A lot of ink has been spilled already, with tons more to come, about just how truly historic last night was. Given our country’s history, one cannot overstate the importance of the first African-American President. When you drill down a little deeper, however, President Obama will serve as a symbol of something potentially deeper. Will President Obama mean the end of affirmative action? Consider what happened. An African-American man, raised by a single mother, succeeded to the most important position in the world. Is it still credible for minorities to say that historic racism and biases makes it impossible for them to compete for jobs, and that the playing field needs to be leveled by quotas and preferences? Last night may prove to be the final leveling of the playing field and the functional end of affirmative action.
Only time will tell if we truly find ourselves in a post-racial era. What we know as we wake up this morning and start to absorb what happened yesterday is that if have not reached that mark, we have taken a giant step in its direction.
4 comments:
I understand the thinking behind your statements on affirmative action, but would argue that they are a bit naive. First, rather than using the office of the presidency as an example, we could look to the US Senate, where, once Obama is sworn in, there will be a grand total of zero African-American senators. Second, Barack Obama has been blessed with unbelievable amounts of charisma and intellect. You could call him a black Bill Clinton. But perhaps it takes that incredibly rare combination of natural charm and intelligence to be able to overcome the societal barriers to success as an African-American. In other words, just because Obama can overcome these obstacles doesn't mean they are not there. The black Bill Clinton can do it, but what about the black Joe the Plumber? Third, it NEVER makes sense to assess broad social policies on isolated, individual examples. There can be a reasonable debate about whether our nation's current playing field needs to be leveled through affirmative action or not, but the statistics underlying that debate are no different today than they were last week.
Keep up the great work with your outstanding blog.
Thanks for the insightful comment (even though you call my thought process naive).
Even President-elect Obama has implied that he is against race-based preferences, in favor of class-based preferences. If we are going to debate this issue over the next four years and thereafter, the debate should focus on the needs of the lower class (white, black, and everything in between), and not whether preferences should go away at all.
I apologize if using the term naive was disrespectful. I certainly didn't intend it to be.
Actually, I did not take your use of "naive" to be disrespectful at all. I was actually trying to be tongue-in-cheek, albeit miserably I guess. I appreciate that you took the time to comment and your readership.
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