Last weekend I was on a panel and a white, cis, straight, British, cambridge educated man, asked me "[S]o how do you feel about quota's and how would you feel if you got a job because of one? It was like he asked me....
I should have told him that he would probably be the best person to answer this question given his extensive personal experience on the topic [as there] is a white boy quota at every business, every school, every institution and every-fucking-where in this country, but it's so normalized that no laws or acts are needed to enforced it. White supremacy and patriarchy have been safely ingrained into the the every day details of our every day life and interactions.... "
- CECILE EMEKE
(ACKEE & SALTFISH CREATOR/DIRECTOR)
(ACKEE & SALTFISH CREATOR/DIRECTOR)
Yeah. She's right. She should have told him and let him cry. Because as she says,
"Oppressors often feel that any restriction that would placed on their power in order to reduce inequality is oppression, is seen by them as 'oppression' " (paraphrased)
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Something of which I am ashamed:
I hid my race when I filled out my applications for college. I didn't want anyone ("anyone" a.k.a "white people") thinking I'd been admitted due to my race.
That sounds okay on the surface I guess. But in actuality I was tacitly agreeing that the purpose of "Affirmative Action" is inferiority rather than racism --which is not "a quota," by the way.
A "quota" results in white owners and CEOs of a business faking their interest in diversity. The quota oriented white racist might increase "the diversity" of their very white engineering business by hiring 10 black janitors and 20 mailr oom personnel when they really need 5 of each. (And when the 10 & 20 that should be 5 & 5 don't have enough to do to stay fully awake they will be called "lazy").
Quota's create a lose-lose situation, as designed.
By comparison, Affirmative Action is simply about being pro-active about seeking out people of color that are qualified to go to a certain college or qualified to apply for the central/average jobs at a specific business in order to purposefully increase diversity. Affirmative Action results in forcing white CEOs to do things like send a request to an HBCU, asking them to send names of applicants with a 3.9 GPA or higher.
When Affirmative Action was deliberately misinterpreted again in the late 20th century by white people determined to see it fail, black people hired for certain jobs were not hold to the same standards as white people. That is, whites implemented "quotas" instead of affirmative action.
Second Wave crude example of substituting "quotas" for Affirmative Action: White managers would hire black people randomly (only high school diploma required) while holding white people to higher standard (college degree in engineering required) The black people with college degrees in engineering who went without jobs, because black people with high school diplomas took their place, were called lazy while the black people deliberately hired for a job beyond their skill set were called dumb in comparison to the white people with engineering degrees doing engineering work.
Quota's create a lose-lose situation, as designed.
And these two examples of using quotas instead of implementing affirmative action should show you something that should have been obvious to me at 18. Taking "proactive steps" increasing the number of black and brown folk working at a business (a.k.a. taking "affirmative action") to increase the number of black and brown folk wouldn't be necessary if it weren't for white racism.
Affirmative Action is necessary due to white racism not black inferiority, as sold by white people determined not to own and acknowledge their own negative racial attitudes
If all the applicants with a 3.9 GPA had been hired regardless of race while compensating for defacto segregation, then affirmative action wouldn't have needed to be implemented. It wouldn't need to exist now, in 2015.
The proof in the racism pudding is the fact, even now, a white person only needs a high school diploma to earn the same amount of money that a black person with a 4 year college degree does.*
Institutionalized racism exists and the institutions are filled by dominant culture white people. White racism is the problem --not some abstract, anybody can be prejudiced problem-- The dominant culture's racism is the dominant problem.
And the denial of this is why I am ashamed of hiding my race on my college application. By erasing my racial identity on my college application I tacitly agreed that the racist belief that the reason for "Affirmative Action" is black inferiority rather than White Racism.
I expose this here because I want others to tell their children to grab with both hands anything that gives you a step up into equality or even a temporary advantage. As Emeke says, white people use and abuse their privilege every day sans an ounce of awareness -- and their demographic has the wealth to prove it.
Besides, at any given college or business it isn't necessarily to 4.0 GPA people that are the most creative or the most productive people. If that were so, there would be no reason for job interviews (for evaluating things like personality fit OR how you look like my white grandson). If the 4.0 GPA people were always the ones to be the most inventive and productive at a job, there would be no need for extensive promotion evaluations every year; One could just look at the GPAs of people who were hired and promote them via GPA ranking if GPA was firmly linked to job performance.
Be smarter than I was at 18. Realize that the pseudo or flimsy white belief it meritocracy is a fake-out in left field. Stay on track. Get your foot in any door you can and work it. Period. And let those white folk that would cry, cry. Let them shed tears for themselves. It's their party and they can cry if they want to....for now. By 2050 or so? I hear it's gonna be a whole new ball game in good ole U.S. of A.
Read more of Cecile Emeke's blog on her interaction with the white male whining about quotas. http://www.cecileemeke.com/blog/2015/5/8/white-boy-bullshit-quotas
(This link isn't to the sociology paper I read, but it contains the similar information on how black people need two more education levels to make the same income as white people http://thinkprogress.org/education/2014/06/25/3452887/education-race-gap/)
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