There is a case wending its way to the Supreme Court challenging Harvard (and vicariously all colleges) affirmative action program, which is designed to ensure that every incoming class is composed of at least some minorities. Since affirmative action was launched in the 1970’s people have hailed it for giving a chance to blacks and other minorities to have a college education at the many respected institutions, and not just black only colleges. However, it has also been derided on the left as creating a quota that protects colleges from admitting no more than the 10 percent or other benchmark to meet affirmative action’s goals, and on the right of giving spots to less deserving minorities than white people who “earned” their place to admission, only to be denied. The Bakke decision by the US Supreme Court is a good primer on this attitude.
I grew up in an all white suburb on the west side of Cleveland. Our diversity consisted of a redlined small south east corner called Bird Town, due to the streets being named for local birds; think Robin Lane, Sparrow Avenue, etc. It was streets filled with row house duplexes that were rentals, landlords mostly being absentee. It housed various waves of Eastern Europeans, Southern Europeans, and in my high school years, people from Lebanon and parts of the Middle East. After I left for college Hispanics were allowed to rent there. No blacks were ever allowed to rent, and few middle or upper middle class blacks wanted to endure the racism of our town and instead found homes on the more heterogenous East Side of Cleveland.
While I grew up thinking how diverse my suburb was, the reality was closer to the planet in Wrinkle in Time where every father came home to work at the exact same time, to the house that looked exactly like the one next door, and where the children walked outside at the exact same time, bounced a ball for the exact number of bounces and walked back in side.
Diversity came to my suburb when Taco Bell applied to open a franchise in the 70’s. There was much opposition, but it was allowed to open as the building looked just like a miniature of the Alamo. In my suburb Italian food was considered exotic if it was something other than pizza or spaghetti with meatballs.
I say all of this because in the 45 years since I left my home I have discovered a world of diversity far greater than what I ever read in any book or newspaper. People not like me speaking languages not my own made me travel and learn their language (spoiler alert: while their conversations sound exotic, their just discussing their work or what’s for dinner or gossip, just like us). Food I never knew existed, arts I never knew conveyed ideas and history I had never studied. Every course I ever took on people other than my white culture was only taught through a lens of white culture. Stepping out into the real world from college and beyond was like stepping out from a cave into a great Amazon basin.
Which brings me to the point I wanted to bring up. Like being in that allegorical cave, there is a dangerous thought that affirmative action and diversity encouragement are really nothing more than letting inferior and undeserving minorities get to pretend they are as smart and qualified as white people. It is the driving force attitude for the right’s argument that they are a carve out for the inferior races. Even though it is Asian complainants using the left’s arguments of restriction to drive the Trojan Horse of racism right into our college system.
If we are to end the scourge of white supremacy it has to start with the acknowledgement of the beauty and brilliance of the non-white races and why they, in their culture and history, are no lesser or better than us. More importantly, they make us even better with what it is they do contribute, and we are a greater nation for it. Our focus on white supremacists, lone wolf murderers or debates on CRT or systemic racism is only half the battle and futile without understanding the people we claim to champion. If we are to have any chance to defeat racism we have to focus not on the white supremacists, but the value of non-whites to the fabric of this nation.