Is the Charge Systemic Racism a Trap?
John Burl Smith
An article for Real Clear Politics by Linda Chavez posed the question, “Is Systemic Racism a Trap?” Her proposition was framed thusly, “If blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately more likely than whites to be shot by police, live in poverty, have higher unemployment rates, or die from COVID-19, racism must play a primary role — or so the narrative widely repeated on the streets and in the media goes. To suggest that these statistical snapshots of complicated problems do not lend themselves to easy conclusions is heresy. Already, some academics have been ostracized and others persuaded to withdraw legitimate research that provided a more nuanced analysis of police violence. To even question whether systemic racism and white privilege are pervasive today risks being mistaken for a racist or deemed hopelessly ignorant. But the story of race in America is both more difficult and complex and attempts to eradicate all disparities are likely to lead to bad fixes that end up doing real harm.”
After that litany, Chavez presents what she says is evidence with this opening, “My Center for Equal Opportunity (CEO) found that among Virginia’s public universities, for example, the most competitive schools in the state, namely University of Virginia and William and Mary, admitted black students with SAT scores that were, on average, 180 and 190 points lower, respectively, than whites, and 240 points lower than Asians admitted.
The problem I find with such propositions and research as that put forth by Chavez; first is she begins with schools in Virginia, which was one of the most notorious slave states in America, to support her analysis. Secondly, her “ex post facto,” meaning “something with antecedents that existed, before the enactment of the law,” she is trying to bar the barn door, after the horses are long gone. The thing “that existed, before the enactment of the law, some form of affirmative action,” here is slavery! Building her case on only statistics compiled from information that originated based on decisions made over 30 years ago, ignores the fact that the underlying factors began more than 400 years ago, when white slavers began kidnapping and shanghaiing Africans off to the Western Hemisphere and North American. Comparing what is happening today, as though the education inequities descendants of American slavery face have never been addressed not even today, as I said comes after the fact.
If one is going to try and bring clarity to an issue or subject, one must begin at least where the problem itself began. That kind of investigation recognizes the antecedent factors that preceded the point made. For instance, Chavez says, “I have spent a professional lifetime studying the effects of race-based preferences in college admissions programs,” but not studying race, as I have. However, for her to “make such powerful leaps in a single bound,” she needed to spend some days reading how preferences came about in the first place.
For those who would like to avoid the “trap” Chavez fell into, I have compiled a study of slavery and presented it, as a family narrative entitled “The 400th From Slavery to Hip Hop.” Originally planned to hit the market back at the end of April but due to the coronavirus shutdown, it is now due out in mid-August. My narrative begins during the “Dark Age” around the 6th century, because to understand the worlds slavery created, one must understand the world “that existed before slavery became the base of the world’s economic system.”
Back to Chavez, who offers Harvard University, a university that exists as a result of slave labor and continues to benefits from money slavery produced, even today? Chavez offered Harvard, as “a case study to show how another minority group is harmed by preferential treatment. She points to “a lawsuit now before the First Circuit Court of Appeals, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which she claims, “shows that substantial numbers of Asian-American students were denied admission to Harvard with higher grades and test scores than blacks, Hispanics and whites who were admitted.”
Chavez omits slavery as a relevant factor in her analysis, even though it is the major under lying factor, which continues impacting African Americans today. She misleadingly dumped Hispanics into the same pool with slavery’s descendants in terms of education, as though Hispanics were enslaved and have suffered similar conditions, as American descendants of slavery. Linda is either ignorant of or simply omits mentioning why black students deserve and are owed special treatment and considerations. Researchers like Chavez, conflates all discrimination into a blanket condition for any one claiming discrimination even white people, which is why I pointed to her ex post facto fallacy as my original point regarding slavery.
After skirting the issue, Chavez falls hard on percentages to carry the day. She says “According to her CEO review, Harvard tested non-academic factors when considering the racial composition of incoming freshman classes,” she charges “with an eye toward ‘depressing’ Asian admission and boosting black, Hispanic but also white admission.” She makes the leap from need to numbers to show “Asians would have constituted 43% of those admitted to Harvard and whites 38%, with blacks only 1% and Hispanics 3%, if only academic qualifications were considered.” For her clincher, Linda adds “factors such as extracurricular activities, athletics, and personal ratings based on interviews,” which she says, boosted whites to 51% and depressed Asians to 26%, while having limited success in boosting blacks or Hispanics. Only explicitly giving applicants a plus factor for being black or Hispanic would increase their chances for admission to 11% and 10%, respectively, but also dramatically depressed Asian admissions to 18%.” Here Chavez’s appeals to percentages obscure the fact she mixed peaches and watermelons to get the stew she cooked up for race haters to gobble down.
First the original idea of affirmative action was to recognize that slavery’s descendants have a unique history in America, which no other people have, regardless of their cultural or national origin. Secondly, what Harvard did, although it is considered tokenism, was also to recognize that America owe descendants of American slavery something it could call reparations. However, America for 246 years worked slaves for free and after its penniless emancipation has worked emancipated Africans 155 years as wage slaves. Thirdly, during slavery black people were denied, even under the penalty of death, any ability to learn to read and write. Asians do not have such a history.
Moreover, even after slavery ended, white continued denying descendants of American slavery education that other Americans got on demand. Immigrants that came to America came by choice, unlike descendants of American slavery. Asians came to America as free people and brought their culture with them. Whether those cultures were accepted or not they were allowed to hold on to them. They had commonality, which gave them a sense of themselves. There were other Asians, which also gave them a community with resources. But more than anything, they were and are able to take advantage of all the pain and dying black people endured, during the lynching period from the 1880s through 1940s. No one step up to take the place of black people, who had to fight to move ahead, but simply jump to the head of the line, and are able to get ahead at the expense of descendants of America, while looking down on black people, lazy and lack motivation. No other group wants to take the place of black people, while they are the ones fighting to get equality, but everyone wants to jump ahead of them for the benefits, black make possible for everyone.
Today, because of the unity black, brown, red, yellow and white young people are forging under the “Black Lives Matter” movement, those looking to keep division alive are producing bogus diatribes of loosely connected facts without context in order to keep hatred alive, like Chavez. I make this statement in light of Linda’s concluding fallacy. “Clearly Asians have faced, and continue to face, racial discrimination in this society, having been the only group explicitly barred on racial grounds from ‘immigrating to the U.S. in 1882 and denied the right to become naturalized citizens until 1952.’ Indeed, Harvard did discriminate against blacks, Jews, and others in the course of its nearly 400-year history, but ‘whatever systemic discrimination that goes on now appears to target Asians,’ not blacks.”
Linda tied to throw Slavery’s descendants under the bus using disparate points tied together with very thin threats, then she hung it all on another flawed study by “Richard H. Sander and Stuart Taylor, Jr., “Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It’s Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won’t Admit It.” These two denier of slavery’s lasting impact on its descendants, claim in their study that, “The effect of racial preferences in college admissions on black student performance, schools using racial preferences end up admitting students who often place in the lower rankings of their class and struggle to finish college or pass professional exams. But blacks do not necessarily benefit, either, from the widespread adoption of racial preferences in admissions on their behalf. In turn, these students struggle more even after they graduate, failing to advance in their chosen careers if their college grades are subpar, which becomes proof for some not that preferences fail to achieve their goal, but that systemic racism follows blacks into the professional world, requiring yet more racial preferences in hiring and promotion.”
This study is typical of efforts by deniers that slavery did lasting damage to descendant of American slavery, which is compounded during their daily encounters with racism on all levels of American society, which makes my point for me. Again, I return to the impact of slavery on the American society. The fact that this study points out preferential treatment to assist black students enter colleges and Universities does not occur in a vacuum and reflect that discrimination is all encompassing, which occurs from the birth of a black children and continues throughout education and into the job market, which limits not only their access but their level of success during their professional careers.
After reading that statement one should understand Chavez’s real intent, and her lapidary craftsmanship, “But colleges are not the only institutions to adopt the wrong fixes to inequities. So, too, the death of George Floyd and other unarmed black victims at the hands of the police has provoked calls to defund the police and spend more in black and brown communities, hire more black police officers, insist on diversity and implicit-bias training, among others. But like preferential admissions at universities, these measures may not only be ineffective, they may exacerbate other serious problems.” Not only does she minimize the impact of slavery’s 413 years, the 58 years of the internal slave trade and the 155 years of supposed freedom, after emancipation, she feels that Asians discrimination is not only comparable, they should be consider, even before white people based solely on test scores, which one can rig, or buy.
Not to bore readers with more statistics, but Linda finished up what should have been her conclusion, “Simply cutting back on police presence, especially in neighborhoods with higher crime, won’t make the residents of those communities safer. In the aftermath of violence in Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore after police killings of black suspects there, crime rates spiked when police turned a blind eye to criminal activity in protest, and they have remained higher. Since blacks are more likely to be victims of crime than whites, they suffer more when crime rates increase. Diverting funds from policing, especially if it means fewer police are in communities with high crime rates, will likely result in worse outcomes for those who actually live there.”
I feel I have gone on a bit long with this, but I wanted to give a full airing, to just some of her bogus and dank and odorous claims to show the extent to which those that are irritated with any show of contrition on the part of white people. In earlier times, Chavez’s exposé disparaging the death of George Floyd and the “Black Lives Matter” movement would have been considered burlesque. However, the New York Times (WSJ editorial board calls employee concerns about opinion page ‘cancel culture’) ran the same piece to the chagrin of editorialists and employees.
The true shame of America is not that it has made such meager efforts, but that it has taken so long to recognize the total and completely inhumane fashion descendants of American slavery have been treated as both slaves and citizens of the United States. As I said beginning this rebuttal, in order to understand the world slave created, one must understand the world that existed before slavery. And, I recommend that anyone who does not understand that difference definitely needs to read “The 400th From Slavery to Hip Hop.” Only then will they understand the ridiculous and asinine attempt by Linda Chavez, regarding her comparison of the wisdom or justice of affirmative action to address the history of slavery’s descendants in America vis-à-vis others Americans.
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