Shall we overcome?
A brief announcement, by way of prelude:
On Wednesday, May 16, the Coalition to
Defend Affirmative Action & Integration, and Fight for
Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) will
lead a demonstration urging the UC Regents to reverse
their ban on affirmative action at the university.
Affirmative action: an offshoot of the
1964 Civil Rights Act, usually described as an effort to
level the playing field in employment and education. Dan
Froomkin of the Washington Post calls it “the nation’s
most ambitious attempt to redress its long history of racial
and sexual discrimination.” Former secretary of labor
George P. Schultz says maybe so, but “it’s certainly
outlived its usefulness. At the time we needed a 2 x 4 [to
end discrimination] but the time for the 2 x 4 is gone.”
In 1995, the University of California — cheered on by
then-governor Pete Wilson — took the lead in replacing
that 2 by 4 with a toothpick, banning race- and gender-based
admissions, contracting, and hiring practices. The state
followed suit, passing Proposition 209 a year and a half
later.
Regent Ward Connerly, who campaigned
tirelessly for the ban, said at the time, “It is
impossible for me to conclude that a preference for some
based on race is not a disadvantage, is not discrimination
against others.” BAMN, formed almost immediately after the
Regents’ vote, sees the matter differently: “A
university admissions system without affirmative action
would be no more ‘race-blind’ than the society in which
it operates.”
BAMN leaders Ronald Cruz and Hoku Jeffrey
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Dangerous folk, those high school and
college students who make up BAMN, who describe themselves
as an “emerging new civil rights movement.” “Disruptive”
is the word others use to describe them. Says UC Student
Regent Justin Fong, “As much as they do seem to be a
strong voice and a critical voice on campus, they have
also been a disruptive voice in terms of student activism.”
A Berkeley friend and lifelong progressive grimaced
when I mentioned that I had interviewed
members of the group: “They’re very disruptive.”
BAMN was the organization behind the “Day
of Action” held at UC Berkeley on March 9 to rally support
for ending the ban. The event attracted media attention when
its organizers invited local high school students to a
special morning class in the history of affirmative action
and many teachers jumped at the chance to show the American
political process in action.
A lot of horse manure very quickly hit the
proverbial fan. The San Francisco School Board, which had
first welcomed the idea, suddenly discovered logistical
difficulties and called off the field trip. Oakland
superintendent of schools Dennis Chaconas expressed the
misgivings of many observers: “I don’t see how this is
tied into the classroom instruction, and I’m not sure
students are going to get a chance to hear both sides of the
issue at a rally.” Instead of protesting the illogic of
his statement, the public found itself mildly outraged, and
DJs of radio stations like KFOG, which tend to reflect
middle-of-the-road opinion, echoed Chaconas’s remarks.
What’s going on here? What’s all the
fuss about? How could support for an idea that originated so
nobly become so suspect?
Perhaps we should lay the blame on the
Fuzzy Memory Syndrome, which serves — like the post-partum
mechanism that blots out the pain of childbirth — to
sugarcoat difficult experiences so that we can get on with
our lives. The only trouble with the Fuzzy Memory Syndrome
is that it allows us to walk naively right back into the
same painful situation we just escaped from, without an iota
of wisdom learned from the previous experience.
And so, swathed in a warm glow of
nostalgia, we lock arms and sway to the strains of “We
Shall Overcome,” forgetting the fangs of police dogs, the
force of firehoses, and the frightened faces of little black
girls on the first day of school. We forget that once upon a
time an American president dared to say to the nation, in an
astonishing show of support for the people who were
disrupting our system of segregation, “Together, we
will overcome.” We forget that, indeed, racial and
gender inequalities continue to plague the American dream.
Because it’s all so uncomfortable.
Because it’s somehow not quite nice.
What was that old Malvina Reynolds song
— “It isn’t nice… But the nice ways always fail.
Betsey Culp
