Affirmative Action and Collective Responsibility It is no surprise that affirmative action is under attack: along with welfare, it benefits a section of society with very little political clout. It is a fitting site for the displaced anger of working-class white men who have seen their real wages decline over the past thirty years. It stirs up feelings of racism that politicians are quick to publicly denounce but even quicker to exploit. There is, however, very little serious discussion about affirmative action taking place; more often it is supplanted by buzzwords like “quotas,” “set-asides,” and “reverse discrimination.” A serious discussion about affirmative action must begin by addressing the issue of collective responsibility. Opponents of affirmative action firmly reject the concept of collective responsibility, arguing that it is unfair to punish those living today for crimes committed by their parents. A letter to the editor received by The Progressive Review reads: "I have never owned slaves and have never discriminated against anyone. Why should I pay for someone else's sins? Slavery ended more than a hundred years before I was born, and over seventy years before the first of my ancestors came to the United States." Unfortunately, responsibility for the effects of slavery and discrimination cannot be evaded so easily. Even if our direct ancestors did not participate in the slave trade, we are still members of a society that did; Part of the “individual responsibility” so fervently worshiped by neoconservatives must include taking responsibility for the things our society does. When a person becomes an American, they must accept not only the glory and honor of our history, but also the shit…middle of paper…doomed to exist as a perpetual underclass, trapped in poverty because of the racism to which their poverty gives rise. Racism will not eradicate itself; in a society governed by the almighty dollar, it is not possible to separate legal equality from economic equality. This is the fundamental flaw of conservative opposition to affirmative action: the belief that those who live under the bridge have the same rights as those who do not live under the bridge. Unless we make an active attempt to undo the effects of three hundred years of oppression, there will never be a color-blind society. The complaints of a few white men losing their traditional ascendancy seem insignificant compared to the alternative: an unbroken cycle of misery for everyone else. True peace is not simply the absence of conflict, but the presence of justice.-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail"