Barack Obama, Kamala Harris & Affirmative Action’s Diversity Problem

Attorney Antonio Moore and Political Commentator Yvette Carnell discuss the recent debate about Affirmative Action. The two use the lens of American history, and more importantly American slavery to detail the flaws in the policy as it shifted from corrective action for racism, to a focus on diversity. Their discussion delves deep into the backgrounds of former President Barack Obama, and Senator Kamala Harris as lenses to understand their respective positions.

Antonio Moore’s piece on The Grio “America can’t heal until Jim Crow finally dies” http://thegrio.com/2016/07/13/america...

As a result of this over-regulation, for a long time, America and its dream has largely been broken for Black America. This is where our country has existed for over 30 years. As I listen to the pundits on media outlets call for a healing around the nation, it sounds more like a return to business as usual than a call for us to address the fact that small, largely white communities like the one Philando Castile was stopped in can’t exist without him indebted to them through traffic stops and other minor municipal violations. As reported by ABC, Castile “… was assessed at least $6,588 in fines and fees, although more than half of the total 86 violations were dismissed, court records show.” America at its root was founded on the physical ownership of black America through chattel slavery and continued this oppression through Jim Crow, creating black economic genocide. We can’t be allowed to forget that, nor the fact that no adequate repairing action or apology was ever made by the American government for this insidious past. This current system is dreadfully similar to the one seen at the turn of the 20th century, whereby peonage and debt were used to continue the effects of American slavery’s oppression throughout the early 20th century.

The story of America isn’t a war of two sides; it was and remains one based on the oppression of black America by a white superstructure. President Obama stated this earlier today in Dallas:
“We also know that centuries of racial discrimination, of slavery, and subjugation,and Jim Crow; they didn’t simply vanish with the law against segregation. They didn’t necessarily stop when a Dr. King speech, or when the civil rights act or voting rights act were signed. Race relations have improved dramatically in my lifetime. Those who deny it are dishonoring the struggles that helped us achieve that progress… And so when African-Americans from all walks of life, from different communities across the country, voice a growing despair over what they perceive to be unequal treatment, when study after study shows that whites and people of color experience the criminal justice system differently. So that if you’re black, you’re more likely to be pulled over or searched or arrested; more likely to get longer sentences; more likely to get the death penalty for the same crime. When mothers and fathers raised their kids right, and have the talk about how to respond if stopped by a police officer — yes, sir; no, sir — but still fear that something terrible may happen when their child walks out the door; still fear that kids being stupid and not quite doing things right might end in tragedy. When all this takes place, more than 50 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, we cannot simply turn away and dismiss those in peaceful protest as troublemakers or paranoid… I understand how Americans are feeling. But Dallas, I’m here to say we must reject such despair. I’m here to insist that we are not as divided as we seem. And I know that because I know America. I know how far we’ve come against impossible odds.”
Mr. President, I have to disagree. American communities are divided by a growing chasm in ways that are unseen to the naked eye. A divide has split along the fault lines of race and wealth, that has trapped the Alton and Philandos of the world in a cycle of despair. Race relations only appear to have improved, but this veneer has occurred through the silencing of so many unknown black faces, as they were cast into a permanent underclass existence. Communities from Ferguson to Minneapolis are not in agreement on the next step forward. Far too many are profiting economically on black families being over criminalized, and it has to stop for there to be progress. We have to get honest about the fact that whole sections of America exist where Black Americans live in a separate and other America.