As members of the homo sapien species, we are inclined to be wary of the unknown, to be suspicious of that which is different — this is the basis of thousands of years of racism and ethnocentrism.
In Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice,” Shylock questions: “Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal’d by the same means, warm’d and cool’d by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, shall we not die?”
After thousands of years of intolerance, human intellectual evolution (primarily the Enlightenment) has allowed people to reject their natural inclination to despise that which is different and unknown and answer Shylock’s question with a yes. Yes for Jews, for Gentiles, for women, men, whites, blacks, yellows, greens and purples.
In America we now understand that all men and women were created equal. We also understand these men and women have certain inalienable rights such as being free to drink from any public water fountain if it is their desire.
Although racial segregation de jure ended decades ago in the American South, segregation de facto still persists today because of the social choices both the historically major races make in everyday decisions. Government generally no longer impedes interaction among the races, yet many vestiges of governmental segregation subtly continue to promote division of the races, divisions many blacks and whites want to maintain.
In order for Louisiana and the rest of the South to achieve its potential as a society, we must cast away the propensity to divide ourselves along racial lines. We must follow the advice of American poet George Pope Morris and later reiterated in the Civil Rights Movement: “United we stand, divided we fall.”
Advocating programs like affirmative action to alleviate the chasm between blacks and whites reveals naiveté. For one, to be blasé, two wrongs don’t make a right, but more importantly, such devices only generate more animosity while never truly creating a level playing field.
Affirmative action is an example of government much too big for its britches creating an overreaching assumption about society and paternalistically manipulating that assumption in order to create what the manipulators believe to be a better society. The consequent action limits the ability of a free economy to act efficiently in choosing whom to hire and whom not. The action in turn has all kinds of ramifications the manipulators ironically did not assume would occur.
Simply put, affirmative action is communism.
My desire to eradicate racial division probably can never be totally achieved, but the goal can be sought through very practical means in Louisiana — the state should merge LSU and Southern. Why should the state have two education programs in one city? Two English degrees offered? Physics? Business?
It’s ridiculous how our society still deems it appropriate to have a white school and a black school.
Yes, there are whites at Southern and blacks at LSU — but they are like Token on South Park. Why shouldn’t the state pool the resources of the two schools and truly create a flagship institution?
Surely, it would promote diversity and racial unity far better than affirmative action ever could.
Turning to the 133rd Psalm, “How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity.”