Part and parcel of the capitalist offensive against working people in the United States is the drive by both the Democrats and Republicans to trim back the gains won by blacks and other people of colour, and by women.
One aspect of this campaign is increasing opposition to affirmative action.
It is interesting, in the context of the debate within the left about whether to continue to support the Democrats as the "lesser evil", that it was under the Republican administration of Richard Nixon that the most far-reaching programs for affirmative action were developed and implemented. This had nothing to do with Nixon's personal views — he cut his political eyeteeth as a supporter of fascist-minded Senator Joseph McCarthy's anticommunist witch-hunt in the 1950s. It was the massive black movement of the 1960s and early 1970s that compelled Nixon to take these steps.
Now the Republicans are in the vanguard of attempts to eliminate affirmative action, while Democrat Clinton trails along advocating eliminating the "reverse discrimination" that affirmative action supposedly entails.
A recent editorial cartoon showed Clinton eavesdropping on a Republican meeting, and telling his staff to write up positions identical with the Republicans', but to add a note of "compassion".
The Republican governor of California, Pete Wilson, has been in the vanguard of attempts to roll back affirmative action. Last year he championed a ballot referendum to curtail immigrants' rights. This year he is behind a referendum to eliminate affirmative action from all governmental programs in California.
Wilson has already spearheaded the elimination of affirmative action in admissions to the state university system. As governor, he is a member of the state universities' Board of Regents. The regents are appointed "public figures" — capitalist politicians and capitalists — and it was no surprise that last year they approved Wilson's proposal.
This was in the face of overwhelming support for affirmative action by students and faculty. The regents' action has sparked student and faculty demonstrations and other protests.
This year's referendum tries to confuse voters by hiding behind a veil of opposition to discrimination. Thus it is called the California Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI). But the "discrimination" it opposes is affirmative action for people of colour and women.
The CCRI would, however, allow discrimination on the basis of sex — if the job description required it. All the old crap about "women's work" and "men's work" would again be official government policy.
The appeal of the CCRI is mainly to white male workers, but it takes in white women and others as well. I have heard white males in a steel mill and oil refinery where I have worked explain that they know from personal experience that if a white male applies for a job, and a female or a black also applies, the black or woman will get the job, even though they were "less qualified".
Of course, who is more or less qualified is a subjective determination, and in this racist and sexist society, many white males feel they are inherently superior to blacks and women.
But if it were true, for example, that a black job applicant would, in general, be hired over a white applicant, then the rate of unemployment for blacks would be far below that for whites. But the unemployment rate for blacks is at least twice that for whites.
When confronted with this fact, white workers who think they have been discriminated against have to fall back to the position that blacks are just not as qualified as they are. In other words, they are inferior. So what underlies this attitude is racism.
Similarly, women are represented in industries like steel and oil refineries in token numbers.
The idea that affirmative action discriminates against white males is ludicrous and, if taken at face value, stupid.
Another argument is that we now have a "colour-blind" society, and that affirmative action attempts to atone for past discrimination that no longer exists. If anyone in Australia thinks that this is true, I invite them to walk through the white and black areas of any US city and see for themselves if the US is "colour-blind."
Affirmative action has benefited only a small minority of people of colour and women, especially those few who have "made it" in upper middle class jobs. Some of these, like black Justice Clarence Thomas, the most reactionary member of the Supreme Court, are now against affirmative action, even though he wouldn't have gotten into law school except for affirmative action.
The task is not to go backwards and eliminate the modest gains, but to implement vast programs of affirmative action to smash the legacy of racism and sexism once and for all. I'm afraid that won't happen short of a mass radicalisation of workers, including white male workers who begin to see that their interests lie with their fellow workers of whatever race or sex, and not with their bosses, whose tactics of divide and rule further the exploitation of all workers.