Why is Affirmative Action Good for White People But Not for the Rest of Us?
I kept quiet after receiving my early decision admission to the University of Virginia. I shared the news only after my classmates received their spring acceptance letters. For those who had the University of Virginia at the top of their list, there would be bitter disappointment.
When word spread about my early acceptance, one of my white classmates, who eventually attended a very exclusive and very white private women’s college, said, “You only got in because you’re Black.”
I replied, “You only got in because you are white.”
That was in 1980.
In light of the recent Supreme Court case regarding affirmative action, it’s important to remember that white people in America have been receiving affirmative action for centuries. From slavery to Jim Crow to de jure segregation and redlining, white people have always had a leg up in this country. And let’s not forget those immigration laws that favor white Europeans. For 400 years, affirmative action has been alive and worked well, at least for white people.
A Brief history of affirmative action for white Americans
Slavery: Perhaps the most egregious example of affirmative action for white people is slavery. Black Americans were enslaved for centuries and worked without pay to build this country, while their white counterparts enjoyed freedom. Even after the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, Black Americans were kept subordinate through Jim Crow laws and de facto segregation. White people, on the other hand, continued to move up the socioeconomic ladder relatively unhindered.
Jim Crow: Jim Crow laws were a series of statutes enacted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with the sole purpose of keeping Black Americans subjugated. These laws prevented Black Americans from voting, holding office, serving on juries, owning property, and accessing public amenities such as parks and libraries. In short, Jim Crow laws codified discrimination into law. Once again, white people were free to thrive while Black Americans were held back.
De Jure Segregation: Even after the civil rights movement led to the end of Jim Crow laws, de jure segregation — segregation by law — persisted in America. Housing discrimination was rampant, with Black Americans confined to specific neighborhoods known as “ghettos.” Segregation not only kept Black Americans isolated from opportunity but also deprived them of resources such as quality schools and good jobs. Once again, white people would take advantage of these opportunities while Black Americans were left behind.
Redlining: Supported by U.S. government policy, redlining was a practice employed by banks and other lending institutions to deny loans and other financial assistance to Black Americans based on the color of their skin. This practice made it nearly impossible for Black families to buy homes or start businesses, further entrenching them in poverty. White Americans, on the other hand, had no such problem accessing capital.
The Compounding Interest of Affirmative Action for White People
When I talk to white people about affirmative action, I get a range of responses from progressive guilt to conservative outrage. The word “fairness” often comes up. For those opposed to affirmative action programs for minorities, their red-faced huffing and puffing results in diatribes about how white people can’t be held responsible for the past and how minorities, read Black people, need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps to make something of themselves without the undue advantages of affirmative action. The context is always, “I had to work hard for what I have. Why shouldn’t you?”
In response, I’m never sure whether I should play it straight or snarky. I tend to play it straight, in part, because I don’t question that many of my white friends, colleagues, and fellow citizens do work hard for what they’ve accomplished. Success in life doesn’t come without headwinds, and for many white people, those headwinds can be daunting. For the white working class or those among the working poor, there is no doubt in my mind the system is rigged against them, and their momentum is stymied by the real but invisible hand of money and politics designed to keep them from getting ahead.
But for centuries, white Americans at all economic levels have benefitted from visible, state-sponsored, voter-approved policies giving white people even on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder a leg up in education, employment, and wealth generation. Even immigrants from Ireland and Southern Europe, initially challenged by bold-faced discrimination in jobs, housing, and education, were able to access these benefits of “whiteness” within a generation of their arrival. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Black Americans, who faced the same headwinds but ran into the brick wall of racial discrimination.
Affirmative action for white Americans offers centuries of compounded interest that offers even the least ambitious white person a headstart in life. But this legacy of affirmative action enjoyed by white Americans has a dark side evident in the growing anxiety around losing status and being “replaced.” Investing your self worth and identity in something as arbitrary as “whiteness” or skin color can lead to complacency and lack of resiliency that marginalized populations cannot afford without paying dire consequences. The resulting fear, frustration, and a lack of grit often lay the foundation for the only strategies many white Americans feel they have left: A continued enforcement of favorable, affirmative policies through opportunity hoarding, cronyism, intimidation, and increasing violence.
A Better Path to Equity
The debate around affirmative action centers around the fundamental organizing principle of life in the United States, race. As usual, the country’s signature racial divide obscures the cronyism and nepotism that fuels the opportunity hoarding of families at the top 10 percent of the income distribution. As the Supreme Court reviews affirmative action programs in higher education, the debate will no doubt ignore the preferential treatment of students who enjoy the socioeconomic advantages of being an athlete, the child of an alumnus, or a member of the dean’s list of special applicants (such as the offspring of powerful people or big donors). An astounding 43 percent of the white students admitted to Harvard enjoy this type of non-academic admissions preference.
Affirmative action debates ignore these privileged groups of white Americans while unfairly focusing on the credentials of minorities. Ironically, The “Varsity Blues” college admissions scandal proved what many of us always suspected. The system clearly favors a class of trust funders whose lack of merit is trumped by white parents who are able and willing to donate millions of dollars to ensure their child’s lack of talent is overlooked. While university leadership competes to show how diverse their classes are, the British, in spite of all its royal tradition, have an educational system less rife with ancestral privilege.
As the Supreme Court reviews affirmative action programs designed to help non-white Americans, perhaps the policies need to be reframed to focus on the less socially divisive criteria of financial need and income. Like President Lyndon Johnson’s Anti-Poverty programs of the 1960s, the focus on need and income will do a better job of taking actual disadvantage into account. This approach would certainly level the playing field for racial minorities who make up a large portion of the nation's poor while being inclusive of those white Americans who have been so marginalized economically that the privilege of their “whiteness” has been largely mitigated.
When it comes to affirmative action, white people in America have been receiving preferential treatment for centuries. But change will be a hard pill to swallow for those white Americans who have come to rely on the advantages of a 400-year-old system. However the court rules, reframing the policy to focus on need and income will be the best path forward, and affirmative action might actually work for all of us.
