What is it about affirmative action that makes people so angry? For hundreds of years, American minorities have not had the same rights as white men. Finally almost 500 years after Columbus landed, we got a law, the Civil Rights Law of 1964, which said we can not discriminate against race in employment. The term “affirmative action” was first used by President John F. Kennedy in creating the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1961 and required that projects receiving federal funds take “affirmative action” to ensure that employment decisions are free from racial discrimination.

Slowly, the idea of affirmative action evolved to encompass programs that actively sought to increase the participation of racial minorities. We went so far as to say that we can consider race when students apply to college. Minorities got extra points in admissions. Think about it. We were not saying – take minorities that were not qualified. We were saying take them if they were. What happens? Some white guy who scores higher on a test says he should have been chosen and the courts agree. The test is man made – a white man’s test actually if you look at the makeup of testing companies. But just because you score higher on a test doesn’t mean you will make a good lawyer, accountant, doctor, etc. That is the fallacy of testing. But the courts bought it and we have lost much of affirmative action.

Now we have retreated to – let’s provide affirmative action to the lower economic classes because that is race blind. Let’s consider class rather than race. The problem with that is that this country is not race blind. When I worked for NYS Division of Human Rights, I once asked an integrated group of middle-class, highly educated Division employees, how many had been discriminated in housing. Every minority raised their name; every white person did not. Blacks are discriminated against in this country even when they are middle- and upper class.

There are numerous statistics that state time and time again that this country discriminates against the race of a person. In this country, an August 2003 Bureau of Justice Statistics analysis shows that 32% of black males born in 2001 expect to spend time in prison over the course of their lifetime. That is up from 13.4 percent in 1974 and 29.4 percent in 1991. By contrast, 17.2% of Hispanics and 5.9% of whites born in 2001 are likely to end up in prison. There are a greater proportion of minorities in community colleges rather than four year colleges where whites dominant. There are four black CEOs in Fortune 500 companies. At this rate it will take a hundred years to get any form of equity.

Will they change the law? They already have. Affirmative action is dying. Will we go one step further and lose the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that bans discrimination in employment practices and public accommodations; the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which protects voting rights; and the Civil Rights Act of 1968 which bans discrimination in the sale or rental of housing? I don’t know but I don’t think embracing class instead of race in programs to increase participation will resolve these difficult issues.

Our experiences are so different – white and black. It is hard to imagine that we can come together without far more understanding on the part of white people. Richard Wright in Black Boy (1993) wrote about two white waitresses he worked with every day – “They knew nothing of hate and fear….They lived on the surface of their days; their smiles were surface smiles, their tears were surface tears….We shared a common tongue but my language was a different language from theirs. It was a psychological distance that separated the races… For these poor ignorant white girls to have understood my life would have meant nothing short of a vast revolution in theirs” (319).

We have the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of 1929. And who do we put in charge – investment bankers who started it.Let’s look at how this got started. There is a MIT professor, Thomas Kochan, who demonstrates that in the last quarter of a century, productivity in U.S. manufacturing rose by 70% but real wages remained flat (see http://kochan.lerablog.org/). At the same time as wages remained flat, half of the income gains went to the top 10% of the income distribution. Top that off with inflation rising over 400% since the 1970s and that means those who make a median income in this country are being squeezed – they work harder, earn less and watch while the rich take the bulk of the money. What a country! Obama wins and guess what – he surrounds himself with investment bankers. Way to go! What are Democrats to do? Long ago, a friend of mine who was an Assemblyman said the influence of the rich was quite seductive. He gets home from a long night of meetings and he has several phone calls to return. Most of those phone calls are from ordinary citizens, one is from a donor. He’s tired. Who does he call? the donor. What does President-elect Obama do? How can he resist the seduction that is now going on? I don’t know. But the Democrats have a real problem. They promised to help the middle class but the middle class is not in the room.For those of you who wish to understand the financial crunch we are now enduring, you should read Wallace Roberts, a Vermont journalist.

Globalization and Education

Dani Rodrik is a Professor of International Political Economy at the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, writes “the revolutions in transportation, communications and information technologies have considerably increased the speed with which global markets react to changing realities and procedures. But the flows of goods, services, and capital across national boundaries are not significantly larger today- in relation to national product – than they were during the classical gold standard.”

There are 3 potential sources of tension between global markets and social stability. First, globalization makes large segments of the working population more easily substitutable across national boundaries, and, therefore, it fundamentally transforms the employment relationship. The post-World War II social bargain between workers and employers, under which the former received a steady increase in wages and benefits and a degree of job security in return for labor complacency is thereby undermined. The result is a widening rift between groups that have the skills and mobility to flourish in global markets and those who do not have these advantages.

Second, globalization creates strains both within and among countries by engendering conflicts over domestic norms and the social institutions that embody them. … (What happens when) child labor in Honduras replaces workers in South Carolina or when French pension benefits are called in response to the requirements of the Maastricht Treaty. (This is what the calls for Fair Trade are all about).

Third, globalization makes it more difficult for governments to accomplish one of its central functions: the provision of social insurance that served throughout the post-World War II period to maintain social cohesion and domestic political support for ongoing liberalization.

International trade may be a major contributor to prosperity in the advanced industrial countries but it is also responsible for some of the social and distributional costs. International trade can generate sizeable economic benefits only be restructuring economies and when doing so, some people are hurt – someone bears the costs.

Capital is mobile; labor is not.

What Rodrik reminds us is that global economic integration needs an infrastructure of popular support and legitimacy in order to survive. The inherent tensions between markets and democracy must be recognized. Democracy follows an egalitarian logic while markets follow an inegalitarian one. Global capitalism must be complemented by domestic social policies if we want to maintain political legitimacy – that means investments in safety nets, education and training, and social programs.