Racial and national discrimination is institutionalized in capitalist society. The very way that capitalism operates day in and day out constantly reproduces and reinforces inequalities, to the benefit of the wealthy class that runs this cutthroat system. Left to their own devices, the capitalists will never enforce measures to ensure equality in hiring, promotions, education, and housing. The bosses use these divisions to weaken workers' ability to fight for jobs, better wages, working conditions, and other social entitlements for everyone.
The increasing devastation of working-class communities that are Black over the last two decades is the product of the workings of capitalism. Broad layers of workers and farmers who are Black have been driven into poverty and into social conditions that are even more segregated - by race and by class - than the late 1960s or early 1970s. U.S. government figures for 1995 report that 41 percent of Black children lived below poverty level compared to 15 percent of white children. In July 1998 the unemployment figure for Blacks was 10.4 percent, more than two and a half times the overall rate. The median family income of African-Americans is less than 60 percent that of whites and the gap was substantially wider in 1996 than in 1967.
Meanwhile, African-Americans make up more than half of those imprisoned since 1980 and they comprise more than 50 percent of inmates who have been executed, although Blacks make up less than 12 percent of the U.S. population.
Working-class fighters and defenders of democratic rights must champion affirmative action in admissions at every level of education. The argument that students of oppressed nationalities are "less qualified" at the high school and university level is a reactionary justification for perpetuating the discrimination and inequality youth who are Black face from the primary level on.
Affirmative action is also needed to combat widening wage inequality, where a disproportionate number of those working minimum wage jobs are young, Black, Latino, or female. That's why the fight for affirmative action in hiring and promotion - with quotas - is essential for building working- class unity.
More demonstrations are needed like the thousands of students in California, Texas, Washington State, and elsewhere, who have taken to the streets to defend affirmative action. Working people must throw their weight behind this fight to counter the broadening assault on this social gain, won through the massive struggle of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and '60s.
The victory over Jim Crow segregation was a historic conquest that strengthened the working class politically. It is only along this road that a social movement can be built that will ultimately sweep away the discrimination and racist cancer that are a cornerstone of capitalist society.