Affirmative Action is Never Going Away. Here's Why.

Today I was reminded of a Texas legislator who, some years back, tried to push a bill that eliminated racial preferences for athletes (football players, specifically) at state-supported schools like the University of Texas and Texas A&M.  Yeah, you know that thing didn't have a chance.  He probably did, too.  I'm wagering that its passage wasn't the point.  More importantly, I think what he was trying to do (and if I'm correct, he was truly ahead of his time) was to point out a dirty little secret whites will never cop to about Affirmative Action.

Remember the passage in Ellison's Invisible Man, where the protagonist was working at Liberty Paints?  Remember the irony that came out of the firm's whitest white paint?  (For the uninitiated, it took ten drops of black paint in order to create it.)  The genius of it was, though it alluded to the hypocrisy of Jim Crow, that same passage almost seamlessly fits into the Affirmative Action debate. 

It's funny how some people will fight heaven and hell to deny others something close to the same opportunities they had, except when it suits their selfish interests.  And too often, those interests lie in their pocketbooks and wallets.

Stop groaning.  You knew what this thread was about the minute you saw the title.  Yes, I know you're already tired of the debate, regardless of what side you're on.  But have you ever thought that maybe it's because each side keeps saying the same damn thing?  Have we lost the ability to take the opposing view and flip the script?  I mean, for me I can accept that some people feel that everything is a zero-sum equation, and that every break little Jamaal or Maria gets comes at the expense of their little snots.  But why do they seem to get away with the institutional racism that allows them to be seen as victims of a PC-crazy, meritless society while their oppressors are getting fat off undeserved entitlements? Why does it always appear that the biggest whiners of Affirmative Action seem to be amongst the most prosperous in this struggling economy?

Allow me to let you in on a little secret:  the war against Affirmative Action is a farce.  It's not going anywhere, and white people won't allow it to.  You read that right.  Minority-based preferences and set asides are here to stay, and all us black folks can thank Whitey for it.  Contrary to what you hear on Fox News or read from the Southern Heritage Newsletter, white people love Affirmative Action.  More accurately put, they need those preferences and set-asides to remain in place more than we do.

This deserves an explanation.  It's a well-known fact (should be, anyway) that the biggest beneficiaries of Affirmative Action policies are white women, who overwhelmingly marry white men, who in turn have white children (obviously, though many adopt interracially), about half of which are males.  And yet the biggest complainers of preference policies, the ones most likely to vehemently preach of reverse racism in the practice, are white men.  Ironic, no?  The demographic who collectively gains the most from race-based policies are the very ones who are most threatened by them.

At first blush, it is kinda hard to figure.  But if you look at it another way, it's certainly understandable. See, beneath all the vitriol and empty logic about preferences, there's a white noise (pun intended) speaking another unacknowledged truth.  You hear it at schools like FAMU and Bethune-Cookman (white baseball and golf teams), Fayetteville (NC) State (a model of an integrated university:  military, whites, out-of-staters) and the venerable Morehouse College (white valedictorian).  You hear it when applicants employ nepotism and alumni connections to pave a better path to the corner suite.  You hear it when Essence magazine defends its choice of a white fashion editor. That sound you hear is perhaps the dirtiest little secret of the debate:  white people get as much from preferences and set-asides as they feel they had taken away.  The institutional racism that perpetuates the intended beneficiaries as less-than-stellar, while those supposedly left out collectively profit exponentially, will not allow it.

See, the white middle class was built on preferences, preferences afforded to veterans (via the GI Bill), college students (affordable student loans), the indingent (WIC, AFDC, etc.), and, yes, preferences based on race (Jim Crow).  If  those set-asides were taken away from them tomorrow, if we all compete fairly, and thus are forced to compete equally, then it stands to reason that whites would be disproportionally affected; and with the increased competition and scarcity of resources from a more meritocratic union, the tiping point would be the largest transfer of wealth in this nation's history since the Manifest Destiny, far more than any teabagger's fearmongering misspelled on a placard would proclaim.

So the next time you hear some hack whine about Affirmative Action (or immigration, for that matter), remind yourself that the game still favors them; the more that's supposedly taken away, the more it's really given back.  In other words, don't be fooled by the rhetoric, and don't be ashamed to take advantage of something we as a people were long overdue, and that far too many were stepped on for us to have. 

Because like at Liberty Paints, its enemies of getting theirs, too.