Guerrero: Affirmative action cases aren’t about ending discrimination. Their goal is white supremacy.
The fight over affirmative action and reverse discrimination is a sideshow for what should be a real conversation about the problem of race in America, writes Michael Hiltzik.
The first time I saw a photo of Michael D. Horton, a white high school graduate from New Jersey, I was struck by the resemblance with my father, the most white man I have ever known. Like Mr. Horton, my father grew up playing basketball in the black leagues of the Philadelphia suburbs, and like him, he became a top collegiate basketball player for Princeton University. In my mind, it was not that Mr. Horton was a member of an old white American elite; it was that he happened to have the same parents as my father.
For years, it seemed obvious that the only people who could have helped my father succeed in America were people like Mr. Horton. He had a similar background, he was from an old and stable White House community, and he too happened to be smart. White Americans like Mr. Horton are the most common white Americans in America.
It is also not true that there is a connection between whiteness and excellence in America. While some of the best and most creative minds in America have been from the most recent immigrant population, white Americans themselves are less creative than their native counterparts. As for being from an old White House community, you have to go back to the Founding Fathers and Civil Rights Movement to find a country so deeply rooted in racism that it would produce such a self-congratulating narrative about itself.
The fact is that our country is as much about race as it is about anything else—especially our political systems. American politics has been dominated by racists since the founding of the nation, and that racist legacy is as old as our country and is as American as apple pie. Our country has been at war with itself and the other nations in our region since the Second World War, and our politics have often been shaped by white supremacy and imperialism.
This is as true for the Democratic Party as it is