Affirmative Action

Before Diversity, Equity & Inclusion there was Affirmative Action. Affirmative Action programs took off at the end of the '60s in direct response to the civil rights movement. The bosses set aside for Black people a certain number of slots in government agencies, corporations, union apprenticeship programs, medical schools and other institutions in which "minorities" had been "traditionally underrepresented." It was a tactic to defuse the revolutionary potential of the black movement by buying off an articulate, ambitious ten percent. It was brilliant and effective.

Affirmative Action put everybody in a bind. Black people were in a bind because things got steadily worse for the community as a whole, but better for the privileged few. Many sensed that people attributed their success –a promotion at work, admission to medical school – to the supposed "advantage" of race. (I heard more than one Black med student express this unease when I worked at UCSF years ago.)

White people were in a bind because they knew that their chances of getting a scholarship, or into the fire department, were diminished by affirmative action. They'd say, "I'm not a racist and my ancestors weren't slave-owners, in fact, they were immigrants and got discriminated against, too. Why must I lose out on a job?"

The Blacks replied, "How can you compare the discrimination suffered by an Italian immigrant with being ripped from your homeland, your family, and brought over here in chains, deprived of all rights, whipped, lynched, systematically segregated, undereducated, jailed, hated for the color of your skin…"

Everyone was divided, everyone defined their politics in terms of ethnicity, gender, or some other "special issue." The fake left of course played a very bad role in all this. They promoted political activity based on everybody's separate-interest trips – African Americans, women, Hispanics, Pilipinos, prisoners, Native Americans, gays, fat people, pot smokers– instead of building a party that could bring about meaningful change.

I walked into the single-trap with eyes wide open when I decided to cover the medical marijuana movement in the late '90s. (To make a living as a journalist you need a niche.)

One Saturday afternoon in the autumn of 2002 (I think) I went to hear Rep. Barney Frank give a talk at the Autumn Moon Cafe in Oakland. The Massachusetts Congressman was revered by the higher-ranking pot proponents. He had come to raise funds for the Democrats and to get out the vote.

Barney Frank was a few years ahead of me at Harvard. I remember him, overweight and unathletic, umpiring a softball game between The Crimson (the newspaper) and the Lampoon (a humor magazine). He stood behind the pitcher and kept up a very funny patter throughout the game. He could have been a successful stand-up comic. But by the time I caught his act in Oakland, he was a pompous bore.

“Speak truth to power,” Barney told the assembled cheese nibblers in Oakland. “Pragmatism and idealism are not incompatible,” he said, as if he was living proof.

He blamed the dismal state of the nation on Ralph Nader and expressed concern that the Greens might somehow cost the Democrats control of the House in the upcoming election. “Anyone who can’t tell the difference between Nancy Pelosi and Tom Delay has been on another planet,” he fumed. He contrasted the destructive Nader to admirable Jesse Jackson, whose loyalty to the Democratic Party had convinced Bill Clinton not to abandon Affirmative Action. “Thanks to Jesse Jackson working within the framework of the Democratic Party, we won that fight,” said Frank.

Some pot proponents actually clapped their hands. They had come to the Autumn Moon to thank him for sponsoring a bill that would move their favorite plant from Schedule I to Schedule II and acknowledge the right of states to enact medical mj initiatives. As Barney was receiving their expressions of gratitude, your correspondent asked why marijuana belonged in Schedule II, along with morphine and cocaine, rather than in Schedule III, with Marinol – or lower.

“What planet have you been on?” he sneered, repeating his banal put-down. He read my name tag and changed tone slightly. "Do you know how hard it’s been to get the very few votes we have for that bill?”

The same planet as Ralph Nader, I said. The sneer came back. “All you care about are symbols,” he lectured. “My bill is a pragmatic first step. Then there can be other steps.”

No, Barney, the reforms you pass off as first steps always turn out to be final steps, the limit to what we’re going to get in response to our demands. Affirmative Action is a perfect example. In the ‘60s the cities were burning from Newark to Watts and Black people were demanding power. So it was decided to cut them in —not en masse, of course, just the most articulate, the potential leaders. Ten percent (at the very most) would get slots at the big corporations and government agencies and union apprenticeship programs. Affirmative action supposedly represented the triumph of the civil rights movement, as if “a piece of the pie” for a fortunate few had been the goal all along. The first step turned out to be the end of the march.

In Oakland, Barney Frank accepted the gratitude of the medical mj "activists" as if it were his due. He didn’t ask anybody about the raids on their gardens or their pending court cases. He kept looking over their shoulders in case there was somebody more important in the room. His parting words in my direction were, “If you think marijuana should be schedule III, find another Congressman to sponsor a bill."