Structural racism is real

It's known as affirmative action

Let's say that I wanted to devise a strategy for the explicit purpose of perpetually disadvantaging a group of people based on race. To make this fly, I'd create a program that was difficult to question or criticize by camouflaging it as social progress in fighting racism.

I'd call this program affirmative action. I'd sell it by promoting equity, bashing meritocracy and convincing beneficiaries that it was impossible for them to succeed on their own without it due to structural racism.

I am, of course, interested in none of this. I'm the guy who thinks that anyone can be successful on their own through dedication and hard work. I believe in encouragement. I believe in opportunity. What I don't believe in is mandating outcomes. Opportunity is up to everyone, outcome is up to you.

Before you call down angry gods on me consider this – I've never been the guy telling you that you cannot succeed because the deck is stacked or for any other reason. I've been the guy telling you that you can pull it off just fine.

I'm against discrimination, always have been and always will be - especially when it's government sponsored, like affirmative action.

Affirmative action in the United States dates back to the early 1960's. It began with an executive order from President Kennedy instructing federal contractors to take "affirmative action to ensure that applicants are treated equally without regard to race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” This executive order also established the first Commission on Equal Employment Opportunity. A few years later, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, gave a boost to affirmative action (peripherally) by having Congress establish the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

Presidents Johnson and Nixon subsequently signed executive orders expanding the scope of affirmative action (among other things, to include women as an underrepresented class) and creating various agencies to monitor compliance. In less than decade, a new Federal bureaucracy, one wielding enormous power, was established almost exclusively through executive action.

In 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on affirmative action in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, which upheld the use of race as one factor in choosing among qualified applicants, in this case for admission to medical school. It was, however, a mixed verdict as the court also ruled that specific racial quotas was impermissible under the U.S. Constitution.

Over the next four decades, a series of decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court generally narrowed the scope of affirmative action. Where the Court permitted affirmative action, it ruled that it must be narrowly tailored to accomplish a compelling interest.

In 1996, voters in California passed Proposition 209, abolishing all public-sector affirmative action programs in the state in employment, education and contracting. In the decade that followed, the states of Washington, Florida, Michigan and Nebraska followed suit.

Now the U.S. Supreme Court is considering a pair of important affirmative action cases: Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina. Many observers believe that the Supreme Court, which has shown discomfort over affirmative action for decades, may finally do what some states and other countries have already done – eliminate it.

If so, it's about time. Affirmative action has to be near the top of executive branch overreach and the unconsidered consequences of good intentions.

I maintain that affirmative action not only runs counter to our laws, but is the very thing that it purports to cure. If one wishes to stop racism, a laudable goal, probably the last way to go about it is to counter with more racism.

Among the thousands of people that I know as colleagues, acquaintances, friends and family, I know of not a single soul among them who thinks that it's OK to discriminate on the basis of race or sex in education or employment. If you have the qualifications, your opportunity to acquire an education or a job should not be hindered by your race or sex, period.

Minorities and women have had a historically rough row to hoe in our country. Blatant discrimination on the basis of race and sex did exist in this country through a good part of the 20th Century. We should be troubled by that. But 2022 is not the same as 1950. We've made improvements. And I'd argue that we did this in spite of, rather than because of, affirmative action.

I don't know what the Supreme Court will do in the pair of Students for Fair Admissions cases under consideration now, but I unequivocally side with the plaintiffs. Disadvantaging White and Asian students to benefit Black students in college admissions is the very definition of racism. It should stop.

I'd argue that affirmative action, throughout its existence, has done little to ameliorate the sense that playing fields in education and employment are not level. If anything, it's exacerbated it. I challenge anyone to demonstrate to me how we are better off today than we were decades ago when it comes to a sense that fairness prevails. The evidence looks to me to point the other way.

If you intend to convince me that a generation of young Americans who can't exist without safe spaces, who are triggered by vapors, who are conditioned to believe that they can't achieve in challenging fields unless the content is suffused with anti-racist dogma, who are encouraged to see racism everywhere (except in their own souls) actually represent progress, good luck. Especially when so many of those who came before them achieved greatness despite numerous obstacles.

One thing that the current cohort of perpetual victims gets right is their belief that they are not well-liked. That's true. What they are wrong about is the attribution. It's got nothing to do with their race. It's got everything to do with the fact that no one likes inexplicably self-important individuals who've gained nothing from an education (unavailable to many) other than a penchant for complaining.

Blaming everyone but yourself for a lack of success is not a recipe for acclaim. Worse yet, if you succeed in getting government to back this play it's a recipe for the rise of MAGA.

It may be a bit trite but it's nonetheless completely true that if you want to end discrimination the best way is to stop discriminating. You don't need the government for that. You need you.

Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding bicycles and motorcycles, arranging and playing music. His writing on Substack, “Howlin' at the Moon in ii-V-I” may be found at martinhackworth.substack.com. Follow him on Twitter @MartinHackworth