November 2008

“Racial disparities persist despite Obama election” shouts an Associated Press headline.

I’m sure many people had high hopes that the presence of a black man (biracial, to be precise) in the White House would mean the end of the belief that racism is an ever-burning fire in America. Sorry to dash your hopes. As I’ve written before, it’s human nature to blame others for our failures. (But we tend to credit ourselves for success. Convenient, eh?)

Even if all branches of federal, state, and local governments were headed by black people, we’d be reading headlines like this:

“Racial disparities persist despite blacks running the country”

As expected, people quoted in the article erroneously attribute racial disparities to racism, that phantom-like, elusive practice no one can define. For some people, a certain look or fairly innocuous remarks can be perceived as racism. In 2008, you’ll rarely hear an example of actual racist behavior toward blacks: forcing them to sit at the rear of public conveyances, preventing them from voting, assigning them to separate schools based on race, etc.

We’re left with a wishy-washy definition for what passes as racism in 2008: the cause of any kind of negative difference that exists between blacks and everyone else.

A scenario: a black child who grows up without a father, and his mother works or exists on welfare. The child lives in an unstable home where he’s never taught the value of education, good morals, right conduct…he grows up influenced by the wrong element and likely will end up in the criminal justice system. Can we blame his life’s outcome on racist white people or bad parenting and bad values?

As the article notes, whites are more likely to hold college degrees and less likely than blacks to end up in prison. Black males kill one another at exorbitant rates. Black women kill their babies at three times the rate of white women. Almost three-quarters of black babies are born outside wedlock. We’re to believe that “racism” is responsible for these disparities?

Search for racism under any rock, and you’re sure to find something or someone to blame for your underachievement.

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Read this updated version of a 1996 essay that purports to debunk 10 myths about “affirmative action.”

It includes such “myths” as “The public doesn’t support affirmative action anymore,” “A large percentage of White workers will lose out if affirmative action is continued,” and “You can’t cure discrimination with discrimination.”

But there’s a flaw. The compiler of the list, as is typical of most race preference proponents, uses the term affirmative action when he really means race preferences, though he believes he’s distinguishing the terms. His “debunking” of the first myth clearly reveals this.

By now you ought to be able to recite the history. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy issued an executive order that called for the federal government to take “affirmative action” to ensure that no person was denied employment based on skin color. Thanks to a Republican president, Richard M. Nixon, this policy evolved into a quota system. In 1971, he authorized the Department of Labor to set specific goals and timetables to correct the “underutilization” of blacks by federal contractors. Consequently, some people are denied employment based on skin color.

The fatal flaw with the “Ten Myths About Affirmative Action” is that affirmative action is not in view here. Affirmative action is reaching out to and recruiting qualified individuals from minority groups historically excluded from good jobs and good schools. Affirmative action requires the government to take measures to protect people from discrimination. Race preferences do just the opposite.

Today, government entities covertly or blatantly factor in an applicant’s race for hiring, contracting, and admissions. Despite the obvious legal and moral problems with such a practice, it’s done in the name of that almighty god called diversity.

As Larry Purdy writes in his new book, Getting Under the Skin of “Diversity” (emphases in original):

“It was a young president’s unambiguous directive that race be removed rather than added as a factor in government employment. Yet today, nearly 50 years after President Kennedy issued his order, affirmative action has been politically redefined by those who practice raw racial politics, a group which in 2003 included five justices sitting on our nation’s highest court. The policies spawned in the name of affirmative action now mock the phrase’s original meaning.”

Supreme Court cases have been tried over this issue. It’s been proven that when the University of Michigan’s undergraduate and law schools took race into account when admitting students, they assessed black students by a lower standard. Government agencies that take race into account when hiring black applicants in order to fill a certain percentage of vacant posts assess black candidates by a lower standard. As a result, better qualified whites and Asians are denied admissions and jobs to accommodate “affirmative action” policies. Color it any way you want, but it’s still called discrimination.

“Ten Myths About Affirmative Action” should be titled, “Ten Myths About Race Preferences.” Viewing it through the correct lens, it makes sense that “80% of the public felt ‘affirmative action programs for minorities and women should be continued at some level’.” But the original meaning and intent of the policy was lost a long time ago.

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