The first African-American slaves were imported to the Virginia colony in 1618. The slaves remaining in captivity were freed, sort of, by a reluctant President Lincoln in the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was certainly an important recent (very recent) step in the real emancipation of African-Americans. But it was not affirmative action. One could reasonably date affirmative action, in the legal sense, from a Supreme Court case in 1971 or from the Equal Employment Act of 1972.
Now, there is no real symmetry here, since obviously slavery was far more of a burden than affirmative action could ever be a boost. But for the sake of comity and closure, we could ask African-Americans to pretend, with us, that such symmetry exists. On this account we have presently completed 32 or 33 years of a 245-year test.
Considering that we are only a bit over 10 percent into this assessment, affirmative action has not done badly.
When I was growing up, the only black faces I saw on television were Rochester, Amos and Andy. (For those of you who don't know who those characters were, good riddance to them.)
Now, every night of my life, African-American women and men tell me the news from Wall Street, Washington, Bosnia, Japan, even Georgia. A great and good African-American general is the secretary of state and plausible presidential timber, while a black woman who grew up in Alabama is the national security adviser -- arguably the most sensitive position in our government. An African-American woman won the Nobel Prize for Literature and deserved it.
And it is not just a few prominent cases. Recent quantitative research by William Bowen, Derek Bok and others shows that affirmative action is doing just what it was supposed to do: put qualified minorities into professional and leadership roles that they otherwise would have been, for all intents and purposes, barred from. But I don't need to be 100 percent convinced by the statistics, because the test is not over.
The first generation of black youths who have watched the result of this change is coming of age right now. They must grow up, be helped toward great achievements of their own, so they can serve as luminous models for the next generation, and the next. I predict huge ultimate gains, not just for African-Americans but for all of us, as we stop wasting the gifts of a large minority of our people, and as we finally taste the fruits of a truly just society, unburdened by the hatreds and resentments of the past.
| There's more of Emory University anthropologist Melvin Konner's Atlanta Journal-Constitution guest column "Affirmative action merely emerging"
posted in articles on January 19, 2004 12:51 AM | t (2)
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"Plausible presidential timber." I like that phrase. Although I'm sure Colin Powell and I probably have more political differences than similarities, I can't resist the fantasy that he'd get so fed up with his treatment in the Bush administration that he'd quit and run against Bush. In my fantasy I can't decide whether I'd prefer for him to run as a Democrat or a Republican.
And as long as we're fantasizing, is it too late for a Democratic Powell/Dean ticket? Powell the former general could finish off Bush's ridiculous war while making VP Dean the Healthcare Czar.
I can't resist the fantasy that he'd get so fed up with his treatment in the Bush administration that he'd quit and run against Bush.
Being that Powell is military (high loyalty) and was given the job by bush, I'd say your little fantasy is wishful thinking.
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