AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

“WHAT CAME TO BE KNOWN by the latter half of the 1960s as affirmative action — that is, not simply the concept of equal justice under bourgeois law, fought for and more broadly codified by the mass civil rights struggles — but explicit and transparent quotas in hiring, college admissions, promotions, and seniority-based layoffs — is what broke down barriers that had long blocked large numbers of African-Americans from achieving such social status. 

“THE URBAN REBELLION BY BLACKS in Harlem, Watts, Chicago, Newark, Detroit, etc, and the rise of Black nationalist consciousness and organizations, convinced the U.S. rulers that they had to concede something in addition to formal equality. At least for a time, they had to accept the need for quotas.

“IF THE CLASS STRUGGLE does not continue to advance, [these conquests] are more and more often perverted into programs that provide a golden key for a relative few Blacks, Hispanics, & others.

“TODAY ‘AFFIRMATIVE ACTION’ IS USED to further divide African-Americans and other nationally oppressed layers along class lines, and to *deepen divisions within the working class as a whole.*

“[BUT] SO LONG AS CAPITALIST RELATIONS EXIST, the fight for quotas in hiring, promotions, seniority-based layoffs, and college admissions — that is, openly stated numerical targets or separate lists for those facing discrimination based on their race or sex — will continue to be an indispensable element in forging class solidarity along the road toward the revolutionary fight by the working class to take state power, hold it, and aid those the world over fighting to do likewise.”

https://www.themilitant.com/2009/7324/732450.html?fbclid=IwAR0Mc2EBs8joBR0otaILZY7aSMBQEeHyrQQ8plV03GK8z-lmL-Telrp1a3Y