In a world where too many anti-affirmative action pieces begin with an out-of-context quote from a civil rights leader—specifically Martin Luther King, Jr., and even more specifically “I Have a Dream”—I stand: one of the 1,209 Black-identified students on this campus of 43,275 enrolled in the university. That’s 2.8 percent; even broader, there are 6,243 identified minorities total, accounting for 14.4 percent of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I stand as the only person of color on the Cardinal’s Editorial Board, and one of the few minorities on the entire staff.
I must begin by expressing my severe disappointment in the idea that affirmative action is a reinforcement of the racism we are attempting to combat. This disappointment is not merged by any smidgen of surprise, because in my three years on this campus we have been having the exact same conversation on the exact same topic, rehashed using the same tired arguments. And in the majority of these pieces, the authors tend to be White and privileged, tiptoeing gracefully around the confrontational attitude we must take as civilians to address our educational systems that continue to function on fundamentally flawed principles.
There is a seething irony in the idea that a policy serving to bandage the gashes left in racism and societal oppression against marginalized groups is only a racist ideal when White people are not factored into the picture. This is followed by a tendency to carelessly toss ideas of “inclusivity” and “separatism” into the banter to further detail the mirage that white students are systematically disadvantaged by initiatives like this.
The social construct of race was designed as a marker of identity, a system invented by Europeans to classify and separate humans at their convenience. Yet the moment marginalized people begin to echo any sliver of pride in themselves, and demand equity and reformation in sectors of society that have built themselves on wrongdoing, it becomes a nonissue. It then becomes a matter of being a human and nothing more. The contradiction speaks for itself: my Black presence in this university, one drop in the 1,209 Blacks enrolled, somehow conceptually threatens the other 31,036 Caucasians.
Is this a universal perspective? Absolutely not, but it serves as a baseline for the anti-affirmative action position. Racism, on a basic level, can be presented to White people in a world where Whiteness is under a normalized lens to the point where it can become less of a primary indicator of one’s identity. (For example, a White man may identify himself as a man first, while I identify myself as a Black man in any identity.) And herein lays the problem: we are still failing to educate how the institutional and systemic components of racism continue to function in today’s America. A consequence of this is the perspective that a minority identity’s preference in the admissions process is a fundamental injustice to everyone, and not one step in attempting to build upon centuries of wrongdoing.
Another flaw in this position is rooted in the assumption that people of color who are accepted to universities like UW-Madison under affirmative action programs are inherently less competent and more prone to fail under the high academic standards. There is a lingering notion that the policy is shoving students with 2.5 GPAs and 1300 SAT scores to the top of the heap on race alone. This is farthest from the truth: If you don’t have the grades on a certain level, you will not get in to this school.
As a Black middle-class male in the First Wave program designed to bring diversity to this campus, this struggle is even more apparent. In an underperforming suburban school district, I was in the top 10 percent of my class, but had my admission delayed until I could make the grades my senior year. In this case, admittance to the scholarship program did not dictate my admittance to the school, and I had to put in the rest of the work like everyone else here.
Access to adequate education is a pillar that shapes how all people in this country grow and learn, but to act as if this is the only deciding factor is out of pure fallacy. Will we address residential segregation and housing policies? Will we highlight socioeconomic inequalities that persist across the board? What about gentrification? Are these pieces of our identities subject to filling and erasing what we please because it satisfies the majority?
How can one claim the presence of race/ethnicity on a college application is the only determinant on students that look like me getting into predominantly White schools like this one? If UW-Madison functions as a holistic process, this is addressing the intersectionality of one’s identity and experiences and what that can bring to the school. To ignore my Blackness and what that means in Maryland, in Wisconsin, in an America that has risen from the blood and skin of my predecessors, is nothing more than an ignorant mistake. It only avoids talking about race like America has, and will continue to do if it serves the foundation of white supremacy it was built upon.
I refuse to remain a bystander as pieces like the ones I’ve seen continue to go unchecked; the uninformed and jaded lens shines in the eyes of the privileged. Post-racial America does not exist, and we cannot proceed on as if this is our reality. Affirmative action is not the iron fist to rewrite our America, but to say it is dehumanizing is spitting directly in the face of me and everyone I know. You will not ignore me, you will not ignore my people, and you will not ignore our struggle. The content of my character leaks through the color of my skin, and the pain in the history it bears.
I will leave with a degree, and I will live as a Black man long after I am a Badger. Know whom you’re condemning before you open your mouth.
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