Introduction
The year 2018 is promising to be a very politically active year in the USA. With the rising tensions among various strata in the American society and the ongoing campaign against police shootings and inequality, affirmative action is on the rise. Many people are willing to stand up for what they believe in and engage in protest activities in order to draw attention to various social issues. In the USA, the issues of racism, whether personal or institutionalized, are still present. However, as the current political divide shows, affirmative action can sometimes undermine the very goals it is working to promote, whether by alienating people or by delivering fragmented results. The purpose of this paper is to address the issues of divisiveness and mismatching in strategies against personal and institutional racism.
High Education for Black People
The issue of education for black people has been prominent ever since they were freed from the shackles of slavery and granted rights as citizens of the USA. However, the gap between white and black students in regards to education remains significant – although the majority of restrictions were, de-jure, abolished after the protests of 1963, many of them remained in the system, perpetrated by government agents and various remnants of the past. These disparities are being constantly confronted by various organizations, such as NAACP and ACLU, engage in protests in order to remove white supremacy from the government institutions and provide impoverished black communities access to quality education (ACLU, 2017). Here is where the issues of division arise.
Divisionism in Political Activism
The rhetoric of protesters and affirmative activists often shifts from demanding equality in education for the black people to indiscriminately accusing white teachers and students of racism, indulging in self-defeating generalizations. It is where their protests differ from those of Martin Luther King Jr., as well as those of Mahatma Gandhi. Those protests earned sympathy from all sides of the political spectrum, which ultimately helped them succeed. Many of the modern protests generate nothing but antipathy from many of the whites who feel offended by baseless accusations and generalizations, which shifts the balance of power to forces seeking to undermine equality and racial parity (Wood, 2014).
Mismatching and Fragmentary Affirmative Action
The second issue related to affirmative action is mismatching caused by fragmentary actions in promoting education for blacks. This issue arises from a gap between school and university education. The majority of efforts are currently focused on enabling access to higher education for blacks. However, without the schooling system for black students being up to the task, higher education becomes a pointless exercise. A great percentage of black students, when entering prestige universities, finds themselves unable to compete and adhere to high standards of university education, which leads to a higher percentage of dropouts (Sander, 2015). The majority of universities, pressured by affirmative actions and political activists, are forced to lower their standards and expectations, which hurts the quality of education.
Strategic Solutions for Opposing Institutional Racism in Education
In order to effectively oppose institutional racism in the American educational system, political activists must take a holistic and inclusive approach. Accusations of racism are not to be taken lightly and need to be directed at political and government figureheads that deserve the blame. Using racism as a blanket term to accuse all whites indiscriminately derives the support away from the cause. Affirmative activists should not underestimate the political power of the silent majority.
Next, the campaign for improving education for blacks should be aimed at schools as well as universities. Without greater emphasis on reforming the schooling system in order to provide higher standards of school education, the issue of mismatching would doom the lives of many black students to failure, as expulsion from the academic field would leave them unemployed and in debt. Holistic methods and inclusiveness are the keys to efficient affirmative activism.
References
ACLU. (2017). ACLU joins coalition to decry changes to student loan servicing and debt collection changes. Web.
Sander, R. (2015). How affirmative action backfires. Web.
Wood, M. J. (2014). Political alienation in American society. Web.