Prometheus 6   

What we need is a new method to promote diversity, one that focuses on class rather than race. Class-based methods use financial and geographic indicators rather than skin color to determine whether a student will have something unique to bring to the table. Universities like Michigan use race-based diversity programs to ensure a multicultural student body.

Class-based diversity programs can be used to achieve the same ends because most minorities tend to be poorer than whites. In 2001, for example, the median household income was $29,470 for blacks and $46,305 for non-Hispanic whites, according to the Census Bureau.

Because of this disparity, class-based diversity programs will inevitably promote racial diversity in admissions even if they are not explicitly intended to do so. And by ensuring that students are admitted from historically low-income urban neighborhoods, racial diversity can be achieved without using skin color itself as a means of distinguishing among students.

Class, Caste and Race

There are those who see the root of the race problem in class warfare… the exploitation of the 'lower' classes by the 'ruling' class. The approach to solving racial problems advocated by these folks is to empower the lower classes, where coincidentally most Black folks find themselves. Conceptually, this is a possible solution… as, conceptually, there may be unicorns. One gets a hint of the problems in this theoretical construct when you examine the groups dedicated to eliminating the "class problem" and find that they, too, have their command structure, their leaders and followers. Substituting one class structure for another doesn't eliminate classes.

Now, it's not that I'm saying race is a substantial reality. I'm not saying the idea of race wasn't created out of whole cloth to stabilize the particular class structure preferred by Europeans. In fact, I'd truly prefer the issue to be one of class… it would make the issue far more tractable, one that I could master easily. What I'm saying is that there is no way to eliminate class from human society. One can only imagine it possible by limiting one's perception to ideas rather than acknowledging the physical reality we are a part of.

Humans are social animals, and as such are hierarchical. There is no social animal that lives on land that does not have a 'pecking order' (I'm not sure if schooling fish can be considered social, but I give them the benefit of the doubt). There is no human society… hell, there's no human group larger than five people… that doesn't have its leader. There never has been, and short of an evolutionary spurt there never will be because it is inherent in our bodies. This is deeper than society… deeper than humanity. Hierarchy is as inherent in social arthropods as in social anthropoids and The thought of our insubstantial ideas overturning the substance of (with my best Carl Sagan voice) "beelions and beelions of years of evolution", is a bit of hubris that deserves the resounding crash of failure any such attempt is doomed to. You might as well try to grow gills and live at the bottom of the ocean.

I can't define the problem as one of class relations because if it is, the only resolution possible is to expunge land based life and start from scratch. The problem as I see it is that race is used as a determining factor in your starting point in the struggle. Race is also used as a factor in to determining an acceptable response. Black people can excel if they are allowed equal access. We can achieve the same distribution of wealth in our community as the white community has. We can achieve a fair share of the power. We've proven over and over that we can muster the power to excel. But because we were sanctioned by race, unfair methods of competition… like KILLING us… were perfectly acceptable, and we were set back over and over again.

If racism is ameliorated, Blacks can progress through the class system naturally. This is the most we can accomplish, and as such, should be the goal. The problem isn't that we don't meet an ideal. The problem is that we are pursuing an ideal in the first place. Impossible goals simply ultimately disappoint and disillusion people, causing them to say "Accept it… we can't make it the way it should be." But we shouldn't try to make things the way they should be. We should look honestly, and see what can be.

But even that is simply theory.

The real reason we should pursue justice for Black people is that Black people on the whole just want a chance to participate in the system. Our predecessors fought to join, explicitly rejected emigration. They never asked to be white. They never asked for white people's possessions, never asked to displace white people. All they ever asked was not to be obstructed. A number of us have decided that this will never be, so they now wish to separate. But the overwhelming majority of Blacks just want to be able to determine their own actions without irrational forces interfering. And most of them want to do it in the land of their birth. That is both the real goal and the real reason for pursuing it. Everything else is just so much noise.

This month the Supreme Court is expected to rule on two major affirmative action cases involving the University of Michigan's admission policies, Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger. In both cases, white students have sued the university over its policy of giving preferential treatment to black students.

Twenty-five years ago the Supreme Court ruled in the Bakke decision that affirmative action programs in admissions are legitimate so long as they do not rely on quota systems. Michigan's former president, Lee Bollinger, has said the current controversy is the most important civil rights issue since Brown v. Board of Education. President Bush has taken the unusual step of speaking out on the cases, saying he believes the University of Michigan's policies amount to a quota system and are therefore unconstitutional.