| If you wanted to see a multicultural representation of students, you should have been there, December 21, 2006 at the Multicultural Center on the University of Wisconsin Madison campus. Students crowded into this room, standing shoulder to shoulder. Some spoke at the podium; others sat at tables or on the floor with markers and white cardboards. What brought them out during final-exam week? It was a rather disturbing decision by the Legislative Special Committee on Affirmative Action to invite the chairman of the California-based American Civil Rights Coalition, Ward Connerly. No one expected the students turn to protest Connerly's opposition to Affirmative Action and the use of race to determine admission to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "The issue is about fairness," said Isadore Knox Jr., a student at Cardinal Stritch University. I walked out into the hall as students from UW-Milwaukee, Stout, and Madison held signs and formed lines to march down State Street toward the Capitol. It felt like the old days for me; it felt good. According to Shauna Rhone, Connerly "hopscotches across the country, campaigning to stamp out every reference to race in America's attempt to do the right thing." Unfortunately, Connerly is not the only Black acknowledged by the right for preaching the gospel of a color-blind society. Walter Benn Michaels is another opponent of Affirmative Action and his book, "The Trouble With Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality," according to The Nation, would have us do away with "identity politics" for those "who believe they are ineluctably connected to events" like slavery or the holocaust. This stand adds to the backlash against the use of words like "race" and "gender" to express the experiences of people who need to speak out. In fact, these individuals who condemn Affirmative Action and who want to do away with any reference to race make it difficult for people like me and others to teach and write on the subject of racial oppression and its connection to issues of gender, class and disabilities. It is indeed an unfair argument to suggest that racism or class difference does not exist. We are all equal now. Apparently, these men have never read David Roediger's "The Wages of Whiteness" in which he explores the formation of whiteness and the working class. "Race has at all times been a critical factor in the history of U.S. class formation," writes Roediger. "Affirmative action," in the form of oppressive laws excluding and marginalizing Blacks, served to privilege those with White skin. "For the first 330 years, the deck was officially and legally stacked on behalf of whites and males," writes Micheal Brown in "White-Washing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society." Discriminatory practices against African Americans in employment, housing, education, health care, and government assistance sustained White Affirmative Action for decades. "It was government policies -- the very factor that conservatives consider irrelevant -- that led to the white-collar breakthrough." "White Americans cannot see the advantages they gain from this arrangement," writes Brown. Most attribute "white economic progress to individual success and black failure to government intervention. What is fairness in the U.S.? Scholars and authors like Roediger and Brown do not receive the air time given to the likes of a Connerly or a Walter. They are not given the opportunity to hopscotch across the country and speak to the issue of fairness. It is easier on the ears to hearing soothing co-co-co, no more about race. We will not bring up race and cause you any discomfort. Those who do hold up mirrors are, of course, more than troubling. Silence them. Black labor helped shape this country. Black labor made it possible for the U.S.'s economy to dominate the world. Black labor received no compensation for those 330 years of making it possible for others to promote their stories about "hard work" and "humble" beginnings. And here they come, the negroes, coloreds, blacks, asking us to share something with them. Where is the fairness? "It is dispiriting to think that some believe the plain has been leveled -- is ridiculous and makes no sense," said Knox. And it does not make sense. I could not take a seat in the Madison State Capitol to see or hear Connerly. Some in the group that marched to the Capitol were able to squeeze in the committee chambers. Others of us stood just outside the chamber door. I cannot say I was upset. I was proud to see that so many students had packed the room. So many students picked up the banner to fight for fairness. The evening was anything but dispiriting. Students were not heard but they were certainly seen! Most importantly, they saw and understood the ways in which White privilege functions to repress opposition to fairness. Hats off to BSU, Latino Students United, Asian Student Association, and other student groups! |
| Voices/ Dr. Jean Daniels Ward Connerly |
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