One day the current crop of “affirmative action” opponents will be no more, which is why I’m heartened to know there are young people who think deeply about the unfairness of racial preferences and the double standards their existence encourages. Alex Gushner, a senior at the University of California at Santa Barbara, writes in the Daily Nexus:
“Most importantly, affirmative action discourages accountability among blacks. Proponents utilize blacks’ failures as a justification to increase our affirmative action efforts. And, black Americans’ successes are too often attributed not to one’s work ethic or ingenuity, but to affirmative action. Thus, it categorizes the black man as either a victim of societal racism or a product of this victimhood scheme. Either way, it classifies him firstly as the member of a race and a policy, and secondly, as a member of society.
“Favoring color over competence is counterproductive, regardless of the intended beneficiaries’ race. Consider the following role‐reversed example: similar to other industries, the National Basketball Association is an industry in which capability supersedes color. It’s no secret that, generally, the NBA’s most talented players are African‐American. Why? It’s because coaches seek to assemble championship‐caliber teams, and therefore select players based on nothing more than talent.
“Let’s pretend that David Stern, commissioner of the NBA, enacts a rule that mandates teams to replace its starting players with five, less skilled men of Caucasian descent. The result of such a rule would diminish the NBA’s aggregate talent, as management could no longer assemble their teams based on merit. Surely, less talented teams would garner less public interest.
“Consequently, ticket revenues would plummet, as would apparel and food sales. I’m not arguing blacks should stick to basketball and whites to the conference rooms. I’m simply questioning, at what point does the pursuit of diversity overshadow and subordinate excellence?”
Has any supporter of racial preferences ever offered a logically sound argument about why “diversity” in the NBA is different from diversity in the classroom or the conference room? I don’t believe such an argument exists, but I’m willing to read/hear one, especially as the person begins to contort himself in an attempt to be consistent.
As long as there’s any industry that makes money and garners publicity on portraying blacks as put-upon victims who cannot function in a free society without government largesse, there will be concerted efforts to keep race front and center. That’s not to say people can’t or shouldn’t notice differences and exercise their freedom of association and avoid or interact with certain others based on skin color or subculture. In other words, people don’t necessarily have to be colorblind in their private lives, and I have no interest in trying to persuade them otherwise. Free country! But government policy must be colorblind. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive.
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