Battling Racism through Education

This post is not about whether or not affirmative action is justified (See Racism and the Reverse). I may criticize affirmative action in this post, but that is only because I believe there is a more important and more effective way to battle racism. I look at affirmative action as attempting to treating the symptoms of a disease rather than attempting to cure the disease. The disease of racism may always be present in our society, but there are things we can do to help prevent the seeds of racism to grow in the next generation.

There is one goal that all affirmative action advocates have that I personally believe in. This goal is the to "level the playing field" for all races. I believe the goal is best attainable by starting children off on the "same level" by ensuring they have the same opportunities to obtain an education. In my opinion, the two key aspects of this unleveled playing field are lack of education and unhealthy family relations. In the United States today social standing, wealth, and skin color probably matter much less as a child than education and family relations do when speaking of giving a child the opportunity to succeed in life. These other factors do matter, but they play minor roles in giving a child an opportunity to succeed.

Education is the ultimate tool. It is my opinion that regardless of whether someone is poor or rich, if they are educated their potential to succeed in life is increased greatly. One problem for lower-class minorities today is that it is often very difficult to receive a good education in a low-income area. Low-income areas tend to have very poor public schools with little funding and ineffective teachers. This problem needs to be solved by raising the money to do whatever needs to be done to get really good teachers and really good programs set in place in these lower-class schools.

Every child is shaped by the family they grow up with. Families influence their children in both positive and negative ways. The negative ways in which families can influence children include not supporting their goals and dreams, convincing them that they do not need an education, and guilt-tripping them into making decisions that may affect them negatively. Families may not push their children to obtain an education, they may force them to drop out of school to support them, or they may tell them they should not pursue a college education. In my opinion, negative family influence is the one big road block that may keep the educational playing field unleveled for longer than expected.

Lower-class families need to be encouraged to support their children in their educational endeavors. Giving children the chance to receive a good education and prove their intelligence is the most important step the government can take in combating racism at a legal level. The argument that leeway must be given to minorities applying for jobs and college is based on the idea that minorities currently do not receive the same education and opportunities as everyone else.
Ensuring that everyone, minorities included, have easy access to education will allow everyone the opportunity to succeed.

Official Languages

People often propose making English the official language of the United States. Even discounting the many different varieties of English, this is an awful proposal. Laws that are like this are either useless, or racist.

First, let's consider what this would mean. The weak version is that all official documents have to be at least in English. I must ask the question, why? What good will be gained from this? All government documents are already in English, so the only place this would apply is in contracts (and personally, I'm not sure if contracts in different languages would be enforced). But contracts are a matter of civil courts, and thus, not strictly law-enforced. Besides, if two people want a contract in Spanish, why shouldn't they get one? This is the useless version.

A stronger version is that official documents should not be in a language other than English. And same for store signs, etc. Now, suppose that for some reason or another, 90% of the population now spoke Spanish, or some language other than English, as their first language. This would seem like a pretty silly law. This also applies to the first weaker version too. So, the law is either useless, or it forces a percentage of the population to learn a language they don't want to. If the latter is true, it is racist. Think about it like this, would you force an immigrant to take an accent coach and learn the precise "proper" way to pronounce the words? Why not? It's the same idea, taken just a bit further. Possibly, you'd say they can make it with just the English language, and they can make themselves understood. In the first case, there are plenty of economic reasons to learn English. If they can make it without using English, that's just fine for them. They can decide whether they need English or not, better than you can. Why is it O.K. to force a minority to do something and not a majority? Well, traditionally it's considered not O.K. and this should not be an exception.

So, the law is useless unless it's racist. And thus it shouldn't exist.