(Washington) The latest refrain in the “culture wars” in the United States, programs aimed at promoting ethnic diversity on campuses are banned or restricted in a growing number of American states, with conservatives no longer wanting to hear about positive discrimination in the university.
The debate rages between the left, which defends strong support for students from minorities who are victims of America’s gaping inequalities, and a right on the offensive on everything it considers “woke”, advocating a meritocracy that should of being blind to the racial question.
“The idea of [mettre en place] discrimination today to remedy yesterday’s discrimination, it is fundamentally wrong,” summarizes for AFP Jordan Pace, a local elected official from the right wing of the Republican Party in South Carolina.
The parliamentarian is pushing his state to follow the dozen states, led by Florida, which have adopted such reforms, a new iteration of the societal conflicts which are fracturing American society in this election year, as on LGBT+ issues.
“The main target” of the hunt for these programs aimed at fostering diversity, equity and inclusion [DEI] in public universities, “it’s black people,” says Ricky Jones, professor of pan-Africanism at the University of Louisville, in Kentucky.
Last June, the country’s Supreme Court, with a conservative majority, ended affirmative action in university admissions procedures, thus overturning one of the great achievements of the fight for civil rights.
“We don’t like the idea of judging people on immutable characteristics, whether it’s gender, race, size, whatever,” justifies Republican Jordan Pace. “We are a very meritocratic society,” he assures.
“Kick us off campus”
But, faced with a history marked by slavery and segregation, the origin of strong inequalities until today, many American institutions – businesses, universities, etc. – have implemented programs aimed at facilitating the integration of minorities within the ruling class.
Carlie Reeves, 19, benefited, when she began her studies at the University of Louisville, in Kentucky, from a team telling her “you deserve to be here”, she who is the first in her family to go to university and who, upon arriving, felt that her teachers “didn’t think I had my place here,” she recalled to AFP.
Added to this protective cocoon are specific scholarships, essential for many African-American families. So many of the students she sees “are only there because of the DEI (programs),” she sums up.
But on March 15, Kentucky lawmakers voted to pass a law to restrict these programs, and Carlie co-organized a protest on campus. “I felt it was my duty to inform the students, to say: ‘there are these people who literally want to kick us off campus, we have to do something. »
Because this legislative wave is not just a trick. At the beginning of March, the University of Florida effectively ended its programs and jobs related to diversity issues, a direct result of Governor Ron DeSantis’ offensive against what he calls “woke ideology.” Same thing in Texas.
Following this model, like Idaho, the governor of Alabama last week signed a local law banning all DEI programs in public universities.
“Throwback”
“I am extremely worried,” reacted to AFP Stephanie Anne Shelton, who works on these issues within the faculty of education at the University of Alabama.
If restrictions in the adopted text will allow it to maintain certain teachings to raise awareness of diversity issues for future teachers, she is worried about “teaching freedom”.
The Alabama law, in addition to closing diversity offices at public universities, prohibits them from forcing staff and students to adhere to or be trained in “divisive concepts,” listing among them the idea that ‘it is necessary to apologize because of one’s race’.
This is how its detractors present the concept of “white skin privilege”, according to which white people benefit, without realizing it, in Western countries, from social, political or economic privileges.
Failure to comply with these clauses may result in dismissal, notes the law in black and white.
In the middle of the campaign, candidate Donald Trump wants to bring these reforms to the federal level. “On my first day,” the Republican said on March 16, “I will sign an executive order to cut off federal funds from any school that defends critical race theory or transgender madness.”
Ricky Jones, the professor of Pan-Africanism, fears a very concrete consequence: with all these laws, “there are many black academics who will no longer apply in Florida” and elsewhere. And he warns of a possible “backtracking” by the United States on the racial question.