Affirmative Action Discriminates
Against White Men? Give Me a Break!

- © Peggy Whiteneck

Once the great shakeout had occurred in the 2008 Democratic primaries and it became clear that the candidate choices were going to be between a woman and a man of color, we began to hear from a certain brand of white male voter, of which this plaintive cry from one is representative: "When I look at the Democratic slate this year, there's nobody who looks like me."

Well, here's a news flash: Having to choose between a white man and a white man - which is to say having to vote for candidates who "don't look like me" - is exactly what women and people of color in America had been doing for the last 232 years.

Only a white male, born and bred to expect to see the default of his race and gender (Caucasian and male) in positions of power and authority could consider himself excluded because neither of the top two Democratic candidates, for the first national election in the nation's history, fit that default.

John McCain fit the default. Now, in 2012, Mitt Romney fits the default and I have no doubt that, thoughtful voters aside, he will poll thousands, if not millions, of disaffected white folks, based on little more than his race and gender. Even McCain's (some might say politically cynical) choice of a questionably qualified woman to be his running mate didn't change the reality that, at the top of the ticket, was a white man - a minimum prerequisite to earn the vote of a certain ilk of American.

Now John McCain has said that he supports initiatives to do away with Affirmative Action because, as he says, "I don't believe in quotas." If John McCain knew anything at all about Affirmative Action, he would know that racial quotas are already outlawed under Affirmative Action - and have been for many years. The phantom bugaboo of "quotas" persists, however, in the rhetoric of opposition to Affirmative Action because those opposed to social and cultural progress in America have found that a lie that can fit into a sound bite is more compelling to millions of uninformed voters than are the nuances and complexities of truth.

The essence of white male privilege is precisely how it enables a certain kind of white male to strut confidently through his daily life blithely unaware of how his race and gender have advantaged him from birth. Mitt Romney's remarks on the campaign trail make him a perfect example of that cluelessness (with a further overlay of unconscious privilege conferred by wealth). To be a white male means not having to think, on a daily basis, about being a white male. It means taking one's membership in the default race and gender for granted. This male privilege is in marked contrast to the thousands of women annually who discover, once the highly secretive corporate salary structure has been cracked like a stubborn safe, that they're being paid less for the same work their male colleagues make in precisely comparable positions. White privilege is in contrast to the thousands of middle class men of color who get stopped driving "fancy" cars through "white" neighborhoods, traffic stops so arbitrary and capricious that they have acquired their own acronym: DWB - Driving While Black.

Folks who claim that Affirmative Action is reverse discrimination against white men are trying to have it both ways. Anti-Affirmative Action forces want us to believe that there is no such thing as a systemic or institutional obstacle to the aspirations of women and people of color. This argument subscribes fully to the underlying myth of the American dream: that anyone can be whatever he or she wants to be, even President of the United States. People who make this argument cynically try to appropriate Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton as the argument's poster children. Yet, out of the other side of their mouths, anti-Affirmative Action forces want to be able to claim that Affirmative Action is an institutional obstacle to the aspirations of white men. In other words, there's no such thing as a systemic obstacle to economic, social, or political advancement unless it happens to be Affirmative Action, which we're to believe is a systemic obstacle to the advancement of white men. Oh, give me a break.

If white male disaffection succeeds in its strategy of state-by-state gutting of the Affirmative Action program, things will return to the way they used to be. Which is to say that bosses and deans and municipal entities will use some principals of selection in awarding seats at the table, as some principals of selection will logically always have to be used in a competitive market. Absent Affirmative Action, those principals will be what they have always been: good old boy networks for jobs and contracts and so-called "legacy" admissions to elite colleges, to which you get to go if your father went. Both these networks and the alumni databases of colleges have been historically and overwhelmingly white and male. That's how George W. Bush and hundreds like him over the decades have gotten into Yale (as but one Ivy League institution), despite a mediocre high school academic record, a crappy performance pattern which often continues throughout their college careers (so much for merit). Yes, what we will return to is what amounts to affirmative action for not particularly well qualified white men.

There has never been - and will never be in this country - a time when a white male was denied an opportunity because he is white or because he is a man. The overwhelming weight of history stands against such a claim. And all the paranoid fantasies in the world about whether and why a particular woman or person of color got a job or a contract or admission to college, when a given white man didn't, won't change that fundamental truth.

Ultimately, Affirmative Action isn't about competition for jobs or contracts or slots at an Ivy League college. It's about equal access to these things. Does a child of color from an inner city school, where the roof leaks and even the toilets don't work, really have access to college equal to that of a white kid from a suburban school system with all the educational amenities and enrichments? Anyone who thinks the answer to that question is "yes" just isn't paying attention.

It's fine to say we're all equal now when your personal history and experience have always taught you that you're more equal than others. Frankly, it shouldn't be those who have never experienced being on the receiving end of racism and sexism who get to say whether we still need Affirmative Action.