Positive action and collective responsibilityIt is not surprising that positive action is under attack: along with social assistance, it benefits a part of society with very little political influence. It is a breeding ground for the misplaced anger of working-class white men who have seen their real wages decline over the past thirty years. This fuels feelings of racism that politicians are quick to denounce publicly, but even quicker to exploit. There is, however, very little serious discussion going on about affirmative action; more often than not, it is supplanted by buzzwords such as “quotas,” “reserved markets,” and “reverse discrimination.” A serious debate on affirmative action must begin by addressing the question of collective responsibility. Opponents of affirmative action strongly reject the notion of collective responsibility, arguing that it is unfair to punish those alive today for crimes committed by their parents. A letter to the editor received by The Progressive Review says: “I have never owned slaves and have never discriminated against anyone. Why should I pay for someone else's sins? Slavery ended more than a hundred years before I was born, and more than seventy years later. years before the first of my ancestors arrived in the United States. Unfortunately, responsibility for the effects of slavery and discrimination cannot be so easily avoided. Even though our direct ancestors did not participate in the slave trade, we are nonetheless members of a society that did; Part of the “individual responsibility” so fervently revered by neoconservatives must include taking responsibility for the actions of our society. When a person becomes an American, they must accept not only the glory and honor of our history, but also the crap...... middle of paper ... condemned to exist as a perpetual, trapped underclass in poverty by the racism to which their poverty gives rise. Racism will not eradicate itself; in a society governed by the all-powerful dollar, we cannot separate legal equality from economic equality. This is the most fundamental flaw in conservative opposition to affirmative action: the belief that those who live under bridges have the same rights as those who do not. Unless we actively try to undo the effects of three hundred years of oppression, there will never be a colorblind society. The complaints of a few white men who lack their traditional ascendancy seem insignificant compared to the alternative: an endless cycle of misery for everyone else. True peace is not simply the absence of conflict, but the presence of justice.-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail"