Affirmative Action and the Clash of Experiential Realities

The different historical experiences of African Americans and other immigrants have engendered different approaches to the social and economic discrimination they encountered. Immigrating voluntarily to improve their status, other ethnic groups met de facto discrimination but not dehumanization. Glad to leave worse conditions, they expected little from the state and advanced by their own work. Blacks, free in Africa, entered in chains as de jure property. They had to struggle for de jure human status, for full legal equality as citizens. Demanding that the state restore rights it had deprived them of, they also demanded, in affirmative action programs dating to the mid-1930s, a fair proportion of jobs. Ghetto poverty, it is said, is an economic and social, not a racial, problem. Civil rights groups have long recognized that the welfare of blacks and the welfare of other citizens are united.