Affirmative action is a "system of special privilege," that "pits group against group, race against race," asserts presidential aspirant and California governor Pete Wilson. "No one envisioned that redressing two centuries of unfairness would launch a whole new era of unfairness." Hoping to boost his presidential possibilities, Wilson is adding assault against affirmative action for Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and women to his anti-working-class repertoire.
But it is not affirmative action that divides working people, and it is not Black, Latino, Asian, or women workers who benefit from groups being pitted against one another. Bosses do.
The biggest division working people face is between employed and unemployed; it is used by the bosses to force workers to accept speed up, lower wages, and worse working conditions as the competition for jobs gets fiercer. The employers also stand to gain a lot if they can pay one layer of workers less than others, and if they can play off one group against another, using skin color, sex, nationality, or language to do it.
Wilson is simply speaking up for the "privileged" bosses who pay his way to office. Working people have a life-and- death interest in fighting to eliminate the capacity of the employers to divide us.
The capitalist class seeks justifications to pay workers less, and if they succeed in shortchanging women or immigrant workers they use it to lower the wage for all workers. The employers set pay from the bottom up.
Affirmative action is aimed at cutting across the divisions that the bosses reproduce every chance they get. They are the experts at using prejudice to defend their privileges.
Affirmative action is not primarily about 200 years of history, it is about what is happening today. Blacks, Latinos, and women are a disproportionate number of those workers who are unemployed, or who receive the lowest pay, and live in the worst conditions.
It was through struggles for equal rights and just treatment in housing, education, and employment that Blacks, other oppressed nationalities, and women began to close the gap that so long existed in wages and social conditions. But with the growing economic crisis the bosses are trying to impose harsher conditions on all workers, and without a fight by working people to defend our rights, the gap will grow wider.
The labor movement should respond to Wilson and other capitalist politicians by fighting to defend and extend affirmative action. To close the gap between better and worse off workers we need to put a struggle to raise the minimum wage on the front burner, too. And to deal with unemployment we should demand a shorter workweek with no cut in pay - 30 hours work for 40 hours pay - to create more jobs and spread the available work. A fight by the labor movement for these demands can unite working people and strengthen all of us against the employers
The attacks on affirmative action, like those on the rights of immigrant workers, will continue because capitalist politicians will keep trying to divide us. They will keep offering scapegoats for the worsening conditions they must try to impose to save their system. But the outcome of these attempts to push us back is far from determined.
When tens of thousands mobilized to oppose the anti- immigrant Proposition 187 initiative, it had a deep impact on whether or not the government would go ahead with the denial of rights to undocumented workers and their families at hospitals, schools, and government offices. A judge prudently ruled it could not be done at this time.
The lesson for all defenders of affirmative action is that we should jump into the debate and follow the lead of students at California universities who responded with protests to defend the rights of women and oppressed nationalities when proposals were floated to change admissions policies and eliminate affirmative action.