race is the new black

It's very trendy now to talk about race in headlines, I guess since we have a good chance of having a biracial man for our next president. The American Medical Association has apologized for "racial inequality" against black physicians in medicine. I'm all for splashy public headline grabbing apologies, but I'll be more impressed when I see the AMA and all of the health science fields do more to recruit black students into health care training. I'd like to see a public apology to the African slave women used by J. Marion Sims for gynecological research to benefit white women. Much has been said of the Tuskegee medical crimes against American black airmen, but have you heard of unlawful and unethical research on Depo Provera involving poor black women?

In an opinion piece in the WSJ Ward Connerly, a racist activist writer talks about how Obama is racist in an indirect way by saying that Obama is no "post racial" candidate. This got my attention for several reasons. One, I'm always interested when "post" is attached to anything because because of the controversy I've encountered for using postmodern and poststructural methods in my research. "Real Scientists" think I've gone over to the dark side of vague, unfounded theoretical claims. When I mentioned my next research project (a quantitative study) to a fellow postmodern researcher I got the distinct impression she thought I had gone over to the other dark side of grand narrative production! Fortunately I have a thick skin for this sort of thing.

But I digress.

In his article Connerly uses the phrase post racial to refer to ending affirmative action! He argues that using racial preference in hiring or in university admission screenings is nothing more than racism. He's turned the whole racism argument around and used it against measures employed to end the negative effects of 400 years of racism! See how interesting the new black can be?

I'm an Obama supporter by default. (My candidates were Kucinich, then Clinton, now Obama.) Obama is too conservative for me, has been too disingenuous by having so many registered lobbyists working for him while criticizing Clinton for talking to lobbyists. Not all lobbyists are working for cooporate welfare, some work for social worker groups, nursing groups, etc., and apparently a lot of them work for Obama!

However, I have to take Obama's side in this one. We need racial preference to heal a festering wound.

Connerly has left quite a bit out of his analysis with respect to achieving equality for black American Descendants of African Slaves. He fails to account for debts owed due to:

1). American fortunes built on the unpaid labor of African slaves over 100s of years. The USA has enjoyed the world dominance it has had for 400 years solely because of this free labor. Our leaders have gone searching for more free labor in international trade agreements, the gutting of the American education system, and our archaic health care system which currently excludes 45-100 million Americans, mostly people of color. (The 45 million number oft quoted only applies to Americans who go more than 365 days without health insurance. If you go without health insurance for 364 days, you're not counted!) Keeping Americans poorly educated and in poor health is builds a workforce so cheap it's almost as good as free labor. But first you must do away with employer sponsored health insurance for the working class, and do everything possible to block universal single payer health care for all.

2). American gynecology advanced through experimental medical research first on African slaves, and later on poor women of color. See Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide for more on this topic.

3). American history is rife with examples of affirmative action in favor of whites--the institution of slavery is the most obvious example. Jim Crow laws followed and there is good reason to consider the New Deal affirmative action for whites because it excluded most job classifications held by blacks. See When Affirmative Action Was White.

4). Then there was redlining. American Descendants of African Slaves have been deprived the ability to purchase property because they have been deprived the ability to get mortgage loans for many generations. Property is the primary means by which wealth is passed from generation to generation, so this is another example of how the deprivations of American Descendants of African Slaves have been passed down through the generations (See page 163, When Affirmative Action Was White).

I could go on for a while here but my point is that we owe about 400 years of "racial preference" to American Descendants of African Slaves and to Native Americans. It is too soon to pull the plug on affirmative action for people of color.

Connorly and others like him are living in a delusion, ignoring even recent history of white affirmative action.