Views from Lori Johnson

  

From https://disqus.com/by/disqus_3Utu1qcYcr/

 

 

Lori Johnson  2 years ago

Let's get something straight, the primary beneficiaries of Affirmative Action have been white women--not blacks--according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Also, it is erroneous and racist to suggest that blacks only began achieving in any area as result of AA. There has been a black middle in this country since long before it become the United States. Indeed it was this black middle class (Margeretta Forten and her family), sans AA, that provided William Lloyd Garrison with the funds he needed to publish The Liberator. J.Plotinus is right; SEP has staked out a position that ignores all other forms of discrimination except class. It also ignores the long history of the American white working class--not just the ruling class--in discriminating against blacks and not or even primarily in the South. Can you say, "New York City Draft Riots?" During which working whites terrorized black communities for three days, because they didn't want to fight against slavery. The RNC encouraged Lincoln to drop slavery as a condition for ending the war during the 1864 presidential election. Indeed, the Emancipation Proclamation only frees slaves in the "those states in rebellion" against the US. Why? Because Maryland, Delaware and Kentucky still had slaves. So contrary to SEP history of the Civil War, working class whites were not fighting for blacks. They were fighting mostly for union and for uninterrupted navigation along the Mississippi. Your potted history of the African American experience (slavery, emancipation, Jim Crow and Civil Rights, Affirmative Action) is offensive and dishonest. Blacks have richer and more complex history in this country than the SEP allows. The Nisei got reparations; the same model could be used for the descendants of slaves. Blacks are by definition a mixed people in this country as in the Caribbean and South America. In the words of the late-great paleontologist Stephen J. Gould, "you can't tell by looking at black people how much white blood they have and it is racist to assume otherwise." But only those blacks identifying as such should get reparations. Race is a fiction, but racism is real. Race and gender too often determine class. Until you've been called a nigger, denied a job or housing, watched your child shunned on the playground, don't tell me about racism or why blacks don't shouldn't get reparations. I believe in socialism, but I can't bring myself to join the SEP, because of its false narratives and historical blind spots.