Syl Jones: Affirmative action? No, what I want is my money Syl Jones: Affirmative action? No, what I want is my money
Syl Jones
Published March 7, 2003
The University of Michigan law school's affirmative action remedy is discriminatory and deserves to be struck down by the Supreme Court, which it will be, and by a lightning bolt from the Almighty, which it will not be. Any system that awards points to applicants purely on the basis of skin color is racially discriminatory, and no amount of blather about improving diversity on campus can change that.
In fact, Michigan's remedy is so juvenile that a sixth-grader could have rejected it as too simplistic, which may be why President Bush was able to figure it out. But, don't mis-underestimate me: Give me points because I have overcome extraordinary obstacles in my life, because I know and understand my family's legacy, because I'm from a culture that has encountered intense discrimination and I've shown the propensity to rise above it.
But, let's get real -- don't give me points simply because my skin is black. The Michigan case is a straw man -- one that conservatives have been praying for. But what most white Americans don't understand is that setting aside a few thousand seats for black students in prestigious colleges each year is a much better deal than actually having to calculate the cost of the millions of squandered lives, broken families and economic devastations wrought upon black families by white America.
I don't want no stinkin' affirmative action. I want to know precisely what the value of the land is that was stolen from my ancestors in Georgia and Arkansas by unscrupulous segregationists, and then I want pain and suffering damages piled on top of that. I'd have no trouble proving in a court of law that this theft -- and the thousands of others just like it -- constituted a criminal act that, along with slavery and Jim Crow, rivaled Nazi Germany's persecution of the Jews.
That I survived and even thrived is a testament to the human spirit and to my family's resiliency, not to your nonsensical remedy. I don't want affirmative action -- although it's helped many African-Americans get in the door of what amounted to private, all-white colleges and universities, not to mention corporations.
I don't want affirmative action, which white folks created without the slightest discussion between the powers that be and those who needed a remedy to level a playing field that has historically been tilted toward white legacy and remains so today. I don't want affirmative action. What I want is my money.
Every single African-American who survived the terrorist onslaught perpetrated by the majority of white society deserves compensation for his or her losses, direct and indirect. And I'll make a deal with you: Give me just one-tenth of the hundreds of millions of dollars stolen from us in free labor, confiscated homes and land, in human flesh and blood, and in psychological agony, and I'll gladly donate a large part of my share to your education. Because most of you desperately need it.
If I had reparations dollars in my bank account -- plus a nickel for each time someone condescends to lecture me on the instability of the black family -- I could afford to substantially further your woefully inadequate education. I wouldn't call my program anything fancy, like affirmative action. No, I'd call it the Get Real Academy for Undereducated Whites, and I'd gladly set aside some of my money to assist overprivileged and ignorant majority-culturees.
At the Get Real Academy, you'd be forced to study the origin of the false concept of whiteness. You'd have to analyze the psychological reasons why spectacle lynchings became a part of America's reign of terror over blacks and why so many of the lynched black men had their genitals cut off by bloodthirsty whites. You'd be required to learn every last detail about the miracle of the postslavery generation of black Americans who pulled themselves up by their dusty bootstraps and became farmers, teachers, engineers, inventors, doctors, dentists -- everything that the American Dream stood for.
Only to have it taken away by Jim Crow laws. And you'd have to investigate, through the works of hundreds of scholars who've already done the research, what the behavior of your people signifies about where you came from and who you are today.
Affirmative action is white society's lazy way of sweeping the high cost of black enslavement and oppression under the historical rug in the desperate hope that those now living won't have to cough up fair compensation. But, Michigan's remedy be damned, I've got four words for all you affirmative-action haters: Give Me My Money.
Syl Jones, of Minnetonka, is a playwright, journalist and corporate consultant. This broad support underscores the importance of affirmative action to the nation's welfare.
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