Jeff Jacoby offers a scathing deconstruction of our broken affirmative action system, using the finalist selections for the American Advertising Federation’s annual “Most Promising Minority Students Program” as his starting point:
In the world that affirmative action has made, there are rich rewards to be reaped from being designated a “top minority.” The students featured in the ad were flown to New York for a long weekend, flattered at a Waldorf-Astoria awards luncheon, and introduced to recruiters and executives from leading media companies and ad agencies. They repeatedly heard themselves described as accomplished, talented, the best and the brightest. And presumably none of their hosts or sponsors was tactless enough to mention the gulf that separates the nation’s “most promising minority students” from the nation’s most promising students. […]
[…] Once upon time it was racists who insisted that “nonwhite” was a synonym for “intellectually deficient.” Today that attitude is promoted most emphatically by the defenders of affirmative action, a system rooted in the belief that blacks and certain other minorities can’t hope to win if they have to compete on a level playing field. And so racial preferences are used to tilt the field in their favor: lower admissions standards at colleges and graduate schools, minority set-asides for government contracts, unofficial racial quotas to benefit those applying for jobs. Racial preferences are clearly a boon for some minorities — particularly those from upper-middle-class families who know how to leverage them to get into a good school or land a good job or get in on a good investment. But they do no favors for minority groups as a whole. Preferences stigmatize them as less able than other Americans to stand on their own two feet. Many end up resenting those who believe they need such a crutch — as well as resenting those who would take the crutch away.[…]
[…] Black and Hispanic Americans would rise and overcome as well if only they could be liberated from the condescending mind-set that thinks it’s a compliment to tell a group of college seniors that they show great promise — for minorities.
Readers of this site from back in its earlier days (the ones who haven’t traded in internet surfing and politics for peyote and teenaged Tijuana party girls) will remember that the affirmative action “question” — as it pertains to race or ethnicity — is a particular concern of mine. And in my estimation, Jacoby’s criticisms of racialism in contemporary social policy are dead on. For a more detailed discussion of this subject, I invite you to do a site search (try “race”). Some of the intertextual links in my old posts are broken (I’m working on a fix, but it ain’t gonna happen today), but the gist of the debates I’ve had on this subject should come through okay.
It doesn’t seem to have occurred to the American Advertising Federation or its corporate sponsors that it is insulting to tell a group of students that, for minorities, they are hot stuff. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to the students, either. No wonder: They are winning at the game of racial double standards that for years has reinforced the stereotype of black and Hispanic inferiority—the degrading myth that members of certain racial and ethnic groups can succeed only if the bar is lowered for them.
Its either this or that minorities are held down by active racism held by those who judge merit. Somehow, I don’t think those who comprise the American Advertising Federation are quite willing to entertain that idea. To avoid it they’d have to do something showy, like hosting award luncheons and giving prizes to the poor betrodden souls.
whats wrong with all four…the internet, politics, peyote and tijuana party girls? in fact i find most of my tijuana party girls and peyote on the internet.
Heh. Just be careful you don’t shock yourself trying to, er, plug into the USB port…
the ones who haven’t traded in internet surfing and politics for peyote and teenaged Tijuana party girls
We get to choose? I’m outta here.
I’d like to mention what gets suppressed in the institutionalized media and cultural apparatus about affirmative action quotas: they are part of an overall phalanx of racial policies. Officials have set these up in the name of peace, love, equality, brotherhood and freedom; but the clear effect of them is towards hatred, race war and dictatorship. Schools, with money received out of the hands of officials, are preaching that there are no ideas; only races and biological groups in conflict. The culture, even the lowest popular kind, is more racialized than at any time, including that of the mass-murdering regimes of the world war era. In this context, to pretend that quotas don’t exist, or that they are only alternative welfare for the disadvantaged minorities, is to cover up a danger of balkanization that few are prepared to look at. Most of the sovereign countries which today exist started as partitions which followed closely after the establishment of racial quotas. This policy was called decolonization. If almost every other polity which has used racial quotas was, not too many years afterwards, partitioned, why do we have any right to expect that it will not also happen here?