The document discusses competing conceptions of affirmative action and myths surrounding it. It addresses discrimination in employment and education, issues like underfunded schools and the school-to-prison pipeline, as well as concepts like stereotype threat, implicit bias, and racial profiling. It also notes connections to privilege and wealth, and argues against the myth that African Americans are the sole beneficiaries of affirmative action policies.
Life as a race. A Common metaphor used by both supporters and critics of affirmative action. For critics, the problem is that this runner has an advantage. For supporters, the problem is that this runner is crippled from past discrimination, scarred, unable to run. He’s got to start three quarter lengths ahead of the others, because he’ll never cross the finish line. The problem is in the runner, not the race itself. Although these competing notions of what the runner deserves characterizes opposing aspects of the debate on affirmative action, what I want you to focus on is what they have in common. In both, the race is the race, it prefers no one. We want to suggest a different way of conceptualizing the metaphor. The problem is not that the runner is three quarter lengths ahead, nor that he is scarred by the past. The problem is not in the runner, it is in the track, more particularly, his lane in the track. For in his lane, there are high hurdles, cracks, uneven surfaces, and other obstacles that are not in the other lane. The problem isn’t the runner, the problem is the running ground, it’s the lanes, constructed in ways that reflect the fact that he was never contemplated to be part of the race in the first place. His lane is the junk lane. When you think about what’s in the junk lane for some runners, and the clear lane for others, the one’s understanding of affirmative action shifts away from framing it as a head start for the runner, and refocuses attention on its role in removing the obstacles, the pot holes, the crevices, the unpassable barricades from the track. For various people of color, as I will describe, are varied, ranging from stereotypes, racialized patterns of access and opportunity, biased testing procedures, integenerational disadvantages from governmental policy, underresourced schools, institutions ill-equipped to welcome nonw-thie people and nurture non-white talent. Minorities aren’t the only ones that run in a junk lane. Women run in a lane saddled by stereotypes, by gendered role expectations, by childcare, by risk of violence and sexual harassment, by old boys networks, by cultural norms and expectations that constitute barriers to their full success as early as middle school. The predicate for affirmative action then, is not two runners differently treated by the starting line, but two runners differently situated by the race they have to run. Affirmative action seeks to make a fairer race. And just to put a point on the fair race, I want you to think about another lane, not a junk lane with potholes, not even a perfectly clear lane with virtually no obstacles in site. I want you to think about an electric lane, one in which the runner simply steps onto the track and assumes the position of a runner, and the track actually moves him. That’s the track the people like our president occupy, those denizons of high standards who inherit the most coveted job in the world, not because they ran a perfect race, but because the race was run for them, won not by their own effort but by the privilege they inherit. Now when you look at these lanes, one has to wonder, who really is the Affirmaitive Action Baby? DEFINE AA: Our central thesis is that affirmative action is not a matter of affording "preferential treatment" to its beneficiaries, but instead an attempt to offer them greater equality of opportunity in a social context marked by pervasive inequalities, one in which many insititutional practices work to impede a fair assessment of the capabilities of those who are working class, women, or people of color. Our focus, what it means to speak of equality and genuine full citizenship. **** AA is about removing those hurdles, unwarranted obstacles, not about giving its beneficiaries a head start, as both conservatives and liberals would say. Its that track that cripples our performance; the track is littered with obstacles only in our lane. Removing those obstacles where they are there because of race is not reverse discrimination, is it not unconstitutional, it is not the moral equivalence of segregation, it does not detract from the pursuit of excellence, and it does not reward us solely because of our race. Yet this is precisely what critics of affirmative action say it is.
