“I just think everyone should be treated equally.”
This one quote is the main defense for why affirmative action should not be employed at UMass.
Unfortunately, however, throughout the history of the United States, people have not been treated equally and have been judged by the color of their skin instead.
From the time the first Europeans arrived in North America, they were already planning how to subjugate the non-white people of the continent. The Native Americans were continually pushed off their lands while Africans were stolen from their homeland and brought to the new world as slaves.
These people were not judged by the content of their character, but were instead forced into a submissive position in society by a racist white, Christian culture that was intent on spreading its faith to the entire world.
By the mid-1800’s, nearly all of the Native Americans’ land had already been stolen (in part because the U.S. government made over 400 treaties with the American Indians and ended up breaking every single one of them), and blacks were still slaves after more than 200 years of horrible oppression.
After the end of slavery, things were no better, as Jim Crow laws in the south and de facto segregation in the north made it impossible for blacks to move up to high positions in society. People now look at South Africa’s apartheid government with disdain, but the U.S. government’s legalized segregation was absolutely no better.
With the Civil Rights Act of the mid-1960s, blacks finally gained political equality, but by that time, the majority of African Americans were already living under extreme poverty in either urban or rural sections of the United States.
However, the United States has done virtually nothing to help the black poverty it created through slavery and legal racism. In fact, the government has never even apologized for the institution of slavery, and of course, has never even considered paying reparations for the wrongs it has committed.
As far as the Native Americans go, the government has also never apologized for the blatant robbery of every square inch that now encompasses the United States (and also for robbing a people of their way of life). Instead, it has thrown them onto poverty stricken reservations where there is virtually no hope of economic prosperity.
Leaving the reservation for the American Indian means abandoning their people and assimilating into the culture of their oppressors, while staying on the reservation undoubtedly leads to a life of extreme poverty. It is a no-win situation.
One of the ways to help cure this is to make it easier for Native Americans and blacks to receive a higher education. Both of these groups on average make a lot less money than white people, live shorter lives than white people, and generally live a much harder life than white people. And it is not because they are lazier or stupider than whites, but is instead a result of past and present racism.
It is not just Native Americans and blacks that deserve the benefits of affirmative action. Asians and Hispanics have also suffered under a racist U.S. government and should receive an easier access to higher education as well.
From the 1880’s to 1943, the U.S. government implemented a Chinese Exclusion Act that completely barred Chinese immigrants from entering the country (unless they received a work permit that was very difficult to attain). For this reason, most Asian families are recent migrants to the United States, and many of them don’t learn English as a first language.
Even U.S. born Asian Americans usually learn their native language first from their parents and go on to learn English later. In high school, however, they are forced to take the same verbal SAT’s as people that have been speaking nothing but English their entire lives. Of course, they are not going to do as well. Without affirmative action, they are still judged by the same standard as their English-speaking classmates.
The situation is much the same for Hispanics in this country. As a result of imperialism, colonization and the global economy, most Spanish-speaking nations are ravished in poverty. Much of this is the fault of the U.S. government, as it stole half of Mexico in 1848 in the Mexican-American War, waged a war of imperialism against the Philippines, Cuba and Puerto Rico in the Spanish-American War of 1898 and continues to exploit workers that are not protected by their own U.S. backed regimes.
When the people revolt against their oppressive governments, however, as has occurred in Nicaragua many times, the United States comes in and violently crushes the revolution in order to benefit its own economy at the expense of human rights.
When Hispanics immigrate to the United States looking for a better life, they generally speak nothing but Spanish and cannot advance economically. Their kids also learn Spanish first, and will obviously not receive the English training that whites tend to receive. However, even though their poverty has a lot to do with U.S. foreign policy and even though they are held to the same standards on the SAT’s as English speakers, they were barred the benefits they deserved with the end of affirmative action at UMass.
Granted, there are non-whites in this country that do not deserve affirmative action. Asians and Hispanics that grew up speaking nothing but English generally do not deserve affirmative action. Michael Jordan’s kids do not deserve affirmative action. But to deny affirmative action is to say that the economic problems of non-whites are their own fault.
Sometime in the future, when affirmative action has run its course, one day maybe everyone will actually be treated equally. Until that time though, it is the proper decision to help right the wrongs committed by a white U.S. government throughout its history.
Jesse Greenspan is a Collegian Staff Member.
