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The end of affirmative action was inevitable. The only surprise was that such intentions gone terribly wrong lasted so long.
First, supporters of racial preferences always pushed back the goal posts for the program’s success. Was institutionalized reverse bias to last 20 years, 60 years, or ad infinitum? Parity became defined as an absolute equality of result. If “equity” was not obtained, then only institutionalized “racism” explained disparities. And only reverse racism was deemed the cure.
Second, affirmative action was imposed on the back end in adult hiring and college admissions. However, to achieve parity, remediation early at the K-12 school level would have been the only solution. Yet such intervention was made impossible by teachers’ unions, the rise of identity politics and government entitlements. All were opposed to school choice, self-help programs, critiques of cultural impediments, or restrictions on those blanket entitlements,
Third, class, the true barometer of privilege, was rendered meaningless. Surrealism followed. The truly privileged Barack and Michelle Obama and Meghan Markel lectured the country on its unfairness—as if they had it far rougher than the impoverished “deplorables” of East Palestine, Ohio.
Fourth, affirmative action supporters could never square the circle of proving that racial prejudices didn’t violate the spirit of the Declaration of Independence and the text of the Constitution. What they were left with was the lame argument that because long ago the 90% white majority had violated their own foundational documents, then such past bad unconstitutional bias could legitimately be rectified by present-day “good” unconstitutional bias.
Fifth, supporters never adequately explained why the sins of prior generations fell on their descendants who grew up in the post-Civil Rights era. Nor could they account for why those who had never experienced institutionalized racism, much less Jim Crow apartheid or slavery, were to be compensated collectively for the suffering of long-dead individuals. No wonder 70% of the American people in many polls favored ending affirmative action including a half of African-Americans.
Sixth, there never was a “rainbow” coalition of shared non-white victimhood—a concept necessary to perpetuate the premise of white privilege, supremacy, and rage, so integral to race-based reverse discrimination. More than a dozen ethnicities earn more per capita than do whites.
Asians have been subject to coerced internment, immigration restrictions and zoning exclusions. Yet on average they do better than whites economically and enjoy lower suicide rates and longer life expectancies. The arguments for affirmative action never explained why Asians and other minorities who faced discrimination outperformed the majority white population. As a result, affirmative action ended up discriminating against Asians on the premise they were too successful!
Seventh, no one ever explained when affirmative action was to apply. Blacks, for example, were vastly “overrepresented” in merit-based professional football and basketball. Yet no one demanded “proportional representation” to address such “disparate impact,” despite underrepresentation of all other demographics.
Yet if blacks were “underrepresented” in baseball, then reparatory measures were supposed to address that fact—even if Latino players were “overrepresented” and whites “underrepresented as well. No one in our race-obsessed culture, of course, objected that white males died at twice their demographics in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Eighth, in our increasingly intermarried mass-immigration society, few could adjudicate who was what, or much less what standard gave one racial preference. In lunatic fashion, pink, blond Senator Elizabeth Warren became Harvard’s first “Native American” law professor due to her “high cheekbones.” Light-skinned Latinos were considered marginalized while some darker Italians or Greeks were not.
Ninth, an odious wokism absorbed affirmative action and changed it into something even more abhorrent—as the original spirit of the Civil Rights movement was trashed. So Americans were asked to stomach a return to distasteful segregated dorms, “separate but equal” graduation ceremonies and racially exclusive workshops.
Tenth, and finally, affirmative action was insidiously destroying meritocracy. That hallmark American value of tribally-blind inclusivity had once explained why the nation outshone the world by discarding the old class prejudices of Europe. But increasingly this value seemed to have been abandoned.
When Stockton Rush, the late captain and inventor of the ill-fated Titan deep-sea explorer was quoted postmortem bragging that his company had no need of “old white guys” with long military expertise in submarining, Americans realized that woke racial discrimination was not just repulsive but could get you killed.
A nation whose pilot training, medical-school admissions, and military high command promotions were increasingly adopting racial, gender, or sexual-orientation essentialism was a country headed for the sort of Third World tribalism characteristic of failed states abroad.
In the end, the court finally stepped in to end this unconstitutional aberration, more like the old Soviet commissariat than our ideals of equality under the law.
The American people concurred. And the only regret seemed to be why not sooner?
Affirmative Action is not dead. A massive, well-paid bureaucracy exists in every Human Resources office, every universityadmissions office, in corporations,and government,. There purpose is to prevent the hiring of the best qualified, and hire instead a less qualified (barely or even unqualified) woman or minority to fill the desired quota. Expect them to continue to show how much they are needed, and using other methods to achieve the quota driven outcomes.
Good and observant comment.
To believe that the mentality and informal practice of Affirmative Action will now disappear because the Supreme Court struck it down is like believing the separation of Church and State will make religion disappear. Or striking down Jim Crow laws will make bigotry disappear.
With or without government and legal sanction people practice what they believe is morally right even if it’s actually morally wrong.
Guess what…..the concept of separation of church and state, while not enshrined in our Constitution, was never intended to make religion disappear, as much as you would like it to.
The other thing is that the largest protected class (women) are not having set asides and “positive discrimination” overturned, except by transgender athletes who claim they’re women. Which merely points out the absurdity of “protected classes”.
You cannot discriminate in favor of one group without necessarily discrimnating aginst another. Far too many “conservatives” are vocally opposed to Affirmative Action for blacks and hispanics (or LGBTQIA+) but readily accept it for women, who dominate Human Resources bureaucracies and comprise 60% of university students.
You got it. They may rename what they’re doing and lie more about it but they’re not going to end it – ever.
Affirmative action will be alive and well as long as the Democrat Party exists. Do you seriously believe that a piece of paper scribbled by some justices will force the ruling party to abandon its power base? I see scores of businesses in the US that don’t have a white face anymore. Is it all legal? Probably not. So what? They still exist without a care in the world.
Nixon and the Republicans did more than most any other group to get us to where we were just prior to this “conservative” SCOTUS decision which is also a paper tiger.
You are right – it is far from dead! Our federal government, for example, makes all managers take these DEI training courses to uncover our “unconscious biases”, etc. (Never mind that I’ve been hiring people for decades and have had people from all walks of life work for me, if they were capable of doing the job.) I apparently have all these “unconscious biases”. They say it’s still OK to give the most qualified person the job, but the way this DEI stuff is being pushed speaks to the contrary. It’s actually acceptable to publish job postings that say the job is limited to “members of equity-seeking groups” – so if you’re a white , non-handicapped, heterosexual, Christian male, you might be the most qualified person and you could still apply, but your application would be automatically rejected even before being read because you’re not part of the equity-seeking groups..
Professor Davis Hanson shows why Affirmative Action should be be dead. But a mere look at tv every night, shows it’s alive and well.
Regardless of race, the most terrifying aspect of modern America is our deemphasis on Excellence general. Schools are completely dumbed down, kids get 12 hours to take a 20 minute pop quiz if they get a note from a doctor saying they’re messed up in some way (which they all seem to be). Kids don’t have to do homework or listen to a teacher. Punishments are gone– even for beating a teacher or another student.
My friend who teaches at Emerson College has dumbed down her classes so much they are impossible to fail– and all students get As. It’s pay to A.
Another MD friend has a resident who refuses to take notes on his patients. He doesn’t care that this leaves no record of care or progress (or turn downhill) for his patients– he’s too lazy to do what all doctors have done forever– so he just doesn’t do it. He grew up doing whatever he wanted with no consequences. He went to Columbia– which used to be a good school. But there are no good schools because there are no good parents or teachers– so we have yet ANOTHER generation of grotesque narcissists in America.
Affirmative Acton was just plain Unconstitutional and was not needed the same with Abortion now they need to do the same with this Church & State ruling and take the wind out of the ACLU sails
Another spot-on article by Dr. Hanson. I spent the better part of 30 years working under Affirmative Action guidelines, just another frustrated white guy covering for the incompetent quota-hires. I’m glad to see it go. But is it really gone? Or is it just masquerading under the guise of DEI? Meritocracy is still just a distant memory either way.
“No one in our race-obsessed culture, of course, objected that white males died at twice their demographics in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
And don’t forget the so-called, “Civil War”. 360,000 white Yankees died. Somewhere over 100,000 black men served in the northern armies, and according to the official figures of the US Army, 1800 of them died. That’s about one-half of one per cent of the total Union dead.
https://history.answers.com/military-history/How_many_white_people_were_killed_during_the_Civil_War