After blogging about Amendment 46, I began to think more about how affirmative action has worked in my life in the past. I have a few friends who on job and college applications they refuse to check any of the boxes denoting their race or gender. I can't tell if this an anti-affirmative action or a pro-affirmative action. Most of these people were white and female, so I don't think marking the boxes would have changed the outcome for them anyway. However, I think it was a statement on how things like race and gender are important in our society when they shouldn't be. I think those people who refuse to check the boxes are wondering why does it matter what race I am; does that change my accomplishments or abilities? But the truth is, if a black female from an impoverished home and city who was first generation high school, graduates college with a 3.5 that is much more of success story in our society than a white male from a rich, college educated family achieving the same thing. If you erased the story of gender and race from those two applicants, they would look the same which isn't the case. I'm not sure what my point is about that, I can't decide yet but it's just an interesting point.
Another real life example that comes to mind is from high school. My best friend was so concerned that she wasn't going to get into any of the colleges she wanted. When she confessed her fears to others, she always got the same response. People would tell her she was a shoe-in anywhere because she was Filipino. I confess that I said the same thing, I thought I was comforting her at the time but now I see that it was degrading. No one praised her actual abilities, just her minority status which we believed would secure her in any college. I know she would hate to think that she was only at a certain school because of her race but also I have to wonder would she like to be considered based only on her accomplishments without her nationality playing into it at all if you know it would help you? I think affirmative action is a tricky thing, on one hand you love it but on the other people can resent it- but I think to add a constitutional amendment that is anti affirmative action isn't helping anyone, but hurting many.
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Your discussion of your friend's experience is in my mind a very painful example of how even the best of intentions can go bad in relation to how we think and talk about race.
(On a side note, I went to a very interesting talk on Friday about racial microaggressions. Basically, the researcher made the point that instead of experiencing outright racist attitudes or comments in life, many of us are party to much more subtle forms of discrimination, like the comments you noted in this post. What's challenging about these micoaggressions is that many people aren't even aware that what they've said could be painful to another person.)
I think the first part of your post points out an idea worth pursuing that I might phrase something like this: Are justice and equality the same thing? How are they different? Or, when is it okay to acknowledge and consider differences like race and gender? When is it not? What's the difference between distinguishing between these issues and discriminating against people because of them?
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