DURBAN, South Africa “”mdash; Besides being basically across the
globe from each other, the United States and South Africa have a
lot of things in common, including a recent history of racial
segregation and a mechanism of trying to make amends for that
history ”“ racial affirmative action.
Racial affirmative action ““ giving people priority based
on their ethnic background with the goal of correcting past
discrimination ““ is an interesting idea.
It sounds like a hypocritical one. After all, it promotes
discrimination based on skin color, which is what both the civil
rights movement and the anti-Apartheid protests were trying to
abolish.
There are a variety of justifications for affirmative action,
but it is debatable whether its policies actually achieve the goals
of its justifications.
South Africa and the United States have run into similar
problems with respect to their racial affirmative action
policies.
In both countries, affirmative action is creating a more diverse
elite class as opposed to redistributing power.
The reasons for this are also similar in both countries: The
race or races that are meant to be empowered have not been equally
educated. Those people who are well-educated get the university
spot, or the job, while the others are left behind.
This does not mean that affirmative action shouldn’t
exist. In South Africa, the effects of Apartheid are still very
much apparent, and leaving it to slowly fix itself over time
wouldn’t be fair to the people living there now.
In the United States, while segregation may seem over and done
with eons ago, it actually only ended 42 years ago.
While programs were instigated to desegregate the country,
according to a Harvard study, desegregation peaked around 1988;
since then segregation has even increased.
This can easily be seen in the public school system. As detailed
in an article in Harper’s Magazine, the conditions at some
minority-dominated schools are so terrible that children are
basically told that they cannot expect to achieve anything more
than a managerial job, and teaching is reduced to controlling
students in a rather despotic fashion known as the Skinnerian
approach.
Education in the United States has become, as the Harper’s
article calls it, its own Apartheid. Even without considering
university fees, these students simply don’t have an equal
opportunity to attend a university of their choice.
But the problems in both countries aren’t all about race.
As time passes, these issues are becoming more and more about
wealth.
That’s why the South African Institute of Race Relations
has suggested that the basis for affirmative action shouldn’t
be race, but rather wealth ““ economic affirmative action, if
you will.
It’s time the United States acknowledged this as well.
There are two main justifications for affirmative action in the
United States ““ to redistribute economic power to
disadvantaged minorities and, specifically for university campuses,
to create a more diverse student body, which would result in a more
rounded education for all students.
Economic affirmative action would address both these issues.
It would specifically target the people that are still
disadvantaged and would automatically lead to a more racially
diverse workplace or campus, completely disintegrating the claim
that affirmative action is racist.
Besides which, there are also more forms of diversity than just
racial diversity.
According to the Century Foundation, almost three-fourths of
students enrolled in the U.S.’s top 140 schools come from the
nation’s wealthiest families, while a mere 3 percent come
from the bottom economic quartile.
Creating a diverse campus involves not only including all ethnic
groups, but also all different economic classes.
There are some criticisms of the idea of economic affirmative
action. It has been argued both in South Africa and the United
States that there simply aren’t enough people at lower-income
levels who are prepared for college or well-paying jobs.
Yet there are solutions to this problem.
For example, universities could give lower-income students
access to the same kind of tutoring that athletes have access to.
Similar programs could also be implemented in workplaces.
In the long run, the obvious answer is finding a remedy to the
real problems ““ fixing the public education system in the
States and finding a way to make South Africans less poor.
But we can’t simply forget about the people that are in
these unjust systems. Hence the temporary solution: economic
affirmative action.
E-mail Lowenstein at llowenstein@media.ucla.edu.