Western Massachusetts

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA REGENTS ABOLISH AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

On July 20, the University of California regents voted to wipe out gender- and nationality ("race")-based preferences in student admissions, hiring and contracting. KKKalifornia Governor Pete Wilson, himself a regent, understands that nothing brings home settler votes better than attacks on the oppressed nations. The governor recently proved it by immigrant-bashing his way to re-election.

Affirmative action has made no more than token reparations to Amerika's internal colonies, and MIM is outraged that even this tiny bit of progress was too much for the settlers and their political representatives to allow. We see the emerging student struggle in defense of affirmative action as progressive, but severely limited.

Affirmative action has been part of Amerika's neo- colonial way of minimizing the threat of national liberation struggles in Amerikkka's internal colonies. It allows small numbers of oppressed nationality individuals to "integrate" more easily with their national oppressors, while the majority in the oppressed nations retain more traditional colonial status.

Real affirmative action requires reparations from the oppressor nations to the internal and external colonies and neo-colonies. And that requires that the imperialist U.S. bourgeois dictatorship be overthrown through armed revolution and replaced by a dictatorship of the international proletariat.

The fact that 30 years of reform were wiped away in one blow demonstrates once again the futility of the reformist approach to making progressive change. The bright side of this latest attack on the oppressed nations is that it will bring new allies to the side of the international proletariat. We hope to see - and will gladly assist - students organizing in such a way as to raise the cost of the regents' reactionary decision.