Reverse Discrimination Needs Reversing

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Reverse discrimination is the negative side of the call to the positive goal of affirmative action, and in theory they are supposed to work together. But the greatest affirmative action is the message of Christ, and this has been ignored even though it provides affirmative action of all, not just a designated group, not just in theory, but in actuality. The current application of reverse discrimination needs reversing, for something much better without all the adverse problems, and it is the Christian message to “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Reverse discrimination is one tool used to raise academic possibilities for various minority groups, but is it really needed any more or has it become an Albatross or encumbrance around the neck of our educational establishment?  Reverse discrimination is a humanistic way of seeking to do what real regeneration in Christ will do in a spiritual way.

An alliance of Asian American groups filed a federal complaint against Harvard University, claiming that the school and other Ivy League institutions are using racial quotas to admit students other than high-scoring Asians. More than sixty Chinese, Indian, Korean and Pakistani groups came together for the complaint, which was filed with the civil rights offices at the Justice and Education departments. The groups are calling for an investigation and say these schools need to stop using racial quotas or racial balancing in admission.

The federal suits say Harvard and the University of North Carolina rely on race-based affirmative action policies that impact admissions of high-achieving white and Asian American students (“Asian groups file federal complaint against Harvard over admission practice”- Fox News, May 16, 2015). Race-based affirmative action helps some, but in helping some, hurts others. Overall, Asians tend to excel above the whites, the blacks, and the Hispanics in academic achievement, but is it right to discriminate against them? Isn’t this one of the causes of American education’s drift toward mediocrity?

Reverse discrimination in Progressive thinking is seen as a redeemer, instead of the Christian message and call to responsibility, hard work, dedication, and spiritual commitment. In 1636 when Harvard was founded the stated purpose was:  “Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well that main end of life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life (John 17:3). And therefore to lay Christ in the bottom is the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning.”  Needless to say, things have changed!

The gospel is under attack in our educational world, particularly from the higher echelons of our government. The focus is not freedom of religion, but more freedom from religion. This attack began when our nation started replacing “rights” for “righteousness”, and history is showing the downward descent in many things in our land, including education achievement.

Reverse discrimination in our educational institutions has been applauded, as it has promoted diversity, helped those who could not help themselves, opened new opportunities to individuals, helped to destroy stereotypes, and has been a way to compensate minorities suffering from past prejudices in American society. But on the other hand, it has tended to lower educational standards, filled classrooms in mainstreaming often with ill-equipped students who are real discipline problems, failed really to develop the goal of a color-blind society, has been seen as a form of condescending to minorities, has deflated individual responsibility rather promoting true minority achievement, and once enacted, affirmative actions are difficult to remove. Surely there is a better way without this mixed bag, and the current Common Core is not the solution!

In an article entitled, “Common Core Author Admits He Wrote Curriculum to End ‘White Privilege’” by Dean Garrison in Freedom Outpost, November 6, 2014 it is brought out that the Common Core is very racist and very political. Garrison says, “According to Dr. Pook, he helped write it to balance the scales because he, and many others, are benefiting from some mythical ‘white privilege‘ that was not earned…It’s not about uniform and effective educational standards that benefit our children. This is about a leftist agenda and yet another shining example of the train wreck called political correctness.

The leftist, political agenda, which has reverse discrimination as one of its many tentacles is very much part of the Progressive war plan. John Dewey, the father of Progressive Education, was a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Civil Liberties Union, as he was an early member of the Socialist Party of America, which promoted alternatives to a capitalist system which they considered to be obsolete and cruel. Christianity was also considered something obsolete to Dewey!

Dewey was very much a follower of the ideas of Karl Mark, and he had great praise for Soviet education in Russia. Progressive thinking very often tunes itself in with Marxism. Hubert Kay in a 1948 LIFE Magazine, brought out that: “In the Marxian view, human history is like a river. From any given vantage point, a river looks much the same day after day. But actually it is constantly flowing and changing, crumbling its banks, widening and deepening its channel. The water seen one day is never the same as that seen the next. Some of it is constantly being evaporated and drawn up, to return as rain. From year to year these changes may be scarcely perceptible. But one day, when the banks are thoroughly weakened and the rains long and heavy, the river floods, bursts its banks, and may take a new course. This represents the dialectical part of Marx’s famous theory of dialectical (or historical) materialism.” This process describes to me what I seem to be seeing taking place in American education.

Father Bryan Massingale in an article, “Catholics Should Stand Firm on Affirmative Action,” supportive of reverse discrimination said that: “Notwithstanding the undeniable progress of the last thirty years, racial prejudice and discrimination remain deeply entrenched and strongly operative in the personal attitudes, group behaviors, and institutional processes of this country. Because black skin is still seen as a liability in America, proactive measures like affirmative action are still necessary if there is to be any hope of overcoming the stigma, the presumption of inferiority, which too many whites still ascribe to African American people.” This is a half-truth, and a half-truth is not really the whole- truth!

Massingale went on to say near the conclusion of his article that: “Needless to say, affirmative action was hardly a burning issue during Jesus’ life…” Affirmative action was not a factor in the days of the Lord Jesus, but prejudice was certainly there in respect to the Samaritans, and I thought about the Lord Jesus and his encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well.

The Lord Jesus then did something that was a cultural taboo: he spoke to a woman in public; and not just a woman, but a Samaritan woman. The Samaritans were descended from the Israelite people who had not been deported when the Assyrians conquered the Northern Kingdom (722/21 BC) and imported other peoples into the region (2 Kings 17:22-41). They continued to worship Yahweh, but also allowed the worship of other gods from the resettled peoples’ homelands.

In John’s Gospel (John 4:3-42) the Samaritan woman at the well is the first person to whom Jesus openly reveals himself as Messiah. The pious Jewish leader, Nicodemus in John 3, did not hear the words that Jesus tells this foreign woman when she states her belief in the coming Messiah: “I am he, the one who is speaking to you” (John 4:26),  and this is also the longest private conservation Jesus had with anyone in the New Testament (John 4:7-26). It is of note that the woman asked the Lord Jesus three questions, which does suggest an educational or teaching event (John 4:9,11,12). Here we have an instance where the Lord Jesus was utilizing a type of affirmative action as well as a form of reverse discrimination, but not in the world’s way.

The Lord Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman about the “Living Water” as recorded in John 4:10 and then in 4:14 he said to her,  “ But whosoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.”  This is the water of God’s cleansing, God’s forgiveness, God’s refreshing, God’s new life, God’s flow in one’s soul, opening to God’s knowledge which ultimately opens up all knowledge in truth. This is a flow of God’s truth in contrast to the flow of humanistic error as is it being displayed in Marxian theory of dialectical (or historical) materialism, which was very much part of John Dewey’s thinking and Progressive learning.

Jesus uses water as a metaphor to teach this woman. He speaks about the living water, which gives eternal life, divine grace, or God’s life within the soul. The woman craves this type of water, because she wants to have eternal life. But first Jesus has a lengthy but candid dialogue with her. He makes her understand that she needs to confess her sins and change her life before she can obtain this life-giving water – grace. Jesus shows her that he already knows she is living with a man who is not her husband. It is a call to realize her sin, a call to repent of it, a call to accept God redemptive grace, a call to see Jesus as the Messiah, and a call to realize this living water at work in her life. This encounter has an educational application we need to see.

What we need in modern day American education is not more change toward the desert lands of Humanism, Deweyism, Marxism, or Progressivism and more of the legalism that more government mandate as often is seen in reverse discrimination. We need to realize an explosive focus on the living water that the Lord Jesus presented to the woman at the well!  The tool of reverse discrimination has outlived its usefulness, and we need the eternal tool of the living water to which Christ referred. Reverse discrimination needs reversing and the gospel can do and does the job, so it needs to be advanced!

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by Joe Renfro, Ed.D., Educational Columnist, Radio Evangelist, Retired Teacher and Pastor, 5931 West Avenue, Lavonia, Georgia 30553,  706-356-4173, joerenfro@windstream.net

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