by Slothrop
Accepting class balancing as a compelling state interest would
justify the imposition of class proportionality throughout American society …
Allowing class balancing as a compelling end in itself would “effectively
assur[e] that class will always be relevant in American life, and that the
‘ultimate goal’ of ‘eliminating entirely from governmental decisionmaking such
irrelevant factors as a human being’s class’ will never be achieved.” Croson,
supra, at 495
…
An interest “linked to nothing other than
proportional representation of various classes … would support indefinite use
of class classifications, employed first to obtain the appropriate mixture of
class views and then to ensure that the [program] continues to reflect that
mixture.” Metro Broadcasting, supra, at 614 (O’Connor, J.,
dissenting).The validity of our concern that class balancing has “no
logical stopping point,” Croson, supra, at 498 … is demonstrated here by the
degree to which the districts tie their class guidelines to their demographics.
As the districts’ demographics shift, so too will their definition of class
diversity.
From Roberts’s
plurality opinion in Seattle
The Seattle/Louisville school district desegragation policies were struck down
by the Roberts Court. Anybody could see it coming. Researching to draft an
amicus brief for Seattle last year, it was obvious to me then the school
districts were sunk. I believe in large part the cases finally resolve "race" as
a rhetorically inert concept, incapable of signifying anything but the will of
domination. Whitey done won.
What Volosinov called the "univocality" of
a sign washed up as a site of confrontation over meaning, explains the semiotics
of "race" perfectly. Replacing the word "race" with "class" in Roberts’s opinion
rehabilitates some of the polyvocality of the sign acknowledging in a more
obvious way what the "concept" is in the line of cases from Dred Scott to
Brown to Seattle.
The concept is about the kind of 14th
Amendment rights associated with class-ism. "Race," as a polyvocal sign in
Brown was, if not explicitly, obviously encoded as a signifier of class.
"Race" in Brown is no empty abstraction as it is for Roberts. In
Brown "race" is another way to say "Negro" and as such, an avalanche of
contestation of status is embedded in the word. "Negro" meant seperate but not
equal, those persons routinely denied "opportunity, where the state has
undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on
equal terms." "Negro" is in part a sign acknowledged by the Court as a site of
class conflict, remedied by equal access to public education.
Well, fuck
that. Hey, we’re equal, time to be seperate. Pity the Chief Justice’s decorum
for not offering Michael Jorden and Oprah! as exemplars of "race." But the
cynicism is there. The triumphant expropriation of political content from the
word "race" is total–the victory of semiosis, the Roberts Principle:
white=race.
One can only envy their balls. "Class" is a signifier which
has none of the effeteness of "race." "Class" is a devil-term signifying
communism, the Rosenbergs, Rosie O’Donnell, Michael J. Fox, MSNBC, and hybrid
vehicles. So, in order to get at the idea of class without saying the terrible
word, "race" was a wobbly juridical surrogate. Farewell.
So, where to
take the fight? Good luck opening up the terrain of contestation occupied by
"Choice," "Happiness," "legal immigrant," "freedom." Even better luck you’ll
need to transliterate "class" to circulate signs mediating continuous
class-warfare in what passes as the nation’s political consciousness. Whatever
that word is, it won’t be "class" anymore than it will be "race."
And
good luck finding a person of color in a position of power to rip a little hole
in the prevailing ideology. Says Thomas: "Indeed, if our history has taught us
anything, it has taught us to beware of elites bearing racial theories." Elites:
Dubois, CLR James, MLK.. who all understood the ways in which "race" often
implicates "class" and "class" always insinuates "race." These are the stuff of
Thomas’s nightmares.
Well, as Raymond Williams often said "hegemony is
never total, twat!" So lurking out there is a word whose political content might
include the synchronic deviousness to assault Mr. Thomas and his merry class of
gated-community dwellers. My money is on, if you’re in America, "Mexican"–if in
Europe, "Arab" might do.
