Posted on January 6, 2006

Not Since Jim Crow: The Racism of Affirmative Action

With Executive Order 11246, President Lyndon Johnson established affirmative action by mandating that federal contractors “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” That was 1965. Over the next forty years, civil rights organizations and the Supreme Court did everything they could to bend affirmative action into the polar opposite of Johnson’s intent and, in so doing, created the most sweeping and damaging example of institutionalized racism since Jim Crow.

This essay seeks to demonstrate how affirmative action, far from being a program of anti-racism and liberal ideals, is in fact deeply racist in its underlying values. In an effort to maintain clarity in light of complex issues, I will focus exclusively on how the topic applies to African Americans, though that is by no means the only group afflicted by affirmative action. Blacks are the most frequently referenced when the topic is discussed, however, and the effects of the policy on them are the starkest.

Before I can begin, it is necessary to define a number of terms, as my argument depends greatly on exact definitions of racism, affirmative action, black failure, and discrimination.

The Defining of Terms

For purposes of this essay, I define racism as the belief in the biological inferiority of a racial group. In common parlance, the term is often applied much more broadly, covering everything from the repercussions of the War on Drugs to the possession of a deep dislike for mexican food. I will not argue against such uses of the term—though I do think they are wrongful applications. Instead, it is good enough for use in this essay to say that belief in the biological inferiority of a racial group is a sufficient, if not necessary, condition for racism.

Because affirmative action is applied to combat discrimination, a definition of that term is required as well. Discrimination is defined as the presence of unequal representation for a given group. So long as that inequality exists, discrimination is assumed to exist. While some may argue against this definition and use one that is broader, unequal representation is the de facto sign of discrimination at work and is always assumed, by those who advocate affirmative action, to be the result of discrimination. Thus, in the case of my argument, unequal representation and discrimination can be seen as synonymous.

In the overwhelming majority of cases, affirmative action takes the form of lower standards for entrance—whether into college or the job pool—for members of certain “underprivileged” groups. Through lowering standards, proponents of the policy hope to increase the particular group’s representation by making it easier for members to gain admittance. Note that this is very different from a quota system in that no hard numbers of necessary members is set. In this essay, I will be focusing exclusively on the lower standards form of affirmative action, though my arguments apply equally well, I believe, to other forms.

The result of discrimination is failure, namely the failure to succeed in proportional number to other racial, ethnic, or gender categories. Affirmative action’s goal is to compensate for or do away with failure on the part of the underprivileged group. To illustrate, I will deal only with black failure, as blacks are the primarily targeted group. Black failure, then, is the lack of achievement, educationally and economically, on the part of blacks when compared to other racial groups. Thus there is a simple causal relationship that forms the ideological basis for affirmative action: Racism causes discrimination, resulting in black failure, which is solved through the application of affirmative action.

Affirmative Action = Racism

It is now relatively easy to see how a racist view of African Americans sits at the heart of affirmative action. Black failure must be seen as some form of inferiority if the goal of affirmative action is to fix it. After all, if there wasn’t something wrong with the current performance of blacks, something not as good as the performance of other racial groups, there would be no need for a policy to improve that performance. This gets us to the “inferiority” half of my definition of racism. All that is needed now is to show how the inferiority is seen by the policy’s proponents as biological.

Biological inferiority can be found in that affirmative action zeros in on race as the single relevant criteria for the lowering of standards. As such, it considers black failure only as a possible result of race. This discounts other circumstances such as socioeconomic status since it treats middle-class, suburban blacks and poor, inner city blacks identically. Because race is biological, the affirmative action advocate’s quite explicit equation of blackness with failure and inadequacy is clearly racist by the definition given earlier.

Or, to put it another way, affirmative action seeks to combat black failure, which it sees as caused by discrimination, by lowering standards for entrance by blacks into desirable positions. Because the only thing all blacks have in common is race and because the only criteria affirmative action uses for its application is race, affirmative action equates failure—a form of inferiority in regard to those who don’t fail—with blackness. And blackness/race is only genetic, meaning affirmative action sees something inferior about black genetics, which meets my sufficient condition for racism.

Objections & Refutations

The single cogent objection to my argument I can imagine is with my assertion that the only thing all blacks share is blackness/genetics. A second, minor objection about my focus on blacks could be raised, but it is exceedingly weak. The former objection goes as follows: While it is true that all blacks share genetics, it is also true that all blacks share in suffering from discrimination, both historically and currently. As such, black failure is not a result of blackness, but rather of the discrimination directed at that blackness by non-blacks.

There are two responses to this, both strong but one with a wider reach than the other. The first, more narrow response is that it is simply absurd to believe that all blacks have suffered from significant enough discrimination to result in black failure. Finding even one black person who has succeeded means that discrimination is either (a) not universal or (b) not the only cause of black failure. And, obviously, there are countless black people who have succeeded spectacularly, whether financially like athletes or musicians, or educationally and intellectually, such as the African American scholar, Thomas Sowell.

The second response comes from the discussion of how discrimination manifests, specifically that it does so through disproportional representation. I argue that if this is to be used to judge whether affirmative action needs to be applied, then it must also be applied for other under-represented groups, such as men as public school teachers or women as auto mechanics; or even whites in university admissions in California or Washington, where, in the latter, they account for 78.9% of the general population but only 53.9% of the incoming UW freshman—and this in a system without racial preferences. Because the proponent of affirmative action is unlikely to extend the program to include these groups, there must be something other than discrimination/disproportional representation that sets blacks apart. And, once again, that can only be race/genetics. Hence, we are back to affirmative action being a racist policy.

The second objection is that I only deal with blacks in this essay, while affirmative action is often applied to other groups such as women and hispanics and, therefore, it cannot be racist because women and hispanics don’t share black genetics. This is quite easy to deal with by stating that multiple groups receiving affirmative action does not demonstrate the lack of racism with the policy but, instead, that the policy views women and hispanics as genetically deficient, as well.

Conclusion

Even if affirmative action is racist, even if it presupposes that blacks are biologically inferior to other racial groups, a case might be made for its continuation if the program resulted in helping African Americans. While a discussion of the empirical outcomes of the policy is beyond the narrow scope of this essay, the damage is well documented.

Why, then, does this policy continue to enjoy such widespread support? Clearly those advocating it do not think of themselves as racist. Rather, they see their actions as important elements in the fight against racism. And, because they have defined racism into a hidden menace, one that causes discrimination even when those doing the discriminating are now aware of their own “racist” attitudes, affirmative action can continue to exist in a wholly non-falsifiable. fashion. They can always fall back on unconscious racism being the cause of black failure, even if similar failure is displayed by other, non-black groups. In this sense, affirmative action and it’s battle cry of more diversity, can continue, immune to criticism.

It is my hope that the argument in this essay cuts to the very heart of the assumptions behind affirmative action. Only by demonstrating conclusively that the proponent of affirmative action is just as racist, if not more so, than any hiring committees or admissions boards, can the harmful policy be halted or reversed.