"Try to see it my way,
Only time will tell if I am right or I am wrong.
While you see it your way
There's a chance that we may fall apart before too long.
We can work it out,
We can work it out."John Lennon and Paul McCartney, 1965
The song title is "We can work it out."
The means to that agreement, the Beatles sang, was for her to see things his way. Yeah, right.
Today's post, like yesterday's, is about stepping out of one's own frame of reference and seeing what problems the other person -- or other country -- faces. It requires empathy. It requires seeing oneself in the position of the other person. To cite lyrics from another song of the same era, from the rock musical Hair, it is
"Easy to be hard.
Easy to be cold. . . .
Easy to say no
Easy to be proud."
Herbert Rothschild is a former college professor, now retired, in apparent good health. He recognizes his own good fortune and privilege. He steps outside his own frame of reference to write about affirmative action and privilege. For decades, he has been an advocate for peace, justice, and the environment.
Guest Post by Herb Rothschild.
In 2015, when I was writing a weekly column for The Daily Tidings (RIP), I took the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to reflect on affirmative action. I ended the column with the following prediction: “Next term the U.S. Supreme Court will end all affirmative action programs based on gender, race, and ethnicity but leave the ADA requirements intact.” My prophecy was seven years premature, but unfortunately accurate. Here is that column. I’ve added a new ending.
Like the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the ADA forbid discrimination against specified groups of people, but it went much farther. It required covered employers to make reasonable accommodations for employees with disabilities, and imposed accessibility requirements on public facilities. In other words, it mandated affirmative action.Such affirmative action was extraordinarily expensive. Buildings had to be retrofitted with electric lifts to accommodate the physically challenged. Sidewalk curbs had to be cut for the same reason. Colleges and universities had to hire helpers for their visually and hearing impaired students. Those were just some of the adjustments. The list is lengthy.
I’m not complaining. It was fair and intelligent public policy. It corrected past injustice, and it brought hitherto wasted talent into schools and workplaces. Interestingly, few people challenged that view. I never heard any public complaints about this affirmative action program despite its enormous cost.
Contrast that with the earlier resistance to affirmative action for women and especially for people of color, resistance that frequently reached into the courts.The charitable view of the contrast is that we White men couldn’t see the analogies. It was obvious to us that we had created a world tailored to those without physical or mental disabilities, so we knew we couldn’t “level the playing field” (a much-used phrase in affirmative action discussions) for the blind or the paraplegic, say, just by declaring that we would no longer hold their condition against them in hiring, promotion, or admissions decisions.
But far too many of us didn’t realize that we lived in a tailored to White men, a world which couldn’t change meaningfully just by declaring that from now on we would be gender- and color-blind. Long before the nation was founded, a thorough-going affirmative action program had existed for us. We created it, we maintained it—since we were the ones making almost all the hiring, promotions, and school admissions decisions—and we hugely benefited from it.
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Readers have noticed a higher than usual number of Guest Posts. I am grateful to Guest Post authors. We get by with a little help from our friends. I have been busy and distracted getting baby Cabernet, Malbec, and Pinot Noir grapes up and alive. And in doing so, working alongside young men and foolishly trying to keep up, I re-injured an old hernia, yet another distraction.
Pinot noir in the Rogue River valley? A worthy gamble! Good luck with them all, Peter. I’ll buy a few bottles when they’re ready. 🍷😊
-Your cousin somewhere along the family tree,
Allison Hamilton
Cabernet, Malbec, and Pinot Noir grapes. Great choice Peter! Cheers, Dale Porter