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Adding Salt To The Wound: Affirmative Action And Critical Race Theory, Carlos J. Nan, 12 Law & Ineq. 553-572, 565-572 (1994). Copyright (C) 1994 Law and Inequality: A Journal of Theory & Practice; Carlos J. Nan.  

The 1993 Economic Report of the President provides evidence that affirmative action programs have been, for the most part, ineffective. Moreover, the report illustrates that arguments of "reverse discrimination" are undoubtedly futile. In fact, claims of reverse discrimination would be valid: 

only if preferential affirmative action required the "niggerization" of white males - to use with apologies that cruel term that connotes the spirit and effects of the caste system. But in what sense are we planning to systematically insult white males and put them in the lowest caste in society? In what sense does preferential affirmative action plan to decrease the life span of white males and their wives and children? Is this policy geared to making white males hate themselves and be ashamed of their physical appearance? Will it make white male unemployment double that of blacks and will it reduce white male salary to 60% of that of blacks? Will it confine white males to ghettos where there are more rats than people and no hope? To truly reverse the discriminatory process would require all of that. Obviously, none of that is contemplated or possible. The term "reverse discrimination" houses a big lie. 

CRT [Critical Race Theory], however, acknowledges that there are advantages to being a racial or ethnic minority. For example, the values of "double consciousness," termed by W.E.B. DuBois, provide people of color with the ability to see society in terms of two perspectives. One perspective is the world as seen from the eyes of the oppressor in which people of color are exploited and dehumanized. The other perspective is seen from the eyes of the oppressed in which their own values and cultures are revered. In other words, minority status is viewed as an affirmative qualification. For exmple, "[a] black professor who can alleviate the racism of his white students and inspire learning and hope in his black students is a better teacher for that." 

Nevertheless, Delgado claims that even if "double consciousness" is ever recognized as a valuable asset, whites will deny it exists, or insist they have it as well. 

Delgado also questions the diversity argument for affirmative action: In law school admissions, for example, majority persons may be admitted as a matter of right, while minorities are admitted because their presence will contribute to "diversity." . . . The assumption is that such diversity is educationally valuable to the majority. But such an admissions program may well be perceived as treating the minority admittee as an ornament, a curiosity, one who brings an element of the piquant to the lives of white professors and students. 

Delgaldo, moreover, attacks the role model argument for affirmative action. Being a role model requires that you "uplift your entire people"; complete the duties required in the job description, as well as assist your community whenever it affects your position or that of your employer; conform into behavior that will encourage the community of color to adopt majoritarian social mores; and lie to your community about how they too can achieve the "American Dream" because the arms of opportunity are open and waiting to welcome them. The program, instituted, arranged, and produced by "others" appears to work against people of color much like cream to coffee. "[I]f you pour too much cream in it, you won't even know you ever had coffee. It used to be hot, it becomes cool. It used to be strong, it becomes weak. It used to wake you up, now it puts you to sleep." 

So where does that leave people of color? All this cynicism about a program which was allegedly intended to benefit the least advantaged and about how it has actually patronized communities of color, has destroyed any hope of amelioration of the country's racial problem. Where do people of color go from here? The first step, according to CRT, is to expect nothing but the worst from the dominant culture. History provides enough evidence of what white people have accomplished, not only for themselves, but for society in general. In addition, assuming arguendo that the dominant culture has an interest in ending the racial dilemma and healing the wounds they have inflicted upon communities of color, that interest will be limited such that programs implemented to assist people of color do not infringe on whites' property interest or status. Furthermore, attempts by the dominant culture to ease the racial dilemma should be critically scrutinized as only a vehicle to calm racial tensions and prevent civil disorders, rather than as a reparation for the destruction and mayhem inflicted upon communities of color. The statistics provided in this article, illustrating the dramatic "advancements" reached by affirmative action and civil rights legislation, should provide sufficient evidence to persuade a person of color to look at the dominant culture and their alleged interests in alleviating the racial crisis with a suspicious eye. 

The second step CRT advances is to "take our own program, with our own goals, our own theoretical grounding, and our own managers and call it 'Affirmative Action.' " In other words, people of color should pursue a culturally nationalist objective. 

It is necessary for us to develop a new frame of reference which transcends the limits of white concepts. It is necessary for us to develop and maintain a total intellectual offensive against the false universality of white concepts . . . . By and large, reality has been conceptualized in terms of narrow point of view of the small minority of white men who live in Europe and North America. We must abandon the partial frame of reference of our oppressors and create new concepts which will release our reality, which is also the reality of the overwhelming majority of men and women on this globe. We must say to the white world that there are things in the world that are not dreamt of in your history and your sociology and your philosophy. The bottom line being, that only people of color can comprehend the history, experiences, and dilemmas faced by their community. Therefore, people of color are in a better position to theorize, evaluate, access, confront, tackle, and resolve the problems encountered within their community. 

In order to reach this intellectual level, whites, and in particular people of color, must accept the reality that this country, along with its Constitution, statutes, court-made laws, politics, economy, and social mores and attitudes, is not color-blind, but rather race-conscious. Malcolm X appropriately stated: 

Being here in America doesn't make you an American. Being born here in America doesn't make you an American. Why, if birth made you American, you wouldn't need any legislation, you wouldn't need any amendments to the Constitution, you wouldn't be faced with civil rights filibustering in Washington, D.C., right now. They don't have to pass civil-rights legislation to make a Polack an American. 

Within the white community, the conflict over race traditionally has been structured around an opposition between white supremacists who supported segregation, and white liberals and progressives committed to integration and civil rights reform. To white liberals and progressives, looking through the prism of integrationist ideology, a nationalist conception of racial identity was understood to distinguish backward, ignorant whites from cosmopolitan, educated whites. Whites who took race as central to their self-identity thereby expressed a commitment to racial supremacy, whereas whites who opposed racism understood that opposition to require the transcendence of racial identity in favor of integration and color-blindness. In other words, most white liberals and progressives, projecting themselves as the enlightened avant garde of the white community, automatically associated race nationalism with the repressive history of white supremacy, and never developed either a consciousness or a political practice that comprehended racial identity and power as centrally formative factors in American social relations. Therefore, since race-consciousness or cultural nationalism, as perceived by the white community, is an ideology equated with white supremacy, the solution must be neutrality and color-blindness through an integrationist ideology. Consequently, affirmative action policies are problematic for whites because they create a tension between their convictions of tolerance and color- blindness as represented through their perceived universal and neutral standards of merit, and the use of race-conscious programs as a means to remedy past discrimination. "Affirmative action has been characterized as merely an exceptional remedy for past injustice, rather than an affirmative right rooted in present social circumstances. It has been characterized as temporary and only necessary to achieve integration, at which time equal opportunity can take over." In fact, "conservatives utilize the very rhetoric of tolerance, color-blindness, and equal opportunity that once characterized progressive discourse to mark the limits of reform." 

[I]ntegrationists, organizing their perception of racial justice around images of objectivity, rationality, and neutrality, never considered whether this language for distinguishing the worthy from the unworthy itself might serve to help justify racial domination - if not to its victims, then at least to white beneficiaries who need to believe that their social positions are the result of something more than the brute fact of social power and racial domination. Whites fail to comprehend that their utopian solution of a color-blind society through their form of integration "actually increases the white community's control over the black one by destroying institutions, and by absorbing black leadership and coinciding its interests with those of the white community . . . ." 

Race consciousness for people of color, on the other hand, does not imply the annihilation of the white populace or the superiority of communities of color over caucasians, as it does for whites. Rather, it is a "commitment to the vitality of the [community of color] as a whole and to the economic and cultural health of [each respective community's] neighborhoods, schools, economic enterprises, and individuals."