It Ain't Fixed Yet.

By Rev. Dr. Calenthia S. Dowdy, ROJ Trainer

I hadn’t intended to write this. It’s Sunday morning, July 2nd, and I’m sitting in my easy chair watching CBS News Face the Nation. Former Vice President, Mike Pence, one of the many hopefuls in the Republican party to be their nominee for President is being interviewed. Naturally he was questioned about the recent Supreme Court decision to end Affirmative Action in colleges and universities.

​When asked if fundamentally he believed there was racial inequity in the education system in the U.S., Pence responded by saying... “I really don’t believe there is, I believe there was, there may have been a time when Affirmative Action was necessary simply to open the doors to all our schools and universities, but I think that time has passed, and we’ll continue to move forward as a color-blind society which is really the aspiration I believe of every American.” Pence went on to try to quote Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in 2003, saying, 

 “Affirmative Action was a temporary solution designed to open doors that hadn’t been opened before, but she expected it to go away within 25 years, and look it went away more quickly than that”... Pence added that “we should be judged not on the color of our skin, but on the content of our character, and in this case on our GPA.”

Sandra Day O’Connor’s actual 2003 quote, “We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest [in student body diversity] approved today.”

Pence commenting on shit he has no clue about really triggered all my feelings this Sunday morning. Once again, a white man, a wealthy, powerful, cis gender white man is sure he knows my reality and speaks with confidence and ease in his ignorance of me.
His responses may have angered me more than the actual Supreme Court decision because he is representative of so many white people in this country. Pence said there is no longer racism in higher education, that time has passed, and we are well on our way to becoming the color-blind society that is the aspiration of all Americans.

As a longtime college professor, having spent too many years working in higher education, I offer at least a few things to consider about this decision and Pence’s representative comments. Among many problems the decision, if you read it, has sought to personalize racism once again. The court says that students can write about racism in their college application essay, they can write about how racism may have attempted to hinder their lives and how they transcended it. Students can share personal stories, but their race cannot be a factor in their acceptance.

Stories can be powerful, but in this case, there is the concomitant refusal to examine the larger systems still in place that negatively impact students’ entrance and experiences at these schools. Beyond personal engagement with white people who might not like them, it refuses to examine systems like social capital, policing, legacy advantages, college preparation, and other white privileges that don’t benefit people of color in college acceptances.

In Roots of Justice, we have argued for more than 20 years that people of color are hurt by the systems in place that make Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) progress harder, and white progress easier. Imagine the image of walking by foot through those long airport corridors vs. gliding almost effortlessly by those moving
walkways or travellators through the airport. The Supreme Court conservative majority, and Mike Pence have disregarded the moving walkway. They’ve disregarded systemic racism in the U.S. once again because they both see it and choose not to see it.

Another issue is what I call the “should be & is debate.” Early in my teaching career one of the things I noticed quickly was that most students at the Christian liberal arts colleges where I taught, would respond to difficult questions with their idealism and moral leanings. They might say that Affirmative Action wasn’t fair because “all students should be treated equally.” Or “why should race matter, we should all be equal” ... and I would spend a lot of time affirming their dreams, hopes, and aspirational language and then I would ask, “but is that reality?” Can we talk about what is vs. what should be? I know the wish dreams, but what if those dreams don’t exist in reality? Can we try to examine reality? And this is where white students often got stuck on race. It was hard for them to imagine that the country and especially the religious entity they grew up in and received so much support and unearned privilege from could possibly not benefit others who were not white.

White folks just don’t know. In her often controversial but still valuable book on White Fragility, Robin DiAngelo, a white woman, writes to white people saying, “our opinions are uninformed, even ignorant.” That was how I heard Mike Pence this morning, as uninformed and ignorant. Dude, how do you know???
DiAngelo also highlights the complexity of racism and warns that white people generally have a very simplistic understanding of racism. “Racists are mean people who intentionally dislike others because of their race; racists are immoral.” Again, a very interpersonal understanding of racism. The system of the U.S. is not color-blind, it is not objective, it does not value all humans equally. We’ve seen that repeatedly and the historical record is more than clear.

Even though “the U.S. was founded on the principle that all people are created equal, it also began with the attempted genocide of Indigenous people and the theft of their land. American wealth was built on the labor of kidnapped and enslaved Africans and their descendants. Women were denied the right to vote until 1920, and Black women were denied access to that right until 1964. The U.S. has yet to achieve its founding principle.
Pence and others like him want to believe that we can simply wish this thing right. We can say some magic words and racism will go away. We can just love each other and all will be well. If only it were that simple. The long walk toward true equity in this country is a long-distance journey not a sprint. Evil systems must be overturned and changed. The education system, the healthcare system, the housing system, the policing and entire justice system, religious systems too, especially Christianity must be interrogated. We are on our way. I believe that, and it’s why the courts want to slow the roll, reverse the progress, yell foul. As resistance gives us the hand, we push back and stay the course.

Like Frederick Douglass said, “if there is no struggle, there is no progress.” It Ain't Fixed Yet. This is not the end.