The liberal case against race-based affirmative action

Salon.com
Michael Lind
Tuesday, Aug 24, 2010 07:01 ET
Why Sen. James Webb is right to advocate colorblind public policy

Some time ago I attended an event in Washington, D.C., in which Virginia Sen. James Webb startled the audience by declaring: "The greatest threat that this country faces is the class system."
Recently Webb shook up the complacent establishment once again with a critique in the Wall Street Journal of race-based preferences in higher education, small business lending and other areas of public policy:
Our government should be in the business of enabling opportunity for all, not in picking winners. It can do so by ensuring that artificial distinctions such as race do not determine outcomes.
Webb's intervention is a reminder that, from the 1970s until the mid-1990s, there was a lively debate over race-based affirmative action between integrationist or "colorblind" liberals and liberals of the "identity politics" school. Most of the liberal critics of race-based policy were pro-labor liberals and social democrats, while many of its defenders were found among neoliberals, who favored inexpensive symbols of racial progress even as they sought to deregulate the economy, slash welfare and shrink the government.

Full Story: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/08/24/affirmative_action/index.html

See SJW's Letter in Response: http://letters.salon.com/29f5cc2be007d9bfd81495330c65b35e/author/

The Politics of Scapegoating Latinos and Other Racialized Minorities

Dissident Voice
by Ron Schmidt / August 5th, 2010

The pundits’ mantra for the 2010 mid-term elections is that American voters are angry as hell and they’re intent on taking out their anger on those in power — and for most writers this means the Democrats who control the White House and Congress. Since they are perceived as a core part of the Democratic Party’s coalition, this party-in-power-about-to-take-its-lumps presumably includes the country’s racialized minorities, especially Blacks and Latinos.
Catching this current, Gregory Rodriguez in his August 2, 2010 Los Angeles Times column predicts that “white racial anxiety, not immigration, will be the most significant and potentially dangerous socio-demographic trend of the coming decade.” He, therefore, advises President Obama to seize his “Nixon moment” and offer up Affirmative Action to slake the dragon’s thirst for blood. Rodriguez thinks that this sacrifice is necessary “to avoid a destructive white backlash.”
On the same day, the lead front-page Los Angeles Times article described the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision as a rush by business (led by the Chamber of Commerce) and conservative political activists (led by Karl Rove’s American Crossroads) to mount the most expensive mid-term campaign in U.S. history to return power to those who will do their bidding more consistently and faithfully. Also on the same day, Paul Krugman’s New York Times column decried the trending of the country’s top leaders toward “normalizing” double-digit unemployment rates as a “structural” necessity of the new U.S. economy.
Are these three stories related? I think so.

Full Commentary: http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/08/the-politics-of-scapegoating-latinos-and-other-racialized-minorities/

American Association for Affirmative Action Responds to Senator James Webb’s Call to End Affirmative Action for Hispanics and Asians

American Association for Affirmative Action
Responds to Senator James Webb’s Call to End Affirmative Action for Hispanics and Asians

Association of diversity and civil rights professionals invites Virginia Senator to meet and discuss what Affirmative Action is and is not

For Immediate Release: July 27, 2010
Contact: Shirley J. Wilcher (240) 893-9475

Washington, DC, July 27, 2010 - The American Association for Affirmative Action (AAAA), an association of equal employment opportunity (EEO), diversity and affirmative action professionals founded in 1974, expressed dismay regarding Senator James Webb’s opinion editorial in the Wall Street Journal. In his op-ed titled “Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege,” (July 22, 2010), Senator Webb called for the end of Affirmative Action programs, except for those intended for African Americans. The Association wrote a letter to the Senator on July 27, 2010, and stated:

We agree with your assessment that nondiscrimination laws should be applied
equally among all citizens. You may not know, however, that anti-discrimination
laws, which banned discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or
national origin in 1964 as well as disability and veterans’ status in 1973 and
1974, protect everyone, including white men and women.

The Association explained that national origin discrimination was among the original covered categories in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because of the persistent exclusion of individuals who, by virtue of their language, ancestry, culture or birthplace were denied access to employment or educational opportunities. “Affirmative action laws were added as a means of promoting equal opportunity and remedying the effects of discrimination,” said Gregory T. Chambers, AAAA President. “Affirmative action is necessary, fair, prevents discrimination and gives everyone an opportunity to compete regardless of race, ability or gender,” he added.

Discrimination is grounded in prejudice resulting in unjust exclusion of qualified individuals in the workforce, academe and government contracting. There is a well-established history of discrimination against Asians and Hispanics as well as African Americans, women and individuals with disabilities in the USA.

AAAA urged Senator Webb to meet with its leadership in Washington, DC in September. “We invite the Senator to have a dialogue with us in order to be properly informed about affirmative action law and policy,” said Mr. Chambers.

Founded in 1974, the American Association for Affirmative Action (AAAA) is a national not-for-profit association of professionals working in the areas of affirmative action, equal opportunity, and diversity. AAAA helps its members to be more successful and productive in their careers. It also promotes understanding and advocacy of affirmative action to enhance access and equality in employment, economic and educational opportunities. For more information about AAAA and Affirmative Action, go to http://www.affirmativeaction.org/.

Virginia NAACP head slams Webb for affirmative action column

The Washington Post
Virginia Politics Blog
By Ben Pershing July 26, 2010; 5:16 PM ET

The head of the Virginia Conference of the NAACP lashed out at Sen. James Webb (D-Va.) Monday, three days after Webb stirred controversy with an op-ed piece suggesting most government diversity programs should be abolished because they "marginalized" white Americans.
In a Wall Street Journal column published Friday, titled "Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege," Webb complained that "the supposed monolith of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant dominance served as the whipping post for almost every debate about power and status in America." As he has repeatedly in the past, including during his 2006 campaign, Webb said that affirmative action programs made sense for African Americans who suffered from the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow laws but not for other ethnic groups and recent immigrants.
Webb's column drew attention but did not spark much vocal criticism Friday, other than from former Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder. But now King Salim Khalfani, the executive director of the NAACP's Virginia State Conference, has unloaded on Virginia's senior senator.

Full Blog: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/virginiapolitics/2010/07/virginia_naacp_head_slams_webb.html

Webb Perpetuates a Myth of His Own.

The American Prospect
Posted by Monica Potts on July 26, 2010 2:52 PM

There's a way to care about and address poverty in every community where it manifests itself without positing that poor whites in America suffer with no help while poor blacks, Latinos, and new immigrants benefit from a slew of government programs. Unfortunately, that's not the kind of writing Sen. Jim Webb did last week, or Ross Douthat did before that, or Daniel Foster did when he wrote about Douthat's column. All of these authors write about poor whites as if they haven't gotten assistance from the government, but poor minorities have. Douthat and Foster were concerned with college admissions and a study that showed lower-income whites were not given extra consideration over their wealthier counterparts. Webb's concern was with non-black minorities and new immigrants whom he says affirmative action was never meant to help. (He also asserts that decades of affirmative action have marginalized white workers, but fails to show how. Such an assertion ignores that the current recession is worse for communities of color, especially black communities, in just about every way possible.)

Full Blog Post: http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=07&year=2010&base_name=theres_a_way_to_care

Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege

The Wall Street Journal
Opinion Journal
OPINION
JULY 22, 2010

By JAMES WEBB
The NAACP believes the tea party is racist. The tea party believes the NAACP is racist. And Pat Buchanan got into trouble recently by pointing out that if Elena Kagan is confirmed to the Supreme Court, there will not be a single Protestant Justice, although Protestants make up half the U.S. population and dominated the court for generations.
Forty years ago, as the United States experienced the civil rights movement, the supposed monolith of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant dominance served as the whipping post for almost every debate about power and status in America. After a full generation of such debate, WASP elites have fallen by the wayside and a plethora of government-enforced diversity policies have marginalized many white workers. The time has come to cease the false arguments and allow every American the benefit of a fair chance at the future.
I have dedicated my political career to bringing fairness to America's economic system and to our work force, regardless of what people look like or where they may worship. Unfortunately, present-day diversity programs work against that notion, having expanded so far beyond their original purpose that they now favor anyone who does not happen to be white.
In an odd historical twist that all Americans see but few can understand, many programs allow recently arrived immigrants to move ahead of similarly situated whites whose families have been in the country for generations.

Full Story: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703724104575379630952309408.html#articleTabs%3Darticle