Barriers Block Our Path to a Post-Racial Society

As a college student I am disappointed to see such a plethora of articles pertaining to most recent incidents of racial discrimination and misunderstanding in 21st century America today.

One of these issues includes voting rights. Here in North Carolina, where I go to school, the legislature wants to decrease the voting period from approximately two weeks to only one week, if not less. It is well known that mostly Democrats and minorities take advantage of early voting.

On May 6, 2013, 27 people, mostly members of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, were arrested while protesting new GOP policies. People are being arrested in 2013 for protesting? Really? The legislature here in Raleigh is predominately Republican and it is obvious to me that the decision-makers in this state wish not to see minorities progress, as their new policies included taking away unemployment insurance and the right to claim earned income tax credit—which will most likely hurt poor, minority mothers who would usually claim expenses related to their children’s needs on their tax returns.

When will enough be enough? Apparently to some, it’s never enough. To some, we are all lazy and our poverty struggle is our fault alone and has not befallen us because of the top-down power structure we are seeing take an even more defined form in this country. From the looks of things it seems we are taking a turn for the worst. The capitalistic greed that has always driven our power structure’s action abroad is catching up with us here at home and minorities and poor people are taking the fall.

Another recent debate has surrounded the newly released collaboration of country singer Brad Paisley and LL Cool J entitled “Accidental Racist.” Now granted, perhaps the song was not given the best title and lyrics such as, “If you don’t judge my do-rag, then I won’t judge your red flag,” can be highly misinterpreted, but the bigger picture of the song is to let people know that the only way we will get over our differences and our fathers’ quarrels, is if we stop judging each other and actually get to know one another.

The most recent issue is a court case — Fisher v. University of Texas–that was filed in 2008 and was brought to the attention of the Supreme Court recently. Blacks have been liberated from slavery in this country for approximately 150 years.

Abigail Fisher, the plaintiff in that case, claims that she was not accepted into the University of Texas because a less qualified minority applicant was accepted under affirmative action. The university says her claim is not true, but in fact the minority was more qualified. In addition, the university is required to accept about 81percent of applicants who graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school classes, and Fisher did not fit into that category.

Many have the misperception that affirmative action is designed to give minorities an advantage. This is not so. It is in place and was designed so that disadvantaged minorities would not be discriminated against if they are more qualified versus a less qualified non-minority.

We must understand that the struggle for minorities to obtain higher education in this country is nothing new, but it’s nothing old, either. For example, the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, better known as the GI Bill, was designed to ensure low mortgage interest rates and education benefits for World War II veterans. Unfortunately, many of these policies did not apply to Black veterans particularly in racist Southern states.

Will the Supreme Court justices be able to look me, a 20-year-old Black college woman in the face this summer and tell me with 1,000 percent conviction that affirmative action is no longer needed despite their knowledge that racial prejudices still exist?

Let us not deceive ourselves into believing that we live in a post-racial society. The only way we can move in that direction is if we stop judging one another.

Yasmine Arrington, a native of D.C., is a junior communications major at Elon University in North Carolina and founder and executive director of the ScholarCHIPS /foundation.