For example, one cliche is that Asian Americans oppose affirmative action because it stigmatizes them. In reality, that community s opinions on such programs are much more complicated and reveal volumes about their profound, double-edged experience with discrimination. Very little coverage has been given to the actual nuts and bolts of affirmative action. As valuable as in-depth examinations can be, using highly charged and misleading language undermines them. Describing affirmative action with words like preferences is misleading because it suggests favoritism and inaccurate because the programs are designed to remedy the preferences for white males that have long been entrenched in our society.
Language can help create light without heat.
It takes a greater commitment of resources to cover affirmative action in these ways than it does to report it only with breaking-news stories. But that commitment offers an unprecedented opportunity for fresh, intelligent perspective at a critical time in history, when America is soul-searching for ways to understand and ease discrimination. Redwood is executive director of Americans for a Fair Chance.