Ask the Scholars

Interviews from 2003

Question 41

What does equity look like? (when will racism end?)

Will there ever be a time when we will not have to depend on social programs for racial equality? How will we know when that time has arrived? In other words, at what point is the debt of "white privilege" paid?

Answers:

Sumi Cho

Legal Scholar

I think the question really needs to be turned around and we need to ask, "When are we going to be rid of racism in U.S. society?" I think the answer to this question serves as the answer for the former question. The idea of a permanent affirmative action policy is used to scare people who might otherwise support affirmative action. Affirmative action opponents play upon fears that proactive measures will become a politically inscribed remedy that society will never be rid of once they a...

John Cheng

Historian

I think the question confuses individual compensation with larger social compensation. You need to have some sort of general societal measure. I mean, the goal of affirmative action isn't the complete redistribution of wealth, but to address the effects that certain dynamics such as race have on reproducing inequality. The debt of white privilege is not really a debt. It's a relation - an elevated status in relation to other groups. It disappears when it disappears.

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