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

- © Peggy Whiteneck

Once the great shakeout had occurred in the 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 have had to do 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, in one national election in the nation's history, fit that default.

John McCain - now, he 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 won't change the reality that, at the top of the ticket, is 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.

See, this is my problem with John McCain: not that he's a white male, but that he's ignorant. (Or to put it as Barack Obama did in his nomination acceptance speech, "It's not that John McCain doesn't care, it's that he doesn't get it.") This is not the first time McCain has been caught either frankly expressing ignorance on vital issues or venturing a position on them from a place of ignorance. And if there's one thing our nation and world cannot afford, it is four more years of ignorance in the executive branch of the U.S. government.

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. 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 white 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 gratuitious and frequent 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. It's a contradictory argument that undercuts its own premise that there's no such thing as an institutional obtacle to achievement.

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 colleges, in 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 got into Yale, despite his mediocre high school academic record, a crappy performance pattern which continued throughout his years at Yale (so much for merit). Yes, what we will return to is what amounts to affirmative action for not particularly well qualified white men.

Like John McCain, those who cry "reverse discrimination" in the face of Affirmative Action don't get it. 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. 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 at 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, 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.