How Affirmative
Action Harms the Best Minority Individuals
GrassTopsUSA Exclusive Commentary
By Gennady Stolyarov II
07-13-07
Affirmative
action greatly hurts precisely those who it is allegedly intended to
help: intelligent, hard-working, meritorious individuals who happen
to belong to some kind of minority group. Affirmative action
policies encourage condemnation and discrimination leveled against
such individuals from virtually all sides.
Mark, a hypothetical individual, is a highly intelligent,
undoubtedly qualified African-American professional who has always
worked industriously and studied diligently. He passed the
admissions exam to his professional school with flying colors and
earned top grades in all of his classes. Yet his was a school that
practiced affirmative action and simultaneously admitted numerous
less-qualified students than he, simply because they happened to be
African-American. These students were judged by a much lower
academic standard than the typical criteria for admission; while
Mark far surpassed the institution’s conventional standards, the
applicants admitted on the basis of affirmative action fell short of
these standards.
In order to appear “respectful of racial diversity,” the school
often treats the students admitted because of affirmative action
more leniently than the rest. While Mark willingly takes on the
entire rigor that a good professional training offers, some of his
peers are allowed to slide by in their classes, merely because of
their race. When it comes time to graduate, Mark gets his
hard-earned degree, but the affirmative-action students also get
theirs.
As a result of hundreds of schools practicing affirmative action,
the world of business has been inundated with holders of
professional degrees who lack an adequate degree of skill. The vast
majority of these individuals are members of minority groups who
were favored by affirmative action. As a result, the performance
statistics for these minority groups has been consistently below the
performance statistics for groups that do not receive special
privileges.
In the world of business, employers seldom have the opportunity to
understand a given applicant enough to determine whether he is an
exception to prevailing trends among people of his racial, ethnic,
or educational background. Often, simply to save time, stereotypes
based on these group attributes are formed – which serve as a great
hindrance to the exceptional individuals who do not meet the
stereotypes. Potential employers see that Mark has gone to a school
that practiced affirmative action. They know that many of the
African-American graduates of that school do not have adequate
skills for the job. Despite their intentions to judge people on
merit alone and not on race, it is easy and tempting for these
employers to assume the same about Mark.
So Mark, when applying for a job or seeking to do business services
for an organization, has an uphill battle to fight. The prevailing
stereotype he must face is that, because Mark is African-American,
at least part of his success must be due to affirmative action.
Through quality work, Mark can disprove this notion in the eyes of
some individuals, but he will always have the stereotype as an
initial hurdle to overcome whenever he tries to form new business
connections.
Do people like Mark get help from members of their own minority
groups? Hardly! One of the devastating cultural effects of
affirmative action is the formation of stereotypes of victim-hood
within the favored minority groups themselves. The presence of
affirmative action policies makes it far easier to cry “Racism!”
with regard to the prevailing state of society. “After all,” many
minority-group social and political leaders argue, “if there were no
widespread racism, why would the government and the universities
need to practice affirmative action to combat the racism?”
Of course, people like Mark do not like to play the oppressed
victim. They see real opportunities for which skin color is
irrelevant, and they seize these opportunities by means of industry
and ambition. In the process, they become more skilled,
knowledgeable, disciplined, and morally upright than many of the
members of their minority group.
But those who accept the view of their own victim-hood have names
for Mark. He is called “Uncle Tom,” an “Oreo cookie,” a “traitor to
his people,” or a “collaborator” with some kind of oppressive
“establishment,” simply because he does not see himself as
inherently limited or bound to suffer on account of his race. To
those who constantly revive the specter of racism, Mark is a living
counterexample – a man who prospers by diligently working alongside
individuals without giving consideration to their skin color or
ethnicity. He must either be ignored altogether or transformed by
sophistries into one of the enemy.
It is essential to note that this condemnation within a minority
group of its most successful and moral members only exist among
groups favored by affirmative action. Jewish-Americans do not do it;
Irish-Americans do not do it; Japanese-Americans do not do it;
German-Americans do not do it – even though individuals in each of
these groups have faced substantial discrimination at some time
during the 20th century. Mostly, the phenomenon of hating those who
ought to be one’s role models only exists in today’s African
American, Latino, or Native American communities – precisely the
groups which are today beneficiaries of affirmative action.
We all know bright, productive, and exceptional individuals from
every minority group. However, many of these people face injustices
today, not despite affirmative action, but because of it. It is time
to abolish racial preference in the workplace, government, and
academia, and to allow people of merit – whatever their racial or
ethnic background – to rise to the top.
Gennady Stolyarov II is
Editor-in-Chief of
The Rational Argumentator, a magazine championing the principles
or Reason, Rights, and Progress. His works have been published by
Le Quebecois Libre,
Enter Stage Right Magazine, the
Ludwig von Mises Institute,
Rebirth of Reason, and other organizations. Mr. Stolyarov can be
contacted at
gennadystolyarovii@yahoo.com.
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GrasstopsUSA.com 2007
