Abstract
Tonia Wellons on affirmative action.
The debate on affirmative action has re-emerged. This time, the question is whether it disadvantages Asian Americans, in particular, even as it creates advantages for other groups, particularly African Americans. In parallel, a new national conversation on racial equity is placing in context issues of generational poverty, police brutality, the prison industrial complex, and the rising tide of anti-other rhetoric and violence. The general sentiment is that, despite our best efforts to achieve equality, people of color, particularly African Americans, are faring worse than 50 years ago, when affirmative action was first introduced to redress past forms of discrimination and racism. As a beneficiary of affirmative action programs and a practitioner in the racial equity space, I know that affirmative action remains an effective tool in achieving racial equity.
My family is eight generations in this country, up from slavery. I am generation six. Our earliest known ancestor is my maternal grandmother, five times removed. Temperance is said to have been born around 1805 on the plantation not far from where my family lives today in rural Southampton County, Virginia. She was a slave on the Holloman plantation and gave birth to Martha. Martha married Jason and gave birth to their three sons, all of whom were born into slavery. Jason was sold to a plantation in the South because of his rebellious nature, leaving Martha to raise their sons alone. Two of the three sons, Jim and Hack, lived long productive lives on the plantation, while the third—Julius, who was disabled—passed away in his early 20s.
The story goes that Hack and Jim entered into a work-purchase agreement with their former owners as the institution of slavery was coming to an end. They eventually earned the rights to the land and raised their families, my great grandmother and grandmother, there. Because my forefathers owned property, they were afforded the right to vote—they were the first Blacks to achieve that right in Southampton County.
More often than not, the history and relevance of affirmative action is told absent the historical context of real people’s stories, as most are unable to piece together the history of families who were enslaved, sold, counted as property, freed, and expected to simply make it without any redress. Affirmative action as a practice was introduced by President John F. Kennedy in 1961. It was designed to level the playing field and redress these past wrongs, historical inequities, and continuing discriminatory actions and exploitations.
In 1993, the Department of State launched a program to affirmatively increase the numbers of African Americans in international diplomacy and development. Their strategy was to recruit undergraduate students into summer internships with USAID missions in developing and transitional countries with the expectation that early exposure would create a career pathway. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), like North Carolina A&T State University where I was an undergraduate student majoring in political science, made ideal partners. I applied at the suggestion of my professors. I didn’t know much about international affairs beyond my participation in Model United Nations, but I knew a great opportunity when I saw it. I was selected because of my academic performance and commitment to service. I’d never been out of the country, nor had I ever been on an airplane. My first flight was 22 hours long, with stops in four countries en route to Columbo, Sri Lanka where I spent the summer as a Democracy Intern for USAID. I assessed the status of human rights, free press, and civil society. It was the best summer of my life.
This single experience in a program established to affirmatively offer opportunities to a segment of the population that had disproportionately experienced discrimination and exploitation set the trajectory for my career. It became the reference point for my entrance into graduate school, my master’s thesis, working for USAID in post-apartheid South Africa, and a nine-year post at the World Bank Group. In the same year that JFK introduced the notion of affirmative action, 1961, he also established the Peace Corps, where I had the pleasure of working as a political appointee under President Barack Obama.
As a racial equity tool, affirmative action is a full-circle opportunity. Even as we try our best to win hearts and minds with equality arguments, research continues to demonstrate the persistence of racism and the vestiges of a dark, but not so distant history of mass exploitation and abuse. Today, I take a lot of pride in my seat at the table, in being regarded as an as an equal with people whose early beginnings looked so different from my own. That is what affirmative action was designed to achieve, and I will continue to uphold it as a tool for racial equity until full equality is achieved.