The Blame Game: A Prelude To Racial Privilege

The Blame Game: a Prelude to Racial Privilege

In order to fully understand an easily debatable and highly controversial policy, such as racial privilege, one must first understand the political and social climates that led up to it. Racial privilege has been practiced during two periods in America's past: the post-reconstruction era, via Jim Crow laws, and today, by way of affirmative action.

After Reconstruction in the American south, landowners reorganized their land in such a way that it could be farmed without the use of slaves. The most common structure employed sharecropping, in which the land owner divided his property into several plots of land, each farmed by different individuals who paid for the use of this land with a predetermined percentage of their harvested crop. At its onset, sharecropping was a racially diverse program. Boyer et all notes that "By 1880... white sharecroppers now outnumbered black ones, although a higher proportion of southern blacks, about 75 percent, were involved in the system" (597). Tenants, most having no capital with which to purchase farm equipment, livestock, and seed, offer yet another pre-determined percentage of their harvested crop as collateral and repayment for loans. Since both the landowner and the creditor were invested in the profitability of the farmer's crops, they insisted that these farmers raise only easily marketable cash-crops, limiting crop diversification (Boyer 598). When supply began to exceed demand, value of these crops rapidly declined. Sharecroppers, both white and black, were plunged heavily into debt and poverty.

The failure of this system presented a window of opportunity for the Democratic leaders of the Old South who wish to restore the power structure of the pre-Civil War south. All they needed to do was convince the white farmers, as well as other whites who were negatively impacted by this system, that their economic difficulties were a direct result of the newly-emancipated slaves. Ironically, this economic downfall was actually caused by the wealthy landowners and lenders who, for the most part, made up this Democratic leadership. Poor whites, eager to find a scapegoat for their problems, endorsed the idea of racial privilege. By seeking restitution, whites in the south successfully managed to evade personal responsibility, while also evading the possibility of a true solution to their problems. Thus began the Jim Crow era of racial oppression.

In a related string of events, the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s failed to bring about solutions to the problem of racial inequality plaguing America. Not until the death of one of its most prominent leaders, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., did the Civil Rights Movement transform from a movement for racial equality to a movement for racial privilege. King, in his speech during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, makes clear the ideal of racial equality: "I have a dream... that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." After King's assassination, new leaders arose claiming that it is not enough that blacks and whites are treated equally, but that, in order for deliverance from their troubled past, they must be given preference over those who previously held preference over them. Shelby Steele describes the problems with this aspect of the black power movement, stating that it actually claims "that no black problem--whether high crime rates, poor academic performance, or high illegitimacy rates--could be defined as largely a black responsibility, because it was an injustice to make victims responsible for their own problems" (White Guilt 55). Once again, the opportunity to blame society's problems on a single race seduces our nation to pass laws of racial preference.

Affirmative Action: Alleviating a Symptom or Curing a Disease?

In 1971, affirmative action received approval in the Griggs v. Duke Power case from the United States Supreme Court (Skrentny 97-8). According to James P. Sterba in The Case for Preferential Treatment, "preferential treatment [i.e., affirmative action] is a policy of preferring qualified women and minority candidates who have been disadvantaged by discrimination and prejudice over equally or more qualified white male candidates who have not been similarly disadvantaged" (286). The inherent flaw of the system described is the impossibility of discerning which women and minority candidates have experienced discrimination and prejudice and which white male candidates have not been similarly disadvantaged. Since there is no quantitative means for determining what disadvantages one faces, affirmative action tends to primarily benefit those minorities and women who have not been disadvantaged, while harming disadvantaged white males.

Affirmative action represents a failure of policy in that it lowers the standards of performance expected of minority students. Since the goal of all students is to meet the goals set by the educator, double-standards increase the educational divide between races. The minority students' acceptance of the notion that they are not required to compete with the general population erodes the principal of personal responsibility in those who are helped by affirmative action, while, at the same time, reduces the legitimacy of the achievements of these "benefactors."

One common misconception supporters of affirmative action argue is that minority status determines what educational opportunities are available to individual students. It does not. In fact, "if a selective college... granted a preference to applicants with family incomes below $20,000, only one out of six would be black or Hispanic" (Kane 450). Logically, then, it seems that affirmative action tends to help minority applicants who are not economically disadvantaged, while harming non-minority applicants who are not economically advantaged. In this aspect, affirmative action fails to keep its promise to help those who have experienced educational disadvantages compete and succeed amidst those who have not been similarly disadvantaged.

When Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he effectively ended legal discrimination. Under this new law, "Discrimination in employment on the basis of race, religion, or national origin was to be banned" (Rai and Critzer 6). Blacks soon realized that, although their chains of oppression were removed, they still didn't qualify for many of the jobs which were only recently opened to them. A new movement began, calling not for equal opportunity when applying for