The Myth of Reverse Discrimination Revisited

Anne Braden's article "In Different Boats" appeared in the Dec 1999/Jan 2000 Peacework.

Thank you for publishing my article on the myth of reverse discrimination. As you pointed out, this article was first published by Southern Exposure magazine and was adapted from a panel presentation I made in 1991 in Birmingham AL, at a conference called by the Southern Organizing Committee for Economic & Social Justice, with which I work.

Reading the article now, as we begin the year 2000, it strikes me that not very much has changed on the issues I addressed in the nine years since that conference. The statistics documenting the appalling gap between the quality of life of people of color and that of whites in this country may have altered slightly, and in some cases for the worse.

Today we read each day in the mass media that our economy is booming. And indeed that is true for the minority of the population that gets its income from the stock market or is in the top income brackets. But we all know that for the great majority of our people, of all colors, life is a constant struggle just for survival because even the so-called "good" jobs don't pay enough for a family to live on. Not surprisingly, this situation is worst for people of color. Even as unemployment rates reach record-low levels, the rate remains shockingly high for people of color.

Also, even more than they were nine years ago, our jails and prisons are bulging--mostly with African-American youth, many incarcerated for nonviolent offenses--who should be getting help in some kind of constructive program instead of being warehoused behind bars. Indeed, if all these people were on the streets, our unemployment rates would soar to new levels; we are really trying to lock up our problems instead of solve them.

Prison construction has become the fastest-growing industry in this country. What does that say about our society? Martin Luther King, Jr., said in 1967 that a nation that year after year spends more on military preparation than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. That phenomenon has not gone away; the Pentagon continues to consume the lion's share of our national resources. But what would Martin say about a society that year after year spends more on jails and prisons than it spends on education, housing, and health care? Or on rehabilitation programs? He would say that such a society is most surely approaching spiritual death.

As I reread my 1991 article, I realize also that our social justice movement in this country as a whole has not yet done effectively enough what I said nine years ago we must do: take on four-square the myth of "reverse discrimination" and undermine it, in our legislative halls, in our union halls, in the media, in the streets, and in the minds of white people.

I still don't have any magic answers as to how we can wage that battle effectively. The encouraging thing, however, is that over the decade of the '90s, people in many places in our country have indeed raised this issue and taken it into the arena of public debate. They have usually done this around localized struggles to defend affirmative action. The battle for affirmative action is one that we have been losing in the courts, and sometimes in popular votes. But in a remarkable number of states and communities we've won on this issue in legislative halls. For example, a few years ago in Georgia, a broad coalition of diverse groups came together and mounted such an effective campaign that they gutted an effort in the state legislature to destroy affirmative action programs.

The results when the issue has been put to popular vote have been mixed: sometimes in widely-publicized instances, as in California and the state of Washington, we've lost. But in some places affirmative action has won at the ballot box. And in every such confrontation, when the forces supporting affirmative action mounted a public campaign, they did indeed reach the minds of many white people and won some gains, in the court of public opinion, if not the final vote.

That says to me that the struggle against racism is fought most effectively around very specific situations. Racism, or white supremacy (which I think is the more accurate term), permeates everything in our society, it goes deep into the very structure of our society because the society was built on it. Thus, sometimes we can feel that there is just no way to fight it; it is too big to take on. So people do nothing. But we make breakthroughs in the minds of whites--and sometimes in public policy, as well--when we carve out a specific instance of racism and center our attack on that.

The other myth I talked about in 1991--the tendency to think we can ignore race in our organizing--is certainly still a major problem. In fact, many white people have become convinced that race is not a problem any more, because that is what they hear constantly in the mass media and from many high places in our country. People are told that if they talk about racism, they are living in the 1960s. All that, it is often said, is a battle that was fought and over with long ago. Now there are "other issues" that are more important to address.

The problem with this is not only the fact that we have not won this battle. But we must also understand that none of those "other issues" can be taken on successfully unless we deal with white racism. As long as this society can place the main burden of its problems on people of color--as long as people of color are considered expendable, as they now are--those problems are not going to be solved. For example, as long as the worst jobs and the lowest-paying ones are reserved for African-Americans and other people of color, the levels for all working people are pulled down accordingly. As long as the worst schools are reserved for people of color, nothing effective will be done to revamp our entire educational system as is needed. Or--another and very clear example--as long as the worst toxic pollution can be literally dumped on communities of color, there will not be the effective movement that is required to force those who make huge profits from polluting to change their productive processes and contribute to a sustainable economy. And toxics--like all social problems, except perhaps more dramatically--do not stay in one community; wind and water carry them everywhere.

One thing that has encouraged me greatly in recent years is that I find that an increasing number of white people today really do want to do something about racism. The problem often is that they really don't know what to do. They live and work remote from any contact with communities of color, so they really don't know what the day-in, day-out problems in those communities are.

I think the first thing white people who are sincerely concerned must do is to find out what is really going on in communities of color. They need to go places they have not gone before and listen. In every community in this nation, there are very specific issues that need white opposition--growing police crimes against people of color, for instance, or worsening housing conditions, or devastated schools. The issues are there, and in most places people of color are organizing to deal with them. In most of the places I know of, they will welcome white support--as long as whites understand that these struggles are not ones they should try to lead or dominate.

Those of us who work in local organizations dealing with issues of racism are always desperate for more troops for each endeavor. Especially, at least where I live, we need more white troops. Our job is to link up those who want to do something and don't know what to do with the specific jobs that must be done.

Perhaps most important of all, whites who care must find a way to be visible in this struggle. It may be helpful to our own psyches to meet quietly with people of color and talk about these problems. But it does not change one thing about the conditions under which so many people of color live. We must find a way to make our voices heard. This can be on a picket line or at a demonstration--but if people are not the demonstrating type, there are other things they can do. They can attend a public hearing and speak out. They can organize a delegation to public officials, or to decision-makers in the private sector, for example an executive of a company that is discriminating against African-American employees. They can write a letter to their newspaper. They can organize a public forum in their own church or community group.

The main thing is to be visible. In this manner we help create breaks in what now sometimes seems a solid white wall of resistance to admitting that a problem still exists. We create a pole to which other whites can gravitate as circumstances bring them to the conclusion that they too must act. All this helps create what I call an "anti-racist majority" in our communities. That must be our goal in every community in the country. And as we build anti-racist majorities in our local communities, we will be making possible the time when there will truly be an anti-racist majority in our entire country.