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Race & zero sum game
One complication to inverting a civil rights topic and making the
affirmative defend rollback: most of the attacks on racial reforms take
the form of that delightful mind-scrambler, "reverse discrimination."
Example: a hypothetical topic wording which required affirmatives to
overrule a Supreme Court decision which extended civil rights protection
could arguably allow the overruling of Adarand vs. Pena, in which the
Court struck a brutal, possibly mortal blow to Affirmative Action based
upon the notion that such programs were racially discriminatory. Read
Clarence Thomas's opinion: he takes the stance that Affirmative Action
programs are morally equal to Jim Crow laws.
So how do we avoid this? Could the word "racism" fit into the topic,
enabling people to distinguish between racial _differentiation_ and
closing of _power_ imbalances based upon race? We've really got to hunt
for a word that acknowledges the asymmetry between dominant group and
marginalized group, whether the topic is just race or whether it's more
or even all civil rights: "reverse-sexism" is a ploy that will pop up as
well.
By the way, if you aren't following Doonesbury at the moment, the
current storyline is about a lawsuit against a University for
discriminating against its athletes and fraternity members by failing to
give them As. Good comic relief from a sometimes tennoldiscussion.
Doyle Srader
University of Georgia
<706> 548-9938
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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