America has a history of racial discrimination, three and a half centuries of maltreatment of its racial minorities. America’s history of racial discrimination in both the public and private sectors, from top to bottom. Discrimination either given official government imprimatur or otherwise condoned and permitted. For generations blacks were denied employment opportunities and chances for advancement, or denied admission into institutions of higher education.
After decades of struggles in the courts and streets of this country, after countless deaths of persons demanding that the country live up to the ideals espoused in its most sacred founding documents, the courts of this country determined that, pursuant to law, a remedy was needed to address the long-standing wrongs of racial discrimination. From its English heritage, America jurisprudence mandates that when a wrong has been established, a remedy is appropriate. Often, fashioning the remedy is as difficult a struggle as was establishing the wrong.
What remedy is appropriate for generations of exclusion? Our society has struggled with this question for only a short time. Affirmative action as a remedy, like most remedies, is not perfect, but is fair under the circumstances. Even an imperfect remedy is preferable to no remedy at all. Only a certain few will disagree that racial discrimination needs to be remedied. Some will suggest that discrimination is a thing of the past, and is no longer a problem. However, various examples prove otherwise, including the Texaco "black jellybeans" case. Racial discrimination is still with us, and failing to address it is antithetical to American values, and weakens the fabric of our society.
Whether a remedy is fair always depends on who answers the questions. Some people will call a remedy unfair anytime it could remotely affect them. Others will misunderstand the remedy, and then call it unfair. Among its definitions of "fair", Merriam Webster includes, "conforming with the established rules or consonant with merit or importance." Certainly, attempting to right or correct the wrong of racial discrimination and its remnants conforms to our established rules of jurisprudence and is of great importance to our society as a whole. The alternative is to do nothing, to pretend that racial discrimination does not exist, or is not a problem if it does. Doing nothing about our history of racial discrimination is unfair to America.
