Bergmann, Barbara. In Defense of Affirmative Action . New
York: Basic Books, 1996: 147-8

One claim made against affirmative action is that the program's very existence is taken by blacks to be an admission on the part of the white community that it has victimized blacks. This evidence of their victimization supposedly makes blacks angry and therefore susceptible to the rhetoric of extremists such as the anti-Semitic demagogue Louis Farrakhan. Shelby Steele, the leading exponent of this chain of reasoning, goes on to argue that the presence of angry anti Semites in the black community creates a vicious circle by deceiving the white community into thinking that it needs to continue affirmative action to prevent even more anger from developing.

There obviously is a great deal of black anger in this country, but the connection that Steele draws between affirmative action and black anti-Semitism, and his general point about the connections between oppression, remedies for oppression, and anger, are, when examined, quite implausible. First, blacks' discovery that they were oppressed did not have to wait for the appearance of affirmative action programs. The people who took part in the civil rights agitations of the 19~0s and 1960s knew the score, and black people continue to be aware of oppression simply through living their lives. The frequency of gross police misconduct toward African Americans is known to everybody. The humiliating treatment that even well-dressed blacks receive in stores and in their own workplaces perennially demonstrates to blacks that some whites, including some whites in influential positions, are racists. Second, while a problem is perceived, are we all supposed to just forget it? Are we to adopt the principle that we must never do anything about any problems we see because the people we are trying to help will get angry that the problem has not yet been fixed and will then act irrationally? That principle would condemn us to total immobility in all arenas, not just that of racial unfairness. One could more plausibly argue that oppression that is allowed to continue with no attempt at a remedy produces more anger than openly acknowledged oppression for which a remedy is being attempted.

Affirmative action does arouse anger among some whites, and this reaction does hurt blacks. Some of that white anger is whipped up by the foes of affirmative action, who then proceed to say that white anger is another bad effect of affirmative action. But some of the anger comes from whites who think, correctly or not, that they have been passed over for jobs or promotions because of affirmative action Unfortunately, any advance, through any method, that gives a black a job that a white wanted and might have had may arouse resentment in the white person displaced, especially if he or she thinks that blacks are not good enough to deserve access to such jobs. If we were to avoid any degree of white resentment, we could accomplish nothing.

Carl Gutierrez-Jones,

Department of English

University of California

Santa Barbara, CA 93106

E-mail: carlgj@humanitas.ucsb.edu