AN OPEN LETTER TO SENATOR DAN SULLIVAN AND OTHER POLITICIANS WHO WANT TO END AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
©Wendell Griffen, 2023
TO: Senator Dan Sullivan (Republican, Jonesboro,
AR)
CC: All other politicians who want to end
affirmative action
Dear Senator Sullivan,
You and I are not personally acquainted. However, I have a professional and personal interest in Senate Bill 71, which you are sponsoring in the Arkansas legislature. Your proposed legislation purports “to end discrimination or preferential treatment by the State of Arkansas and other public entities” such as school districts, counties, municipalities, public colleges and universities, and other public entities.
If enacted, SB 71 will produce the following results:
1. Section 1 will prohibit
the Alcoholic Beverage Control Division from considering “lack of diversity in
ownership and financial interest in the geographic area at issue” in permit
applications;
2. Section 2 will
a. amend current law (Ark.
Code. Ann. § 6-10-111) renaming the Equity Assistance Center in the Division of
Elementary and Secondary Education the “Equality” Assistance Center,
b. eliminate the mandate
to provide assistance to Arkansas public school districts concerning
affirmative action, program accessibility, human relations, and awareness, and
which enable school districts to meet civil
rights responsibilities, and
c. strike “civil rights” at
every place the term now appears in that statute, replacing it with “desegregation
and nondiscrimination.”
3. Section 3 of your bill will strike “Equity”
from the Equity Assistance Center and substitutes “Equality.”
4. Section 4 of your bill will
repeal Subchapter 19 to Chapter 17 in Title 6 of the Arkansas Code (Ark. Code
Ann. § 6-17-1901). That law requires each public school district and open
enrollment charter school district in Arkansas to prepare a three-year teacher
and administrator recruitment and retention plan that:
a. Includes goals for retention
and recruitment of “teachers and administrators of minority races and
ethnicities who increase diversity among the district staff and, at a minimum,
reflect the racial and ethnic diversity of the district’s students, and
b. increasing the number of
students who pursue careers in education with an emphasis on students of
minority races and ethnicities,
c. Requires school
districts to annually review their recruitment and retention plans and their
progress towards meeting recruitment and retention goals;
d. Annually update and
post the updated recruitment and retention plans on their websites no later
than August 1 of each year;
e. The effect of that
repeal will eliminate the duty of the Equity Assistance Center to provide technical
assistance, guidance, and support to public school districts and public open
enrollment charter schools in developing recruitment and retention plans and
setting and meeting annual goals;
5. Section 5 of your bill
will repeal the provisions now in Ark. Code Ann. § 6-60-703(b)(3) that require
that minority retention plans and affirmative action program plans be included
in the Comprehensive Arkansas Higher Education Annual Report.
6. Section 6 of your bill will
eliminate current law that requires state supported colleges and universities
to establish a program and prepare annual reports and five-year plans for
retention of “blacks and other members of minority groups as students, faculty,
and staff.”
7. Section 7 your bill will
repeal current law that requires state supported institutions of higher education
in Arkansas to prepare affirmative action plans, annually report on those plans,
and issue five-year reports.
8. Sections 8 thru 16 of
your bill concern a law currently titled the “Arkansas Geographical Critical
Needs Minority Teacher Scholarship Act of 2001,” a law enacted to provide
scholarships to Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American students enrolled
or accepted for enrollment at an undergraduate degree-granting teacher
education program in order to recruit those students to teach in areas of Arkansas
“in which there exists a critical shortage of teachers as designated by the State
Board of Education. Your bill strikes the word “Minority” from the Act, strikes
the definition of “the Native American group” in the Act, and otherwise removes
every mention of “minority” in the Act.
9. Section 17 of your bill
will eliminate “affirmative action” as permissible relief for a discriminatory
housing practice in Arkansas. Section 18 will eliminate the obligation state
departments, agencies, boards, commissions, higher education institutions, and
constitutional officers now have to adopt and pursue “a comprehensive equal
opportunity hiring program designed to achieve a goal of increasing” minority
employees within those entities “to a level that approximates the percentage of
minorities in the state’s population. It will also eliminate the requirement
that state agencies, departments, and constitutional offices include a non-discrimination
statement “describing the equal employment opportunity hiring program..”
Section 19 will strike the words “minority, and women’s” from the procedure for
encouraging public contracting for public improvements.
Section 20 of your bill adds a law titled “Prohibition
of discrimination of preferential treatment by state entities,” makes violation
of that prohibition a Class A misdemeanor (punishable by fine of up to $1000
and jail of up to one year), and entitles persons who believe the prohibition
has been violated to sue in circuit court for injunctive relief, court costs,
and attorney’s fees.
And Section 21 of your bill repeals Ark. Code Ann. § 25-36-103, the law that requires state agencies to include in all requests for proposals and requests for qualifications “language that encourages minority participation,” describe details concerning “minority inclusion in the proposed project,” and explain the circumstances that prevent an applicant “to include minority-owned businesses” in the proposed project.
Senate Bill 71, your bill, proves what James Baldwin said: “… ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.”
Despite your professed devotion to “non-discrimination,” SB 71 proves what Martin Luther King Jr. wrote to white religious leaders in his 1963 Letter From Birmingham City Jail: “Shallow misunderstanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.”
Also, Senate Bill 71 – your bill – proves King’s
posthumously published words.
…Justice for black people will not flow into society merely from court decisions nor from fountains of political oratory. Nor will a few token changes quell all the tempestuous yearnings of millions of disadvantaged black people. White America must recognize that justice for black people cannot be achieved without radical changes in the structure for our society. The comfortable the entrenched, the privileged cannot continue to tremble at the prospect of change in the status quo.
Stephen Vincent Benet had a message for both white and black Americans in the title of a story, Freedom is a Hard Bought Thing. When millions of people have been cheated for centuries, restitution is a costly process. Inferior education, poor housing, unemployment, inadequate health care – each is a bitter component of the oppression that has been our heritage. Each will require billions of dollars to correct. Justice so long deferred has accumulated interest and its cost for this society will be substantial in financial as well as human terms. This fact has not been fully grasped, because most of the gains of the past…were obtained at bargain prices. The desegregation of public facilities cost nothing; neither did the election and appointment of a few black public officials.
[Martin Luther King
Jr., A Testament of Hope, in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings
of Martin Luther King Jr. 313, 314-15, emphasis added (James Melvin Washington
ed., HarperOne, 1986)]
Above all, Senate Bill 71 – your bill – is clear and present proof that the great need for our society regarding racial equity in the 21st Century is new thinking, new leadership, and new action about white supremacy, racism, and racial justice. Without new thinking, new leadership, and new action, we will merely perpetuate past mistakes and re-institutionalize centuries of ingrained white supremacy and racism. But Senate Bill 71 proves what Michael Eric Dyson wrote in his introduction to William Owens’ bold book about the Amistad drama:
It is not overstating
the case to suggest that, when it comes to race, we are living in the United
States of Amnesia. America cannot solve its race problem because it cannot
afford to remember what it has been through or more accurately, what it has
made its Black citizens endure: the horrible, cowardly, vicious legacy of
racial domination stroked by religious belief and judicial mandate. The
willed forgetfulness of our racial past continues to haunt us. It makes
Whites repeat harmful cycles of guilt, denial, hostility, and indifference. It
makes Blacks cling desperately to victimization, White hatred, self-doubting,
and self-loathing. It appears easier for most Whites, and for many Blacks, to
reenact a pantomime of social civility through comfortable gestures of racial
reconciliation than it is to tell each other the story of the colossal breach
of humane behavior and democratic practice that slavery represented. [Michael
Eric Dyson, Introduction to BLACK MUTINY, by William A, Owens (Black Classic
Press 1997) (1953), emphasis added]
Senate Bill 71 – your bill – is bold proof of the “willed forgetfulness” Dyson mentioned.
·
Willed
forgetfulness about 246 years of legalized human trafficking, kidnapping, murder,
rape, castration, maiming, dis-education, bigotry, and other atrocities.
·
Willed
forgetfulness about another century of Jim Crow segregation, the US version of
apartheid.
·
Willed
forgetfulness that the “progressive” 1868 Arkansas Constitution established a
dual system of racially segregated public education in Arkansas.
·
Willed
forgetfulness that by 1920, Black students were 30% of the total pupil enrollment
in Arkansas, but Black schools received only 10% of state educational funds.
·
Willed
forgetfulness that by 1920, deliberate inequality in public education
was pervasive in Arkansas.
·
Willed
forgetfulness that by 1920, there were 160 public high schools in Arkansas for
White students. There were only 6 public high schools for Black students (in Little
Rock, Pine Bluff, Hot Springs, Fort Smith, Helena, and Texarkana). There was no
public high school for Black students in Jonesboro, Blytheville, West Memphis, El
Dorado, Camden, Hope, Prescott, Fayetteville, Forrest City, Arkadelphia,
Nashville, or anywhere else in Arkansas.
·
Willed
forgetfulness that public funds for Black high schools in Arkansas were “diverted” to build
high schools for White children (for example, Little Rock Senior High/now
Little Rock Central built in 1927), while high schools for Black children (Dunbar High School and other "Rosenwald" schools including the Rosenwald Elementary School I attended as a child in Pike County) were funded
by charitable foundations such as the Julius Rosenwald Foundation and the John D.
Rockefeller Foundation, although land owned by Black people like my parents was assessed the millage to support public schools for all children.
·
Willed
forgetfulness that under state law, White teachers were paid more than Black
teachers.
·
Willed
forgetfulness about the 1830 Indian Removal Act that legalized forced removal
of the so-called “civilized tribes” from their homeland in the East to lands
west of the Mississippi.
·
Willed
forgetfulness that the “perpetual title” to land Indigenous people were force
marched over the Trail of Tears to reach lasted only until the government
allowed White settlers to encroach on their land and take it.
·
Willed
forgetfulness that emancipated Africans were given no livelihood after the
Civil War, nor opportunity to exercise a craft.
·
Willed
forgetfulness that the same government that passed the Homestead Act and settled
white farmers on the frontier with free land gave no land to impoverished
formerly enslaved Africans.
·
Willed
forgetfulness about centuries of governmental affirmative action in
favor of the historical beneficiaries of governmentally mandated white supremacy
and racial injustice in education, politics, economics, health, and everything
else.
Therefore, Senator Sullivan, it is my duty, after reading Senate Bill 71 – your bill – and your public comments about it, to declare you the most egregious example of white supremacy, cultural incompetence, and moral nonsense by an Arkansas politician about racial injustice since former Governor Orval Eugene Faubus mobilized the Arkansas National Guard in September 1957 to prevent nine Black children from enrolling in Little Rock Central High School.
You may not be familiar with the term “cultural incompetence.” Cultural incompetence is not limited to unintentional, ignorant, dimwitted, and “color blind” policies, practices, and conduct that produce harmful cross-cultural results (cultural incompetence and cultural blindness). Cultural incompetence includes intentional policies, practices, and conduct that produce harmful cross-cultural results (cultural destructiveness). Here is a link to an article based on the experience of a well-known Arkansan to help you better understand cultural competence and why it matters: https://wendellgriffen.blogspot.com/2009/12/why-cultural-competence-should-matter.html
As a descendant of the formerly enslaved, kidnapped, brutalized, cheated, and despised people whose history is trivialized by Senate Bill 71 – your bill – I recognize your willful ignorance and cultural incompetence during Black History Month.
As a descendant of women whose skills, intelligence, and creativity have been maligned, denigrated, and belittled, I recognize your willful ignorance and cultural incompetence as we approach Women History Month in March.
As a neighbor to Latinos whose land was stolen, whose work ethic is ridiculed, and whose history is willfully ignored by Senate Bill 71 – your bill – I salute your slavish dedication to the myth of meritocracy.
As someone with firsthand knowledge about the bigotry, cruelty, and viciousness of homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and sexism, I acknowledge the premeditated disdain of your cultural incompetence.
As someone with personal and professional experience with the way privileged people weaponize bigotry for political, financial, social, and psychological self-interest, I notice your planned appeal to narrowmindedness and your bullish fealty to intellectual fraud.
Thank you, Senator, for proving yourself to be an exemplar of cultural incompetence with Senate Bill 71. Arkansans can expect your colleagues in the Arkansas Senate to reward your bill with “a good vote.”
In the unlikely event that you desire more insight concerning your learned status, you may read the following article published in 1999: Race, Law, and Culture: A Call for New Thinking, Leadership, and Action. Here is a link to that article. https://lawrepository.ualr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1595&context=lawreview.
The author asked that I present the article to you with his compliments.
Congratulations.
Wendell Griffen
Pastor,
New Millennium Church
Little
Rock, Arkansas
CEO/Owner,
Griffen Strategic Consulting (http://griffenstrategicconsulting.com/)
J.D., 1979, University of Arkansas School of Law
B.A.,
1973, University of Arkansas
Race
Relations/Equal Opportunity Officer, 43d Support Group, Fort Carson, Colorado
(1975-1976)
Graduate,
Defense Race Relations Institute (now Defense Equal Opportunity Management
Institute – DEOMI), 1975
The
time for pious words is over. Allan Aubrey Boesak
Writing
is how I fight. James H. Cone
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