Why do we think we have achieved everything by our own merits, but minorities haven’t?

On to the next hot-button issue: race!

I recently read two interesting articles, in two very different venues, and you should, too!:

Jeffrey Toobin, in the New Yorker, about Sonia Sotomayor.

Chuck Warnock, on the Soj blog, about evangelicals and diversity.

The thing that both articles made me think about is the fact that so much of debates about “identity” politics centers around a fundamentally-absurd assumption: that white Americans (or, in debates about international aid and development, Americans in general) have achieved any/every position in their lives through their own hard work, ability, intelligence, and dedication. Aside from the fact that, logically/statistically/proportionally this is impossible, it is also historically ridiculous. Obviously, when one group structurally and systematically bars another group(s) of people for hundreds of years, the former group is going to have an advantage that does not disappear in the 50 years or so since the Civil Rights movement. One reason for this is that for this is that white families who benefited from others not being allowed onto the playing field consolidate these benefits and pass them on to the next generation. The same is true of money. And when prestige is added to this equation, or name recognition, you get the 100 or so oldest, wealthiest families in America. Thus, we are immediately born advantaged or disadvantaged, and we certainly didn’t choose what womb we were going to come out of. Furthermore, when you disenfranchise people for years, they are more likely to be economically disenfranchised, to develop alternative economies which generate violence, etc. Due to socioeconomic and systematic limitations, minorities have often been ghettoized or concentrated into less desirable areas; even born to the hardest-working, highest-functioning parents, the womb still decides whether you are born in Beacon Hill or Dorchester (MA reference); Magnolia or Rainier Beach (WA reference). Certainly, my parents  worked hard to reach where they are, and certainly they faced obstacles (a woman in law school; the first in my dad’s family attend college), but they still had, in many ways, the advantage of the womb. My position can be summed up as follows: self-made-man, my ass.

The brilliance, in my view, of the Sotomayor nomination–and here is where the Sojourners article comes in–is that there is no way to deny the woman’s ability, intelligence, or hard work. To win scholarships to Princeton and Yale Law, to excel at both institutions, to graduate at the top of one’s class, and edit the law review implies a much higher degree of intellect, commitment, or ability than most of us can fathom. This is no affirmative action–this is real merit.

Which brings me to my next point. In Warnock’s article, he discusses this issue in regard to the Church–particularly the evangelical church–in America:

My online friend Shaun King, a young African-America pastor in Atlanta, recently decried in no uncertain terms the closed circle of white church experts who are featured in conference after conference.  Rah echoes King’s frustration:

While the demographics of Christianity are changing both globally and locally, the leadership of American evangelicalism continues to be dominated by white Americans.

The message a sea of white faces sends, according to Rah, is that “the real experts in ministry are whites.  Nonwhites may offer some expertise in specialized areas of ministry (such as urban ministry or racial reconciliation), but the theologians, the general experts, the real shapers and movers of ministry, are whites.”

I think that the Sonia Sotomayor nomination, and the complaints of King and Rah cited by Warnock on the Sojourners blog highlight the issue lurking behind questions of “diversity”: when people complain about diversity as artificial; or pit affirmative action against merit; or suggest that lack of diversity is actually about “finding the best people,” i.e. the Supreme Court or a panel of speakers at an evangelical conference happen to be all white because these are the most qualified people for the job, the implication is that, in a country that is increasingly less white, somehow white men are still the most able, the most intelligent, etc. If we disagree with this statement, then there is an imperative to make an actual effort to look past our blinders, and look past undeserved advantage to find those who are equally or more able, intelligent or hard-working. Just because we are unaware of them does not mean that they are not there.

This is why, then, we do have to go out of our way or actually make an effort to diversify: because there are many out there with equal or greater ability, with as much or more to offer our civil society and our churches that we are, because of centuries of discrimination and ghettoization, less likely to be as aware of. On King’s blog, he makes the point that there are endless pastors, academics, leaders and experts out there that are not being asked to speak at conferences. Rah notes that there are endless ethnic churches that are being overlooked in assessments of the supposedly declining American church. And, I would assert, the fact of Sonia Sotomayor alerts us to the fact that there are many minorities in the legal field with much to offer that have been passed over or are unseen.

So, while Rush Limbaugh and others call Sotomayor a “reverse racist”–for doing her job, following precedent in a legal case–I want those of us who are white, male, American, or privileged in any way to reconsider our own assumptions, especially if we are Christians, and ask ourselves what lies behind our arguments around race, affirmative action, diversity, and so-called identity politics. I want us to ask ourselves exactly what we did to determine where we were born; what we did to determine our race or gender–and, theologically speaking, what we have really done at all. And then consider the fact that there might be someone, somewhere, more able than we are at some particular thing, someone who is getting overlooked, despite equal or superior ability.