It’s not just that history is written by the victors, but that there are winners and losers in history. Whether it was a war or vote, colonization by a group with superior power or a culture dying on its own, someone prevails. Someone ends up better off than the other someone. It may not be “fair,” but it’s history. And life goes on from there.
At The Atlantic, Kimberly Reyes writes one of the more clear and compelling arguments in favor of reparations rather than diversity, using critical race theory as her vehicle. The tone is well set by her opening anecdote.
I was a 16-year-old student at the Bronx High School of Science, scribbling Concrete Blonde lyrics at my desk, when my English teacher abruptly called on me, without a heads-up or any preparation, to explain my thoughts on the word nigger in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Truth be told, I didn’t have an opinion, at least not a sophisticated, nuanced one, because I was a teenager reading Twain for the first time. I was there to learn like everyone else. But suddenly, as one of two black students in the class, I was expected to enhance the learning experiences of my mostly white counterparts. I’ll never forget the terrifying and confusing feeling of going from a part of the classroom to a classroom accessory.
If the justification for affirmative action was diversity, as has been upheld by the Supreme Court in Bakke and its progeny, her complaint would ring hollow. After all, she brought a different perspective to the classroom as one of two black students. When asked to provide her perspective, she didn’t merely come up empty, but was offended.
It’s understandable that she had nothing to offer. It’s a heavy burden to put on a 16-year-old, and not having thought about it, how was she supposed to know? But what she did know, or knows now and imputes to her 16-year-old self, is that she was not a “classroom accessory,” there to enhance the learning experience of others.
This is a trope of critical race theory, recognizing one’s burden while tacitly ignoring the fact that everyone in the class is there to enhance the learning experience of each other. Yes, it was a burden on her. So too was every question asked of every student a burden, and sometimes she was the sideshow, sometimes the main event. Just as any student enjoys the benefit of learning from any other student, she was there to contribute to the experience of the entire class like everyone else. She felt “othered”? She was. So was the Chinese kid, the disabled kid, and gay kid.
But not the white “normal” kid, because there has to be a normal, by definition, and it wasn’t Reyes.
In its reasoning, the Court suggested that the point of affirmative action was to foster a more varied classroom environment for “leaders,” thus shifting the intended beneficiary of the program from the historically discriminated against to the nation that had discriminated against them. And who are these “leaders”? The future, Powell implied, perhaps without realizing it, depends on white students’ exposure to the supposedly unique ideas and mores that qualified minorities should offer.
The Court didn’t “suggest” this, but held that diversity was the only rationale for affirmative action that passed constitutional muster. Much as critical race theory would reject this notion, twist it so that “token” blacks would be there to expose “leader” whites to their “unique ideas,” the Equal Protection Clause cut both ways. If it prohibited arbitrarily favoring whites, then it also prohibited arbitrarily favoring blacks. Diversity was the difference, that there was an identifiable benefit for all involved in the spreading of ideas, of experiences, that would benefit society.
But as Reyes argues, it’s just a “white man’s” excuse to paper over the historic harms.
Amnesia, defensiveness, and a lack of focus on any one issue as many of us scramble to address the current, nonstop assault on progressive values. What’s the practical solution? I’d rather publicly dissect Twain than pretend I can solve an almost insurmountable problem I didn’t create; I just know that not having a proper conversation about the purpose of affirmative action is dangerous. And there have been ideas percolating around restorative justice and reparations for a long time.
The real purpose, she contends, is reparations. The status that white people enjoy was built upon the backs of others, even though we deny our privilege and believe that we worked for it, we earned it. While we may have “earned” that top rung of the ladder, we started halfway up the ladder while others had to start at the bottom. That was a free climb for us at their expense.
Somehow, advantages of this sort are often invisible to the general public. And if they’re made visible, the most coddled people in American society tend to get their feelings hurt—and insist on their self-worth.
It’s not that she’s wrong to argue that there are “coddled” people in America. But are you? Am I? Did our ancestors get off the Mayflower? Did every black person’s ancestors get off a slave ship? How do we calculate reparations? Who owes? Who is owed? How much? And what happens when they get paid and invest poorly? What happens when you pay and are now hungry?
The problem isn’t that people’s feelings get hurt, although denigrating one’s opposition is very much a part of the trope, that no one disagrees with critical race theory and reparations except whiners who only care about keeping their privilege. The problem is that all of history is built upon winners and losers, majority and minority, and what eventually becomes our “normal” must necessarily be premised on something, and it’s never been, or going to be, the outlier. Tails don’t wag dogs.
Most of us want very much to move beyond America’s “original sin” of slavery. Most of us want a society that offers equality. But this isn’t reparations, but opportunities. History has already been written, for better or worse, but the future has not. We can’t undo slavery, but we can compel equal opportunity. It may not be satisfying, but there is no other practical solution.
Discover more from Simple Justice
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Dear Heart got called on in class? Without a heads-up? (whatever that is) With no chance to prepare?
Irreparable harm ensued. That teacher could give deviousness lessons to Mr. Fuji.
She got called on for the “black person question.” I suspect she was also called on for the math, science and English question from time to time.
She got her masters in journalism in 2013, so she’s real whiz-bang at legal theory and legal history. But what bloats my brain cells is the assumptive rhetoric dropped into every discussion of this type:
“This structure rewarded students who already benefited from living in upscale neighborhoods, who had successful parents or parents who, at the very least, knew how to succeed in “the system,” and who continued to benefit from the affirmative action of not descending from people who for generations were banned from reading, buying property, and living in safe neighborhoods with decent schools.”
White fathers didn’t go to prison? White fathers didn’t work the line Making Thunderbirds (Cue GuitarDave)? No white janitors, bus drivers, teachers or clerks? Everyone was “successful” or “at the very least” knew how to game the system?
On narrow facts, which is always the case, the Court found AA to be constitutional if based on diversity. Otherwise, it had to violate equal protection. In Reyes’ imaginary world, one where AA is based on something else, there is no AA because it’s unconstitutional. Law is hard for journalists and poets.
But it all ignores the real falsity of thought: whether AA is based on diversity, reparations or a letter someone wrote in 1960 is without meaning. AA is a thing. It’s a set of rules, allowances and requirements. What it’s based on is not the thing any more than a Thunderbird was the molten steel in some foundry. If she wants to discuss the subject, then discuss the car, not the steel.
All identity politics is grounded in gross generalizations, and as always, it fails to address the myriad exceptions. Almost every individual fails to conform to the stereotype perfectly.
My view has long been my “bastardized Herzberg Theory,” where no one should suffer a detriment, but no one deserves a benefit. I’m sure it will get its legs any day now and they’ll build a statue of me for figuring this all out.
Which one am I?
No,no,no. I teed it up for you with capitalization! Bob, dude, Big Bob:
Those big tee-ups are too easy…and there’s that contrarian thing. Nothing against Bob.
You mention how reparations will be calculated. The calculation “must” be determined solely by the oppressed to be legitimate. A calculation made by a group of privileged white males will make things worse. The calculation will be one of the following:
1. Some laughably ridiculous amount that no one will agree to.
2. Some vague, incalculable amount that is riddled with symbolism.
Georgetown University sought to do the right thing by giving reparations in the form of an education to the descendants of the slaves of the Jesuits who started it and were sold to fund the school’s operations. Even with a discrete group and a limited form of reparations, it had problems. It was unsatisfying.
And reparations from whom?
From the states that constituted The Confederacy? They lost their fortunes “built on the backs of slaves” in the Civil War. Furthermore, if those states are required to pay reparations, are their African-Americans of slave descent to be spared from contributing?
From the states that constituted The Union? The Union paid the piper’s bill with at least 360,000 lives to free the slaves. Why should the states that freed the black man pay the bill?
Or is it just another political wealth redistribution tactic to further devideour nation?
Lee
Gimme money! (More than I can make as a cocktail waitress…)
Rich or poor, it’s good to have money.
One wonders whether the teacher called on her for the question not so much, as we are invited to assume, because she was black and therefore expected to have an opinion, as because that teacher already planned to ask someone and there she was, inattentively “scribbling Concrete Blonde lyrics” and ripe for picking-on.
Frankly, that hadn’t occurred to me, but you’re right. If she’s as much of a student in the class as every other student, then why not?
-“So what did you think of the book?”
-“How dare you.”
I can’t figure out how taking something successful, like the culture at the top, can somehow be improved by polluting it with a culture from below.
Is the West, currently at the top, going to be improved by throwing out the Christian values that got it there and adopting Muslim ones? Surely if ‘diversity’ was better a diverse culture would have succeeded instead of us? When the Chinese replace us at the top in the next generation I’m sure it won’t be because they have more diversity than us.
That’s simplistic and offensive enough to seriously piss me off. Rethink your life.
People who push the “reparations” theory are attempting to reason by race, and not in accordance with historical fact. In the 18th Century, large numbers of European children were kidnapped and brought to the colonies as a source of servant labor. In the 19th Century, during the institution of slavery that most people think of when they think of slavery on our continent, many blacks owned black slaves. Any black citizen whose ancestors lived in the antebellum south could as well be the descendant of a slave owner as of a slave (or both, as some former black slaves went on to own black slaves of their own). Then there is also the fact that, even in the south, only about 25% of the population owned any slaves. The case for race-based “reparations” on a societal scale simply does not hold up, as such “reparations” would burden large numbers of citizens whose ancestors owned no slaves, and would benefit the recipients whose ancestors did own slaves. Finally, the “reparations” argument ignores generational effects that prevented the “benefits” obtained by slaveholders from transferring to all their descendants.
That there are historical anomalies doesn’t make slavery any better. Reparations may be the wrong answer, but no need to trivialize the wrongfulness of the institution in the process.
I do not see it as “trivializing” to point out that the wrongfulness was not so black-and-white as those who reason by the race would have it.
During these debates over reparations for the history of slavery in the US, nobody ever mentions that slavery is still very common throughout the world, and is growing in some places. It isn’t common here anymore because of our unique form of government that (imperfectly) guarantees various rights and freedoms to all. Those who are the angriest about these historical abuses seem the least concerned about losing those unique rights and freedoms, because of course the government would always act the way they want it to. Even though the government right now is run by evil Republicans, mostly. Do they still teach critical thinking in college?
“Very” common? And if your friend jumped off the roof, would you jump too?