Affirmative Negative Action

         No wonder people still complain about the racial divide in America. This week the Supreme Court handed down a verdict that did away with several aspects of the Voting Rights Act that civil rights activists felt were important in protecting certain voting rights of minorities in America. The verdict was disappointing to many and celebrated by others. Texas and South Carolina, as many other states, want to pass laws that require anyone who votes in an election to have an ID. As much as I understand and empathize with anything that hinders anyone's ability to vote or have access to equal rights, I was personally surprised when I discovered that this wasn't already a law. I find it troublesome that a person can vote to decide something as important as choosing the president of the United States and not have to show a valid ID. I also find it to be bigotry of low expectations to claim that minorities are specifically being targeted if a state decides to pass a law requiring all voters to have a photo ID card, as if certain people depending on their skin tone just aren't up to the task of obtaining such a card.
        Frankly I would find it suspect if a living breathing active member of our society does NOT have some kind of valid photo ID; I would go even further and say that I am not sure I would even want them voting in important elections. White or black. Hispanic or Asian. I don't see it a question of race as much as a question of intelligence and good judgment. Who are these people who want to vote for the president of the United States or a congress person but don't even have a drivers license or some kind of official identification in this day and age?
        This may seem elitist, but I don't believe it is. Is having some kind of formal ID elitist? I find it to be actually a MORE fair and equitable perspective, giving ALL people regardless of their race color or ethnicity an EQUAL shot at the right to vote. There are plenty of poor white people who face the same kind of hurdles and challenges growing up in America that black folks do. Why not acknowledge that and stop acting as if black or Hispanic people are handicapped in some sort of way just because of the color of their skin? Isn't the real challenge poverty?
        With that said, there are some other aspects to what is in Texas's proposed new voter ID law that some claim is discriminatory against certain races, mainly minorities, such as moving polling places last minute in African American communities or closing them without notice altogether or even changing the posted times that they open or close. If this is true, it needs to be addressed and stopped. But we still may benefit from asking: is it just BLACK people that these types of laws are affecting? Or is it poor people in general? If it turns out that it's just poor people, maybe it's time we stopped speaking about the issues as if they're specifically race related and get down to the real heart of the matter. Economic social inequality seems to be a much more serious problem in America today than any issues related specifically to race or one's skin color.

        The Supreme Court also made a decision this week about whether American colleges and universities should still be allowed to take race into account when reviewing applications to attend their respective schools. The case touches on hot buttons revolving around so-called Affirmative Action laws and issues in the United States. But the Supreme Court stepped around having to make any major decisions this time; they threw the case back to the lower courts. This is why we didn't hear much about this Supreme Court decision this week. They did make a formal statement though that will make it a bit more strict and difficult for schools to use race in college application acceptance decisions. At this time most schools do consider race (skin color or nationality) in this process in order to increase the diversity of the overall student body, or so they claim. If you ask me, that's racism -- by definition, to be even considered based on the color of your skin.
        In 2003 several major decisions came down from the Supreme Court ( Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger ) that did strongly affect Affirmative Action in the school application process, but frankly the outcome seems murky. Schools are now supposed to refrain from using a point system that gives "free extra points" to minorities, but are still encouraged to "consider race" to make sure that their student body is diverse, but without necessarily a quota system intact.
        Though many of my friends and peers tend to support the government continuing to uphold some kind of affirmative action program, I tend to lean against it. (Granted, as a well-bred middle-class white male, I can AFFORD to "lean against" it. Or so I'm told. I have always been very curious about this issue and open to learning more from those who still support these programs.) But on the surface, I believe that it's past time we did away with such things. To me it seems that the issue of affirmative action is largely a generational issue at this point in our history. Those who are old enough to remember having lived through the civil rights struggle and either witnessed or experienced a lot of overt racism in their life (not necessarily aimed at them specifically) seem to be more adamantly supportive of affirmative action programs. Those of us who are younger and grew up in a culture of more equality and diversity, where public personalities and our cultural heroes seemed a random combination of many different races, both black and white, see less of a need for such programs to still exist. In fact sometimes they seem downright reverse racist.
        [Contextual Note: I have never claimed or pretended to be a hard-left leaning liberal, though I am aware that the public often views me as such simply because I am an artist, and at times I can understand why. Except those who really ARE radical lefties; they often accuse me of being too far to the RIGHT or too capitalist-minded. I think this confusion and the whole paradigm just proves what I've been saying since we were in our late teens: DON'T JOIN ANY CLUBS. So said the banner I used to walk around with at protests or displayed behind me on stage. Early on I wrote in these Diaries and recorded plenty of YouTube rants against joining ANY political party no matter what country you lived in IF you wanted people to believe you to be an intelligent person. The boxes that you are forced to jump into on both sides are way too small, limited, illogical, and most of all archaic -- and because of this at times seem rather arbitrary. (You can't claim to be "pro-life" (as in anti-abortion) AND at the same time be pro-capital punishment (as in pro-killing people and thus anti-life). Unless of course you are taking that viewpoint simply to fit in with a particular political party's platform. It's illogical and shows a real lack of thinking. To me at least.) Point being, sure I'm liberal, more than most. On some issues. But that doesn't mean that I support ALL or ever a majority of the views of the standard flag-waving American Democrat. I have learned through the years that I usually don't. But I sure as hell wouldn't classify myself as being right-wing or conservative or Republican either. Yikes. Though I do share some of their viewpoints. I will say this though: as brain-fried crazy as most Republicans appear to be in today's America, when forced to choose, I find myself more and more shifting towards FOX News rather than MSNBC. There are many things despicable about both entertainment networks (mainly that they pretend to be news networks in the first place), but the one thing I can say that I admire about FOX as compared to MSNBC is that at least they know and acknowledge what they're doing over there. MSNBC still pretends it's an objective news network, as if they speak for all rational right thinking Americans. FOX lets it's freak flag fly; they just throw it all out there, mercilessly and without apology. The actors on MSNBC really believe they are journalists, and my fear is that many semi-intelligent right thinking innocents might be fooled into thinking the same thing.]
        In terms of affirmative action... most of the people in American society we come across and deem to be "hip cool smart liberal modern well thought out" people seem to be supportive of affirmative action programs, just as they seem to be passionately against any sort of voter photo ID laws. But I would posit that "encouraging cultural diversity" on college campuses is admirable, even desirable IF the students and parents of those who attend WANT that, but that there should be NO mandate to do so by the government. That's not democratic. It may be well-meaning, but it's flat out reverse racism, and damn close to communism.
        What if certain people only want to go to school with people of their own kind? Should that be illegal in a free society? In times past we would say "yes" because of what it was symptomatic of. But now? I'm not too sure. Why not let private institutions at least make their own rules? Wouldn't that be the more democratic way? Let's say that a school only wants to have black students. They've offered up their reasons for it. The student body and their parents have approved of it, requested it even. The school is privately funded through grants and foundations and generates plenty of its revenue from it's incoming tuition and alumni donations. Do we really want to live in a society that will not allow that school, it's faculty, student body and alumni to do what it deems best for itself? It sounds like communism to me. Not a democracy of free people. 
        And what if a white applicant IS turned down who is more than eligible to make room for a black or Hispanic student who is less eligible just because she is NOT a minority? (as was the case in this particular Supreme Court case (Abigail Noel Fisher vs. the University of Texas)) This kind of thing evidently is more prevalent in modern times than most people realize. All because we are trying to guarantee that minority students are accepted into higher learning institutions as often as non-minority students. There is an irony in that America doesn't have too many years to go until so-called white people are no longer the "majority"... What then? It will become clear that our quest to reverse a long history of racial bias and bigotry against so-called minorities has now transformed into a matter of socioeconomic issues more than race or ethnicity. What then?
        This strange phenomena is happening in today's world. White students don't receive any free points on college applications and may in fact find it more difficult to be accepted into the same school that a minority student finds it easy to get accepted into -- all because that student is white. The methodology used to create such an unfair playing field may have started out well-meaning and was for all intents and purposes necessary when the idea was first proposed; but the disadvantage that it places some so-called majority students in shouldn't be happening at all, nor should it be accepted as some kind of unfortunate collateral damage. We shouldn't be using any specific quota that schools need to meet or direct affirmative action practices like a point system with free points going to minorities IF we want at the same time to be able to claim to be a color-blind free society.
        It may sound like a radically controversial idea, but what if we passed a law instead that made it illegal to put anything on a college application that revealed the race, ethnicity or nationality of the applicant? Just flat out against the law. If we really wanted it to be fair and equal that wold include the applicant's name. They should just be assigned a number instead, or rather, just apply with their social security number. Leave it all out. It would be fascinating to see what would happen in that kind of scenario. Regarding schools being encouraged (some may say "coerced") to actively attempt to have a more diverse student body (which I personally find objectionable and not a true representation of a free society), why not allow for the fact that one particular school may end up with a large majority of white and Asian students if they ONLY used academic factors in their acceptance policy? Just as another school with a different focus and mission may have a student body that is primarily black or Hispanic? Or vice versa. Either way. We won't know until we try it. But one would like to think that acceptance into any higher level educational institution is based on how well qualified the applicant is, just as in it is in the real world when applying for a job.
        Here now is the perfect place to reveal that for many years I have felt prejudiced against because I am a white male. When going to college definitely, and when applying for government loans and grants for business and for non-profit grants. As someone younger in America who never really witnessed racism or bigotry first hand and was not around during the major civil rights movement, I always found it odd and frustrating when I was told that unfortunately I couldn't qualify for any special loan programs or grants because I wasn't black, Hispanic, Jewish or female. If only... WE are supposed to go out there and succeed withOUT any kind of special consideration or benefits on the grounds that we are Caucasian and male. It doesn't matter whether we are rich or poor, grew up in the ghetto or the burbs, had two parents or just a single mom. None of it matters because we aren't considered a minority of any kind and therefore we qualify for "nothing special". Just saying. The thought has occurred to me more than once.  
        All this got me thinking about professional sports. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see clearly that for whatever reason black people at least appear to excel at professional sports in America. More than white people? Well that's just a statistic plain and simple that can be checked online if it weren't well past 3 am in the morning. There was a time long ago however when black Americans were not allowed to play baseball in the MLB -- (Major League Baseball club). That changed of course. The recent film 42, about Jackie Robinson, told the story. The same was true with American football. That story is even more confusing convoluted and upsetting. It may be hard for us to believe today, but the first time an African American joined professional basketball wasn't until 1950 but that was just ONE player in the entire league. It wasn't really until the 1960s that African Americans began to become viable active members of professional basketball. The first Hispanic American in the league didn't join until Puerto Rican Butch Lee in 1978! Hard to believe.
        Other sports like golf and tennis and hockey seemed like they may never be racially integrated to many people who followed such things. But now of course anyone under the age of 30 in modern America cannot even imagine golf without Tiger Woods or tennis without the Williams sisters, and it's highly likely they don't even have memory of professional golf or tennis without black players. That's the environment that we live in today. It may have taken affirmative action practices like certain quotas of minorities a team must meet or race-based preferential treatment to get us to the place where we are now in professional sports, but by all accounts it appears that a person's skill and talent in a particular sport is what gets them in now and takes them to the top of that game. IF they're good enough. I believe the same principle should apply to our schools.
        Just to play devil's advocate, one certainly notices the severe lack of white players in the NBA. Of course no one is allowed to talk about that in American society for fear of being fired and having their entire life turned upside down, but from an objective viewpoint it would appear that white people just don't like to play professional basketball. Or perhaps they just aren't allowed or encouraged to play as much as black people..? We are assured this is not the case though and that it's all based solely on the players' skill and talent at the sport and nothing else. So what if it is? Should we not begin to require all major sports teams to have a certain number of white players on every team just to make it fair? It's a thought. Don' white players deserve to play as much as anyone else? Wouldn't the sport benefit from having a more diverse roster of players from different ethnicities?
        In times past a common phrase heard around the world in regards to America and race relations was that we may have made a lot of progress towards equal rights for all but that we still have a long way to go, especially in the arenas of civil service and politics. Hell I even remember people of both colors exclaiming that "I'll tell you this much, we'll never see a black president." Movies were made about the subject. They were always comedies, because the idea seemed so far fetched and ludicrous that it seemed downright comical to suggest such a thing. (Racism or just entertainment? Will we ever be able to laugh at such things without throwing someone under the bus?)
        Well lo and behold now this has changed too. There is a real live living breathing African American in the "White House" (how's that for American irony? There may be nothing to that oft heard idea of "American Exceptionalism" -- I can assure you there's not. Unless you count the variety of exclusively American ironies that abound in this great confounded nation.) The ONLY problem with the exuberant pride Americans take in electing a black president is that he isn't any more black than he is white. He's a genetically perfect mix of both races (colors? What is a "race" anyway?) We need to remind real racists of this... Obama's mother was white... They need to aim their irrational hatred towards someone else. But perhaps that's the true color-blind utopian future that human rights activists have been envisioning for centuries... All the races and nationalities need to just start making love and marrying until we fuck all the color differences right out of us. It would sure fix a lot of our problems.
        Regardless of the future of interracial marriage and free love, I believe that one can safely say that at a time and in a age when one of the most respected and feared men on the political stage of planet earth is a man of color, and Mayor Bloomberg shares control over the most important and powerful city in the free world, namely New York, with a black man, Jay Z (who has a reported net worth valued over 450 MILLION dollars, no one has the right (or at least certainly not the rational) to claim that people of color need to continue to receive hand outs or unfair advantages or benefits over and above anyone else just because of the color of their skin or their ancestors' history.
        When an African American man raised without a father by a single mother and his grandparents can rise up through the ranks of us all -- black, white, Asian, Hispanic and every color in between -- to become president of the United States, when he can claim that he's best friends with the two wealthiest people in the entertainment industry -- Oprah Winfrey and Jay Z, shoots hoops with the country's greatest basketball players like Lebron James, Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan, and plays golf with one of the most winningest players to ever grace the fields of green, who also happens to be black, I'd say that we're not doing half as badly as people may want to still believe.
        If anything, we white males still left in America may soon be asking for some affirmative action of our own.