Affirmative Action….right or wrong?

Affirmative Action..and the insidious Prop 19 got a lot of Republicans elected in the 1990s.

The FACT that racism and prejudice had rendered entire ethnic populations outside of America’s wealth was wrong according to Pete Wilson and the boys.

Why, when a white kid is “discriminated against” by actually having to EARN his/her way into UC, then that is the end of the world.

Racist politicians jumped on board, blasting Affirmative Action as somehow Communistic, hateful; etc.

All that affirmative action did was try to undue hundreds of years of discrimination. All it did was to right a wrong that is so systematic that today it threatens to tear the country apart.

I wrote about Latinos yesterday that talked about the fact that in Latin American Countries the more white your were, the higher the status; that a caste system exists there, as much as much as in the USA.

And the result has been caste deveopment of African Native and Mexican Americans in lower paying jobs forever. Then, of course, immigration is stopped from below the border to add to the discrimination…it just gets worse.

There is still so much racism in California, that in many liberal bastions, people of color live in and work in low socioeconomic areas with no hope of getting out. Mexicans are supposed to work in the fields and mow my lawn and that is it…oh, the tacos are good though.

Mexican Americans have a “place” in California’s racial hierarchy that is well defined and ruthlessly applied.

The Pandemic numbers have proven that once again. The death rate to Latinos is shameful, proving discriminate exists as much today as in the 1990s where affirmative action was overturned by a racist surge.

Hate always elects the discriminators. Hate wins elections. Think not, watch the Trump re-election approach; law n order is being trooped out yet again, Nixon like, to try to steal an election yet again.

Now, as “whites” (whatever that is) are a minority in the state, affirmative action is once again rearing. its head; and the racist lobby has once again struck back.

The Republican Party in Californias has in its platform, policy to destroy affirmative action wherever it is.

It’s the same playbook that was used to pass Prop 19.

The hypocrisy is so thick you can taste it…

For centuries the whiter you were the more the privilege…the darker you were the less privilege.

When Stanford dropped the Indian a grossly racist mascot by the way; there were two (2) Native Americans (self identified) in the undergraduate system. TWO!

To its credit, Stanford did the right thing in 1972 and banned the mascot forever. Prince Lightfoot ironically filed a lawsuit against the University because he claimed the mascot was a positive,and to end it hurt the status of Native American culture….I never could figure that one out.

Oh yeah, calling the Freshmen Teams (in those days) Papooses is acceptable? Dressing the song dollies in very short skirts with feathers in their hair and doing war chants is acceptable. Storming the field, from the tunnel (I did it many times) amidst war whoops and axe chants was somehow not prejudiced…It reinforced every negative stereotype the is.

Disney studies even drew up an “Indian” mascot that had a big nose etc., a stereotype if there ever was one…This “mascot” was plastered on walls and car windows all over the place/

This was “colorful” and “celebrated Indian culture”?

Not to Native Americans…and that is the point, how on earth can the right still be in denial about white privilege…How indeed…check history…

When those of us who supported the “Indian ban” argued. it was right to change mascots, other alums stopped their contributions, and railed about how it was no big thing, its only a mascot.

A truth is affirmative Action does discriminate. slightly against whites…and the solution is simple..expand the size of the colleges.

Stanford for example, with miles of land it owns, still has a small student body that cannot possibly serve the student body it should have; Stanford is still the same size as when I went there 50 years ago. In a real sense it is rationing its opportunity.

And that preserves the elitist white privilege that the place reeks of, regardless of the ethnic diversity it also brags about.

We need to invest more in education at all levels…We are losing in the global economy because we still ration higher education and leave people of color still out of the American “Dream”..