it's not too intemperate to say that it has not been the success we hoped for in the wake of Brown vs. Board of Education and the Civil Rights era of Martin Luther King. Forced busing did not create a color-blind society, and New York City's public schools seem as segregated as they ever were, as is true in most major cities. In rural Columbia County, NY, where I live, Blacks and Whites seem to have little to do with each other, even if there is a Black mayor and other people of color on the town's common council. Maybe most "natives" of the county think a Black mayor is the unfortunate result of second homeowners, people from New York City who have either moved to the county or who, having bought vacation houses in the county, have chosen to vote in the county. They may well be right.
What is also true is that despite the backward step race relations have taken during the Trump era (and we are still in that era no matter who is president), there has been considerable progress over the past 50-odd years. Affirmative action, the end of legal segregation, the intentional acts of some companies to hire and promote Blacks, etc., had the desired effect of increasing the presence of Blacks in the workplace and increasing the Black middle class, along with such other visible manifestations as increased interracial dating and marriage, and casting in commercials and TV, movies, and theater.
All this is for the good. And all of it has produced a terrible backlash, as is evidenced in the political campaigns of Republicans vying for the presidential nomination and state governors and legislatures throughout so-called Red states.
The Supreme Court has most recently evidenced that backlash in its recent decision reversing affirmative action admission practices in higher education. I'm neither a Constitutional scholar nor a lawyer; I'm simply an observer of the passing scene. But even I know that in places where affirmative action policies for colleges have been dropped, admission of Blacks has drastically declined. Where states have reduced their financial support of higher education (that has included both Red and Blue states), college tuition fees have exploded, making it far more difficult for students of all economic classes, but particularly the children of poor and working-class families, to afford college, and that includes community colleges. No matter what a majority of Supreme Court justices imagine, the end of affirmative action will have an adverse effect on Black and Latino communities. Do any of those justices think that's a problem? I have no idea. All I'm sure of is that most (all?) of the conservative justices seem to live in an extraordinary bubble completely out of touch with the real world.
Curiously, it occurs to me that the opening the Court has left for minority students to be admitted to colleges in part based on their race might result in something both unexpected and not desired. In suggesting that Black (or, presumably, all minority) students might still be admitted based on the self-understood experience of their lives as expressed in essays, those students might find it even more urgent to understand what has happened to them both in their lives and history. I can imagine that many of these high school students might be far more radicalized by what they learn than current students. By, in effect, retreating to the 1950s, when few Blacks entered college and when Black history as an academic concern at any education level didn't exist, we might be encouraging a return to the days of the Black Panthers, the Symbionese Liberation Army, and other violently inclined groups; the Black version of today's White supremacist groups. As I've noted before, extremism breeds counter-extremism. The superficial blandness of the 50s hid the stirring grievances of the Civil Rights movement and the movements for women's and gay rights. And the violence at their fringes.
Color blindness may, indeed, be enshrined in the Constitution by the 14th Amendment. But like the assertion in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal," the assertion in the 14th Amendment that all persons are equal before the law is more aspirational than reality. The cancellation of affirmative action returns us to the 1950s when "merit" was, supposedly, the only criterion for college admission. But it wasn't true. Ronald Reagan's idealized 1950s shining city on a hill was an illusion with serious rot at its core.
This series is not yet done. Stay tuned.
Thank you for this Michael, in particular your analysis of the loss of affirmative action. With respect to the issue that there are aspects of our history that we shouldn’t be proud of. Germany might serve as an example in the manner they have dealt with their Nazi history.
Best, Anthony