These groups include women, Native Americans, Arab Americans, Latino/as, Asian Americans, and African Americans. Of these groups, the United States Department of Labor found that white women are the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action.
A broad range of minority groups have also benefited from these policies. Programs that direct resources, outreach and opportunities to people of color have been extraordinarily important in opening up American institutions to a wide variety of communities. Yet even the beneficiaries of affirmative action, like most Americans, may not realize that these programs are under an intense nationwide assault. Many may mistakenly assume that the admission of blacks into colleges is the principal focus of efforts to eliminate these policies. In fact, however, attacks on Affirmative Action programs have included everything from English as a Second Language programs to breast cancer screenings, from mentoring and after school programs to magnet schools, from programs that require Asian-owned businesses to be advised of possible government contracts to battered women shelters that create a safe space for victims of domestic violence and their children. Simply put, there are countless initiatives across the country that affirmatively use race and gender to address the unwarranted obstacles confronted by the beneficiaries of Affirmative Action. Because these vital programs are neither colorblind or gender blind, they are put at risk by attacks on affirmative action.
What is the scope of these programs? And why do African Americans continue to be the subject of media focus when they are discussed?
Consider [a Newsweek] cover story. The story promises ten ways to think about whether affirmative action is still necessary. But how does the cover illustration lead us to think about these programs? For example, who does it suggest Affirmative Action is for? Who is left out of the picture? Is it about gender? Is it about all people of color? Is it about all classes of Americans, or just the privileged members of one marginalized group? What do you think about the person in the picture? Does he still ‘need’ affirmative action?
There are so many things wrong with this picture that we will address only the single most problematic element: this is an artistic rendering of affirmative action, wholly created by the editors of the magazine.
The person in the picture was not chosen because he attended University of Michigan, the focal point of the controversy. Nor was he chosen because he was a beneficiary of some other affirmative action program. He was chosen because the cover artist wanted to tell a specific story, apparently that affirmative action is for the benefit of privileged blacks. This is a paid model playing a character. The preppy clothes he is wearing are not his. Not even the glasses are his own — there is a credit for them on the inside cover. He is a black body on which someone draped a collared shirt, chinos, and a tie. Using the model in this way serves a very deliberate function: it makes us think that Affirmative Action is not about women, or all people of color, or people of all classes. In so doing, it triggers stereotypes in the viewer, stereotypes that most likely will lead readers to answer the question, “Do we still need affirmative action?” with a resounding “NO!”
This is the kind of propaganda with which the media circuses attack blacks daily, and black public intellectuals, the ones who are accorded air and publishing space, haven’t found an answer. In fact some of them make money by joining in on the attack and have fallen prey to the myth that affirmative action is a black giveaway program that offends white working class men many of whom are alcoholics, drug addicts, divorcees, and domestic violence abusers yet are set up by the media as the gold standard for how men should behave toward women.
In the course of a lengthy article he provides us with why neo-liberals love Obama’s Joshua generation so much. It’s because “Obama allowed that black anger about past and present wrongs was counterproductive.” I guess I’m part of the Moses generation because I get angry when I hear about the police emptying their weapons on an unarmed suspect and I’m glad that my fellow Moses, Al Sharpton, is around to protest these police actions.
I also get angry about suburban gun stores pouring weapons into inner city neighborhoods like mine and I am grateful to Jesse Jackson for his sit-in and arrest at a gun store located in the suburbs of Chicago, one that had been supplying guns to Chicago gangs, otherwise the problem would not have received notice from the local press. Some people smugly dismisses Jackson’s career as one about “rhetoric of grievances and recompense.” It was Jackson who demonstrated that an African American who did not talk down to foreigners, the practice of white ambassadors and members of consulates in many parts of the world, could be successful at diplomacy. I’m sure that the relatives of the dozens of hostages who were freed by foreign governments as a result of Jackson’s efforts view his career as having to do more than with rhetoric and recompense. Those who dismiss Jackson might view their pitting of Obama against Jackson as a clash of generations, but I view it as a continuation of the old plantation sport called the Pat Juber in which rival white plantation owners would contrive a contest between two bucks who would engage in murderous combat. Both Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright have written about modern versions of this custom.
Appearing on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, May 30, 2008, Obama critic Paul Krugman said that many women felt that Senator Clinton had been treated unfairly, ignoring the poll conducted by Pew that concluded differently. He also reminded us that those Hispanic journalists who warned their white colleagues that they should be cautious when writing off Barack’s efforts to win the Hispanic vote aren’t the only points of view that are neglected by a segregated arrogant media. In her reply, his fellow panelist Donna Brazile, dissenting, had to remind him, “I’m a woman, too!”
The Big Let Down
Obama Scolds Black Fathers Gets Bounce in Polls5
(Barack Obama was congratulated by white politicians and members of the media, some of whom were divorcees, adulterers and substance abusers, when he criticized black fathers for their lack of “personal responsibility.” When Rev. Jesse Jackson correctly described this speech as one that talked down to black people, he was sacked by the media. A week after his Father’s Day speech, Obama appeared before The Council of La Raza and said that he shared the values of the Hispanic community, which, in some categories, have more dire statistics than those of blacks.)
It’s obvious by now that Barack Obama is treating black Americans like one treats a demented uncle, brought out from his room to be ridiculed and scolded before company from time to time, the old Clinton Sister Souljah strategy borrowed from Clinton’s first presidential campaign when he traveled the country criticizing the personal morality of blacks and wooing white voters by objecting to what he considered anti-white lyrics sung by rapper Sister Souljah. (Though former President Clinton denied that his campaigning for his wife included a racist appeal, a book published in January 2010, Game Change, by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, quoted him as telling the late Senator Ted Kennedy: “a few years ago, this guy [Obama] would have been getting us coffee.”)
As in Clinton’s case, Obama’s June 14 finger wagging at black men was a case of pandering to white conservative voters. This follows a pattern of using public perceptions of black men fanned by the media and Hollywood to win political favor. Bush One and his sleazy cohorts won votes by depicting black men as dangerous. After the Willie Horton ad, featuring a black rapist, was aired, support for Bush soared twenty percent among southern white males, according to Willie Brown, former San Francisco mayor. Obama, by depicting them as irresponsible, saw his poll numbers climb to a fifteen percent lead over McCain, according to a Newsweek poll. With his speech, he received a bounce in the polls that was denied to him after he gained the Democratic nomination. He also enjoyed the bounce in the polls from Pennsylvania and Ohio.