The deal, U.S. Supreme Court, is, see, white America hasn’t totally changed their views on the races since the 1960s. The dominant, or domineering, race of this nation is still white. And not surprisingly to nonwhite Americans, racial prejudices and bigotry still exist. That’s why government programs like affirmative action used in considering employee hires and college admissions were created. The program was fundamentally necessary when created in the early 1960s. White people, time and again, have shown they cannot be trusted to … do the right thing when it comes to treatment of Blacks and other ethnicities.
Yet since the 1980s, a growing white segment of the U.S. population decided they are being replaced by other races in employment and college. Race consideration in college admissions was to be fair toward minorities by giving them a leg up, a gigantic break. Even so, nonwhite families still have far fewer members who earn college degrees. Affirmative action was a small way to open doors for nonwhite families who historically were treated like third-class citizens in their own country.
But the issue that made young white people cry foul was the college admissions’ practice of weighing applications including race: more points for the candidate who is Black or other minority, or simply not white. If two candidates presented the exact same credentials such as high GPA and exam grades, more points would go to the nonwhite student. That’s the simple theory thought to be unfair and the same method understood and overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. Surely more thought was placed into college admissions than just race. After all, the intent among colleges and universities was to strive toward racial inclusion and diversity whereby all students would gain from each other in course lectures, studies, research, and class discussions—all the way to the locker room and dorm.
Reversal of fortune
Reverse discrimination is what white college candidates claimed when they received an unexpected rejection letter by a desired university while a Black or nonwhite student received a warm welcome. This is the part that, repeated loudly through the decades, brought on the U.S. Supreme Court review. And, not surprisingly, the Court voted a firm no on this type of affirmative action.
I don’t or won’t claim to be a victim of reverse discrimination. But once as a job candidate, I was told point blank by a hiring authority that if the choices were me, a white, and a Black candidate, the Black candidate would get the job. The business was under the gun to hire more Blacks. I was shown the door and understood as a white person, I best seek work elsewhere. I didn’t file a lawsuit or yell discrimination. I accepted affirmative action. Always believed in it because I am well aware of white America’s bloody mean cruel not-so-distant past against nonwhite people. I also realized, no, I knew, as a white person, I would get a job and achieve my goals easier than someone who goes through life in this country with dark skin. I don’t know if today nonwhites think the same given our entwined racial history.
The move to reverse college affirmative action and diversity programs was called out during the Obama administration. Remember back then how everyone said, almost as a boast, we’re now living in a ‘post-racist’ society with the election of our first Black president? Hah. Seems many Americans forgot: The political pendulum swings hard conservative after a relatively liberal administration.
So with the Court’s opinion, now the ‘many’ white students who cried “Unfair!” when they were not admitted into the university of their choice may apply and surely be accepted. Time will tell. College is so expensive to most Americans, enrollment numbers have been dropping significantly—no more realized than statistics for white males. What’s that all about? And isn’t the high cost of college a much bigger issue than banning college affirmative action?
Affirmative action was one way this nation showed we care about helping nonwhite people achieve what many of us take for granted: employment, housing, education. This program was created to make up for centuries of white treatment toward Blacks in particular, from slavery to racial discrimination, segregation, bigotry, economic deprivation, intimidation, harassment and lynching. Doing away with affirmative action and related civil rights laws such as the Voting Rights Act by the predominantly white U.S. Supreme Court says racial discrimination—whether whites are consciously or unconsciously aware of their actions and deep-seated prejudices—is a thing of the past.
Not in this country. Not this century. Still.
The FBI will tell us white-on-Black crime continues to escalate and remains the largest percentage of hate crimes in the U.S.
A college education was perhaps the best opportunity white American society could deliver, promote and encourage among minorities. But, no, we had to take that away, too. We never countered against cries of ‘reverse discrimination’ by self-important students who minorities see as winning the racial lottery, that is the great fortune of having been born white.
For more than 50 years, affirmative action did far more good than bad to Americans white, Black and other. I hate to see all that generational progress forgotten and played down—like it wasn’t important or vital to this nation’s well-being and survival.