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BY LISA TREI Slavery and Jim Crow may have been relegated to history but -- despite the achievements of the civil rights movement -- racism and inequality continue to pervade American society, speakers argued last week at a national conference co-sponsored by the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE). Ignoring deep fissures caused by racism will only worsen underlying problems in this country, said Harvard sociology Professor Lawrence Bobo. Referring to the words of Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, Bobo stated: "In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race."
Bobo joined about 300 academics, progressive activists and journalists attending "Colorblind Racism? The Politics of Controlling Racial and Ethnic Data." The event was held Oct. 2-4, just days before Californians went to the polls to vote on Proposition 54. Race, health, education and law experts argued that passage of the "Racial Privacy Initiative," which seeks to ban the collection and use of racial data in California, would be a serious setback for minorities. "If we lose the ability to track racial disparity, we lose the ability to target policies, funding and programs to those who need it," Bobo said. Carmen Nevarez, medical director of the Public Health Institute in Oakland, said data banned by the proposition includes information that helps practitioners fight breast cancer, prostate cancer and Alzheimer's disease. Education Professor Jeannie Oakes of the University of California-Los Angeles argued that the first line of defense against educational inequality is valid and credible information. "We need the best social science analyses to resist our cultural temptation to blame 'those kids,' 'those families' and 'those people,'" she said. History Professor Emeritus George Fredrickson, co-director of CCSRE's research institute, said that normally his group would not sponsor a conference with an overt political agenda. "But in this case, we feel our direct interests as researchers ... [are] going to be seriously impeded if Prop. 54 comes into existence," he said Friday. "We wouldn't know where we've been, where we are or where we are going. We have a direct stake in this." As of press time Tuesday, final results had not been tallied but, according to a Field poll released Oct. 3, almost half of likely voters said they would reject the initiative, while 35 percent supported it. When the conference was planned a year ago, organizers said they did not know it would coincide with yesterday's special election. Eva Patterson, executive director of the Equal Justice Society, a conference co-sponsor, said the event's genesis stemmed from progressives watching "the brilliance of the right over the last 20 years" as they appropriated the left's ideas and reframed them to support a conservative agenda. "They've stolen our language and they're killing us," she said. The event aimed to connect activists with academics and journalists. On the final day, about 150 people met to plan strategies for working together more effectively. Participants considered a fundamental question: How can a society with such a long history of color-based inequality become a society in which color is less a source of inequality than a source of communal strength? The conference kicked off Thursday night with a lively discussion on the historical crossroads of race and class. New York Times editor Steven Holmes started the debate in his keynote address when he said that the civil rights movement is stuck and needs to be reframed to put more emphasis on class issues, not race. "Perhaps it's time to recognize that white working-class people have much more in common ... with people of color than is generally thought," Holmes said. "Recognizing this, maybe it's time to devise ways to build coalitions, even if that means modifying how one approaches issues like affirmative action." Holmes later added, "If it sounds to you like I'm saying the NAACP should go out and recruit whites, that's exactly what I'm saying" -- a remark that elicited a few headshakes and moans from a crowd of about 150 people. Panelist Maria Blanco, the national senior counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, cautioned that it was still too soon in the civil rights struggle to bring whites and minorities together for the good of the common cause. "Sometimes the interests of whites are not what's in the best interest of minorities," Blanco said. "Even as we are attempting to move on, there are forces that take us back to racial issues." Many speakers on Friday agreed with Blanco, as panels discussed the following broad topics:
David Wellman, a community studies professor at the University of California-Santa Cruz, said a profound disagreement persists over the legacy of the civil rights movement. Many white Americans, he said, think that civil rights laws eradicated racism, and if vestiges persist, it is because minorities have not tried hard enough to succeed. "They believe the United States is rapidly becoming a colorblind society, therefore they see little need for affirmative action," he said. "They embrace Martin Luther King's vision of a colorblind society." With the clarity of hindsight, Wellman said, it was naïve to believe that America could wipe out 300 years of race-based oppression in just three decades. "The belief, even the hope, that the nation would glide into colorblindness was foolish," he said. "The current goal of a colorblind society is at least as naïve as the optimism of the 1960s, and it also conveniently masks color-coded privilege." Wellman argued that European white Americans can be sanguine about racial matters because, until recently, the privileges accorded to their race were taken for granted. "They cannot see how society produces advantages for them because these benefits seem so natural," he said. "They do not see how race permeates America's institutions, the very rules of the game, and its distribution of opportunity and wealth. Literally, they are colorblind. More accurately, they are blind to color." Until the nation as a whole recognizes that racism is lodged in the structure of society, it will not be able to eradicate the problem, Wellman said. "The advocates of Prop. 54 seek to transcend racial conflict by banishing blackness and the consciousness of racial inequality that accompanies it," he said. "This, in effect, whitewashes the racial status quo." Staff writer Ray Delgado contributed to this article.
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David Wellman
Larry Bobo
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Stanford Report, October 8, 2003
