Stephen L. Carter: Getting Past Black and White
By RP Staff | July 9, 2008
Yale University Law Professor and novelist, Stephen L Carter has two essays of note in circulation this week. The first is “Affirmative Distraction” an Op-Ed published in the New York Times assaying the legacy of Affirmative Action. Carter’s article gives a brief historical overview of the this policy prescription, meditating on the landmark Bakke case before moving forward to discuss Affirmative Action’s current place in American Politics. Carter’s argument in this essay suggests that while Affirmative Action has helped in bandaging some of this nation’s inequality along racial lines, it still has a lot of work to do when it comes to the area of class-or rather the confluence of race and class:
But restructuring affirmative action programs, although perhaps a good idea, would in the end, like the Bakke decision, amount to more tinkering around the edges. Unless racial justice once again becomes the centerpiece of American politics, with both parties willing to rethink their positions, those who are suffering most from our legacy of racial oppression will continue to fall further behind. Jump Here
In his other essay, “Getting Past Black and White,” written for Time magazine’s retrospective on Mark Twain, Carter applauds Twain for discussing race relations in this country with a tone that was simultaneously sensitive to the turbulence incited by racial conflict, while at the same time not letting that turbulence upend his literary cadence:
I say sophisticated because antislavery fiction–some of it by former slaves–had been a staple of the years before the Civil War. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin is only the most famous example. These early stories dealt directly with slavery. With minor exceptions, Twain melded his attacks on slavery and prejudice into tales that were on the surface about something else entirely. He drew his readers into the argument by drawing them into the story. Jump Here
Topics: Books, Opinion, Politics |
« The Right Is Where We Go Wrong | Home | Hip Hop Activist Rosa Clemente Green Party VP »
