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On
Saturday, April 8, after attending a Richmond Webb-for-Senate
event, I had the pleasure of meeting with Jim Webb
for about a half-hour. We talked about a range of
issues including foreign policy, the Iraq War,
health care policy, Katrina recovery, and even
about our families and their histories. The
Senatorial hopeful, who is seeking the Democratic
nomination to run against U.S. Sen. George Allen,
was warm, engaging, and funny, and he never asked
for my vote. He is the genuine article and sticks
to his principles.
Among
other topics, we discussed the recent controversy
regarding Webb's not-so-recent writings on
affirmative action and diversity programs. Webb
was not surprised by Harris Miller's attacks, but
he was disappointed. Last week the Webb campaign
responded this way:
“Jim
Webb’s primary opponent seriously distorted his
views about race relations in this country, and
about affirmative action. Jim fully supports
affirmative action for African Americans…The
point is, Jim believes strongly that Americans
have more in common than they have differences.
For example, poverty does not discriminate based
on skin color. And in the modern era we are
divided more and more along class lines than by
race. There are 37 million Americans of all races
living in poverty. Nearly one-quarter of all
African Americans still live in poverty. To create
a program that gives assistance to some poor
Americans while excluding millions of other people
in poverty can only further exacerbate racial
tension in America. This is an issue of fairness,
and these programs must be fair across society.”
Race
is the eternal bugaboo in American society. From
the African slavery that predated the Pilgrims to
the destruction of the native peoples of this land
to the scourge of Jim Crow that plagued Dixie (and
manifested itself socially in the Northern
states), the stain of racism has never been washed
out of the American fabric. It has touched the
lives of most Americans in some form, and
Virginia, the incubator of American slavery, has
had its fair share of racial strife.
My
parents, grandparents and most of my in-laws were
forced into segregated grade schools and higher
education institutions because of the color of
their skin. I have had friends and relatives who
suffered from racial profiling, were refused
mortgage loans for houses in white neighborhoods,
suffered through the indignity of school closings
during Massive Resistance, and had job
opportunities impeded because of race. As a
lifelong resident of Virginia (save 2 years in
North Carolina), I have also had my share of
run-ins with unsavory racism. Thus, I know the
issue from both the emotional and intellectual
perspectives.
As
Webb noted at his Richmond appearance and
reiterated to me later, affirmative action
programs were directly intended to remedy the
effects of slavery and follow-on segregation on
black people, people like my own family members.
As a governmental policy, it was designed to
provide targeted and effective measures for
helping African Americans overcome the legacy of
institutionalized bigotry that denied to them
opportunities simply on the color of their skin.
However, over time, the implementation of
affirmative action grew to include any nonwhite
minorities, regardless of the degree of legalized
oppression that they faced. The most recent
incarnations of affirmative action have come under
the diversity rubric.
On
the face of it, extending opportunities to
nonwhite Americans seems like a good idea, and on
balance, it remains such. However, the status quo
of affirmative action created two problems.
First,
by expanding the programs to non-black ethnic
groups, the impacts of affirmative action policies
were essentially diluted for African Americans,
particularly the persistent black underclass.
Giving affirmative action a general “minority”
focus shrunk the pie available specifically to
blacks for their advancement and for redressing
wrongs they suffered explicitly.
Second,
some diversity programs were construed in such a
manner that any nonwhite person, regardless of
economic or class status, received opportunities
over poor and disadvantaged whites, many of whom
are part of the Scots-Irish culture that Webb
eloquently chronicles. Admittedly, poor whites do
benefit socially by having white skin, but they
still face a significant amount of economic
distress.
The
message that I got from Jim Webb was that, if
affirmative action programs are to exist, they
should be for their original purposes – to
overcome the negative effects of targeted,
sustained institutionalized racism sanctioned by
government against African Americans. Furthermore,
if anti-poverty programs are to be truly
diverse and reach all who need them, they must
also be open to people based on class and economic
status, not simply race and ethnicity.
Essentially, focusing on poverty reduction and
social advancement for persons of color and for
disadvantaged whites (who in fact make up the
majority of public welfare rolls) is the best way
to remedy deep-seated social (racial) divisions
and to open up opportunities to even greater
numbers of Americans who have been left behind.
Regardless of the red-meat rhetoric used in his
writings, Webb does indeed have a very strong
argument.
Jim
Webb once wrote that “the greatest realignment
in modern politics would take place rather quickly
if the right national leader found a way to bring
the Scots-Irish and African Americans to the same
table, and so to redefine a formula that has
consciously set them apart for the past two
centuries." As the birthplace of American
greatest political leaders and its most tragic
“peculiar” institution, it would be fitting
for Virginia to be the testing ground for such a
grand experiment. In 2006, Jim Webb believes that
he may be just such a leader for the Commonwealth.
Quite frankly, I believe that in June, Democrats
ought to give him a shot at proving it.
--
April 17, 2006
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