Dean supporters - this might help you answer one critique

Specifically the critique regarding Dean linking affirmative action to class. Read this speech by Martin Luther King. Looks like King was also concerned about class. I particularly like this quote regarding these linkages

"Your whole structure must be changed. A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will thingify them -- make them things. Therefore they will exploit them, and poor people generally, economically. And a nation that will exploit economically will have foreign investments and everything else, and will have to use its military to protect them. All of these problems are tied together. "

The complete speech can be found at
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/062.html

edited because I noticed a typo in the transcription

[BurtWorm]

1. Henry Louis Gates made the same point about King on Democracy Now

a couple of weeks ago.


http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid...e=thread&tid=25

AMY GOODMAN: You have said that if Martin Luther King were alive today, he wouldn't be leading a revolution based on race, but on class.

HENRY LOUIS GATES: And he was heading that way at end of his life. Remember, he didn't die in a civil rights march, he died in a march for garbage workers, for striking garbage workers. He had realized, I think, before any other civil rights leader, that -- well, that the struggle had faces, and the first phase culminated with the passage of the Civil Rights act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Now what? We got rid of de jour segregation. The walls of segregation did not come tumbling down because we abolished the racist laws. It turned out that race was a metaphor for deeper economic, structural discrimination. Everyone was confused. I think the African American leadership is still confused about the nature of the problem. It's easy to rally around obviously blatantly racist incidents. It's much hard tore figure out how to divvy up the pie, how to make structural adjustments in the American economy, at a time of scarcity -- at a time of scarcity and at a time when the pie is perceived to be shrinking.

[AP]

3. That doesn't mean that the need to spread wealth and power stops once

you start making 20K per year or whatever level of income would be the threshold for class-based AA.

However, it is true that racism is largely about profit.

I just read about a book (forget the title) that studied literary references to Africa from the last 900 years. It says that Europe traded with Africa for 500 years before they started in to dealing in slaves. During that period, there were few references to blacks being inferior. As soon as the slave trade started, racism bloomed rapidly.

Calling people genetically inferior was integral part of justifying the evilness and irrationality of slavery.

And this has persisted. Racism is about making a buck. MLK knew it. Gates knows it. Gandhi knew it too.

[BurtWorm]

7. I think of class-based AA this way:

Universities, employers, governments take special action to make places for people from the lower classes where they had no places before. Since a disproportionate number of people in the lower classes are people of color, you will be addressing race when addressing class.

[sangha]

9. But that leaves a problem unaddressed

What about blacks who aren't poor but are disadvantaged by racial discrimination? Don't they deserve a remedy for the crimes committed against them, or is it only poor blacks who get protection?

Discrimination is about more than just poverty.

[BurtWorm]

12. Of course racial discrimination should not be overlooked.

But chronic African-American poverty may not be addressed until poverty as a whole is addressed, and people are not doomed to remain in the class their parents were in. Gates pointed out that even though more African-Americans have joined the middle class, the percentage of African-Americans below the poverty line has not gone down, and has actually gone up. Is racism alone to account for this fact? How much does class alone account for it? It needs to be looked at. Dean has not, as far as I know, said anything other than than class-based AA needs to be "looked at."

[AP]

2. That's evidence of why Dean was wrong. MLK was pro-AA. He was fighting

for AA in the military at the end of his life.

His argument was that fighting racism was about class. It was about spreading political, economic and cultural power down and outward.

He saw racism as an attempt to create a permanently impoverished underclass which would accept lower wages, thus contributing to profit margins for companies which benefit from low wages.

He wanted to help black people have the same chance at making something of their lives that every white person had.

Taking race out of AA turns it into a program which only helps people in the classes or wealth level which the program targets. However, there are many black people who aren't poor who are still held back by racism. They are associates in law firms who aren't making partner. They're VPs at Ford and GM who aren't making it to CEO office. They're Associate Professors who aren't getting tenure.

MLK if alive today would know that spreading political, economic and cultural power down and out would require that Americans still take race seriously for people who aren't desperately poor, but are working class, middle class, upper middle class, and even those who are making 190K per year or more but can't crack into the very top levels of their professions.

5. Did you read the speech?

If you did, you have a different interpretation of it than I do.
I think that the tenor of it is the need to go to larger issues than race. Maybe we disagree on this.
Here's a couple of more quotes that give me this sense.(I'm giving specific examples to foster discussion) I realize that King is talking about integration and segregation, but it looks to me like he is viewing it from a broader perspective.

"If you will let me be a preacher just a little bit -- One night, a juror came to Jesus and he wanted to know what he could do to be saved. Jesus didn't get bogged down in the kind of isolated approach of what he shouldn't do. Jesus didn't say, Now Nicodemus, you must stop lying. He didn't say, Nicodemus, you must stop cheating if you are doing that. He didn't say, Nicodemus, you must not commit adultery. He didn't say, Nicodemus, now you must stop drinking liquor if you are doing that excessively. He said something altogether different, because Jesus realized something basic -- that if a man will lie, he will steal. And if a man will steal, he will kill. So instead of just getting bogged down in one thing, Jesus looked at him and said, Nicodemus, you must be born again.

-snip (the part I quoted previously)--

So, I conclude by saying again today that we have a task and let us go out with a divine dissatisfaction. Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds. Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort and the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice. Let us be dissatisfied until those that live on the outskirts of hope are brought into the metropolis of daily security. Let us be dissatisfied until slums are cast into the junk heaps of history, and every family is living in adecent sanitary home. Let us be dissatisfied until the dark yesterdays of segregated schools will be transformed into bright tomorrows of quality,integrated education. Let us be dissatisfied until integration is not seen as a problem but as an opportunity to participate in the beauty of diversity. Let us be dissatisfied until men and women, however black they may be, will be judged on the basis of the content of their character and not on the basis of the color of their skin. Let us be dissatisfied.

Let us be dissatisfied until every state capitol houses a governor who will do justly, who will love mercy and who will walk humbly with his God. Let us be dissatisfied until from every city hall, justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. Let us be dissatisfied until that day when the lion and the lamb shall lie down together, and every man will sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid. Let us be dissatisfied. And men will recognize that out of one blood God made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth. Let us be dissatisfied until that day when nobody will shout White Power! -- when nobody will shout Black Power! -- but everybody will talk about God's power and human power.

[cheezus]

10. good point... but my priorities are a little different.

I think addressing the problem of the lower class not having equal access to education and health care is more important than crying for the Black corporate VP who just can't make CEO. I think we should address the big injustices first

[sangha]

4. How low can one go?

Using MLK, the man who first advocated AA-type policies, to support Dean's anti-AA beliefs is disgraceful, IMO.

Yes, MLK was concerned with issues of class. However, unlike Dean, MLK never suggested we ignore racial discrimination and it's effects,

6. I'm not trying to defend anti-AA positions

I apologize if it came across that way.
First, I'm not convinced that Dean is anti-AA.
Second, I think race and class are linked. This belief of mine could well be blinding me regarding Dean's position, I realize. Because I believe there to be a linkage, I have not perceived a view that argues for the importance of considering class as being automatically anti-AA. I realize that emphasizing class is used by some to try to make an end run on integration, but I do not think there is an inherent linkage.
Which brings me to my third idea, which is to think this field of issues is not cut and dried, either/or -- & this is what interested me in what King is saying.

[sangha]

8. Tjank you for your gracious response.

and I apologize for taking offense.

You are right that MLK also linked issues of class to issues of race. However, MLK never suggested that one could be substituted for the other. In fact, he explicitely stated that both issues needed to be addressed. Dean, on the other hand, has that he thinks that AA should use "not race, but class"

13. and thank you

for your gracious response also:)

[BurtWorm]

11. Did Dean?