Vision Circle

Assuming that someone doesn't pull the rug out from under us, it now behooves us to ask a question that we haven't really begun to grapple with on a significant national level. What can we do between now and 2028 to abrogate the need for Affirmative Action in higher education?

Of course there is no one right answer...although there are probably several wrong ones. "Nothing" for example is a sure fire wrong answer.

Thinking about the civil rights movement, scholars like Charles Payne (author of the brilliant I'VE GOT THE LIGHT OF FREEDOM) argue persuasively that there were at least three modes of civil rights activism. One mode was largely legalistic...sue, get your case before the Supreme Court, and get the SC to change the law. The other mode was the large scale use of nonviolent protest. The third mode was door to door organizing.

The first two modes are what most of us think of when we think of the Civil Rights Movement, and its victories. Brown v. Board, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the student sponsored sit-ins...

But it's that third mode that really helped blacks and whites make the turn to a better democracy. Because they were about getting regular folks to recognize their rights and their full responsibility as citizens. This task was thankless. There were no cameras documenting these actions for prosperity. There was no cushy Supreme Court Justice job awaiting.

Bob Moses and the Student Nonviolent (later National) Coordinating Committee was one of the thankless heroes of this movement. He's now working on teaching kids in Mississippi math. HIs ideas are worth serious discussion.

For Moses the key wasn't simply changing the system, it was giving individuals the capacity to realize their OWN ability to change the system. So it wasn't just about giving someone a voter registration form, asking them to fill it out and turning it in, it was about educating people about citizenship itself. About educating them about the role of regular people in maintaining and growing a living democracy.

He now believes that the best way to continue this mission is to take the same principles and teach them to grade school kids in the south. By using their lived environment as a template by which to not only teach them higher mathmatical principles, but to teach them the value of teaching others like themselves, Moses is hoping to build a new cadre of intellectual-activists. The book that descibes this project is called RADICAL EQUATIONS.

Our first steps should be to institute programs in school that will both give kids the ability to understand and change their lived reality, and the ability to succeed at whatever mechanism colleges use to sort kids into niches. Like getting people in Mississippi to vote, this is a thankless job. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson will never be a part of it. Tavis Smiley will probably never want to interview you about it. And you won't be recruited to join Cornel West at Princeton after you do it.

But I'm fully convinced that at the end of those 25 years, you'll be able to see a tremendous change that will make all the thankless work worth it.

Now this doesn't absolve government from responsibility or blame. As hypersegregation is the product of a confluence of local, state, and federal policies, government is very much involved in perpetuating educational disparities. As I've said before I personally think that what we need is a new jack Blair Bill. But since that's not coming, we have to do the work.

Posted by at February 1, 2004 12:42 AM | TrackBack