I’m Not The Only One

Since no one has really responded to my scam rundown, I figured I’d get the ball rolling by discussing Affirmative Action, one of the most destructive scams ever enforced by the government and the most racist policy ever supported by liberals.

The first problem with Affirmative Action is that it is based on the assumption that all white people are wealthy and that all minorities are poor. This theory is highly flawed; even when Affirmative Action was first drafted in federal law in the 1960s, this was not true. There were many successful African-Americans who were, although segregated from whites, highly educated and among the middle-class, well before the Civil Rights Movement.

For the last half of the 19th Century and the first half of the 20th Century, African-Americans had responded to the U.S. policy of racial segregation by establishing their own universities, service organizations, businesses and clinics, all of which have been of the same or even of a higher quality of service or product than their white counterparts. At the same time, there have been many white Americans since this nation was founded who have lived in poverty, and were undereducated and unskilled.

The whole point of Affirmative Action, supposedly, is to give an advantage to the disadvantaged, those who were not born in the right families, who were unable to attend the right schools, who lacked the right connections to go as far as others who did. Well, what happens if a black American who comes from a middle- or upper-class background attends a private school and later an established private university? Could she potentially use her racial background to abuse Affirmative Action to get a job that she probably could’ve gotten regardless of her race? Yes, she can, because according to Affirmative Action, if she’s black, she’s oppressed and therefore deserving of preferential treatment in the workplace.

Now let’s flip the script: How about a white person who grows up poor and in a broken family in some trailer park in a poor area, enjoys none of the advantages other white people have and attend a state university? Can he use Affirmative Action to get a job, to get an advantage he’s probably never been able to get in his life? Of course not. He’s white, and therefore is the oppressor, not the oppressed. As far as the Affirmative Action policy is concerned, being white is its own advantage.

Another problem with Affirmative Action is that it causes white workers to question the qualifications of their colleagues of color, to wonder if a member of a minority group in a white-collar position earned the right to be where he is or if he got there because of Affirmative Action. It seems that the general idea among whites is that Affirmative Action opens a floodgate of swarms of totally unqualified minorities into positions they don’t deserve to have.

I’ve worked in print journalism, a field which is still surprisingly dominated by whites, even in New York City. I’ve worked in newsrooms where I was the only minority journalist present and have even had a few colleagues suggest that I was an Affirmative Action hire. It is so hard to imagine that I was hired because I was the best candidate for the job, perhaps more qualified than a white person? I personally find this annoying side effect to be the greatest reason to end Affirmative Action, but there are many more foul-smelling flowers to pick in this bouquet of deceit and bigotry.

But even as many Caucasians are hurt by Affirmative Action, there are at least six groups of white Americans who greatly benefit from it. This of course contradicts the alleged purpose the program minorities are told Affirmative Action serves.

1. White Women: Since Affirmative Action endorses the hiring of minorities and women, white women have a clear advantage over others eligible for Affirmative Action. If I were a white racist employer and had to choose between hiring a black man or a white woman knowing that either hire would easily qualify my company for Affirmative Action-related government benefits, who do you think I would hire? White women share the same advantage as the above-mentioned group.

2. White Hispanics: Next to white women, the loophole for white Hispanics is the biggest in the Affirmative Action hiring policy. Because Affirmative Action includes Hispanics and the U.S. government vaguely defines Hispanics as anyone of Spanish ancestry or originating from a Spanish-speaking country, anyone claiming any Hispanic heritage or connection to any Spanish-speaking country can be eligible for Affirmative Action, regardless of their socioeconomic status or income. Spaniards can easily immigrate to the U.S. and qualify for Affirmative Action benefits, even though Spain is an industrialized nation and a part of Europe.

   Like the United States, Latin America’s ruling class is made up of white people, who unlike the majority of Latin Americans, have not intermarried with people of other races. Any of these wealthy elites, looking for a stable business venture in the U.S. can easily set up a company, declare it to be minority-owned based on the proprietor’s Hispanic heritage and receive a disproportionate number of government contracts by agencies eager to fulfill their own preferential hiring policies.

   But one does not need to have a Spanish ancestor to claim to be Hispanic. One only needs to come from Spain or a Latin American country to qualify for Affirmative Action.

   There are a large number of non-Hispanic whites living in Latin America. Argentina was a silent member of the Axis Powers (the Nazis) during the 1940s and allowed many former Nazis to hide in their country after the fall of the Nazis. As a result there are many Argentines of German, Austrian and Hungarian heritage who can also benefit from Affirmative Action policies if they come to the U.S.

   When Fidel Castro overthrew Cuba’s government in 1959, most of the Cuban refugees were members of that country’s upper and middle class, giving Miami the wealthiest and whitest Latino community in the U.S. They had education on their side and probably didn’t need as much help in climbing the ladder of success as other Latino immigrants.

   But enough hypothetical cases, here’s a real one cited in a April 2000 article which ran in the National Post, a conservative Canadian newspaper, titled, “Who Wants To Be A Minority?” and written by Steve Sailer. In the article, the Federal Communications Commissions gave a tax break to a Polish-born immigrant named Liberman who owned a small radio station. Mr. Liberman claimed to be of Hispanic origin because his Jewish ancestors were exiled from Spain—over 500 years ago! As Mr. Sailer wrote in the article, “In practice, just about anybody with an imaginative lawyer has a fighting chance to be Hispanic.”

3. Watered-down American Indians: White people who can claim even the slightest bit of provable American Indian heritage can also qualify for Affirmative Action. In the aforementioned article, a blue-eyed contractor named Joe McGrath obtained $19 million in government Affirmative Action-designated labor contracts because he proved that he was 1/64th Cherokee.
   

4. Racial Minorities Who Don’t Need Affirmative Action: Since Affirmative Action bases its policies on the assumption that all minorities need preferential treatment in the job market, minorities who come from upper-class backgrounds have the additional advantage of qualifying for Affirmative Action benefits. Those who hail from interracial families (and are willing to declare themselves as a belonging to a minority group) have the advantage of qualifying for Affirmative Action and being more likely to hail from a middle- or upper-class white background at the same time.

5. White Liberals: White liberals benefit because they support Affirmative Action, and therefore convince racial minorities that liberals, especially Democrats, are their allies. Liberals who may have pangs of residual white guilt may brush such feelings away as they think that Affirmative Action is really creating massive social mobility for minorities.

6. White Conservatives: Affirmative Action allows conservatives to ignore any dissatisfaction conveyed by minorities because they receive special treatment. They argue that with Affirmative Action in place, minorities have no one but themselves to blame for their low socioeconomic status. Also, when the issue of reparations to African-Americans for U.S. slavery comes up, conservatives are most likely to argue that Affirmative Action is in fact reparation for slavery.

7. White Racists: I have read much Ku Klux Klan recruitment propaganda on their web sites, and they all have the same theme, “The niggers and the spics have taken your job.” Funny that none of them read: “The white bitch has taken your job.” This works especially well in areas with many poor and/or unemployed whites for whom Affirmative Action truly has left behind. Affirmative Action does indeed hurt lower- to middle-class whites who could use some help finding work, and white supremacist groups use this fact to imply that the white race is doomed, that the U.S. government (who they usually claim is run by Jews and so-called self-hating white liberals) uses Affirmative Action to disenfranchise whites and give jobs to minorities.

   Affirmative Action helps solidify the misconception among poor whites that there is an anti-white conspiracy among the leaders of the U.S. White supremacist groups rely on Affirmative Action to recruit as many impoverished, angry young whites as possible. I believe that if Affirmative Action was wiped out tomorrow, many of the white supremacist groups would fail to lure new recruits and even lose some existing members.

The worst aspect of Affirmative Action, to me at least, is that it drives a wedge between this country’s black and Latino communities. In many cities, Los Angeles in particular, African-American political leaders and Latino political leaders are in a constant power struggle to allocate as many Affirmative Action slots for government agencies for their respective groups as possible. The result? Increased tension if not downright animosity between the two groups.

I’ve experienced this problem as an office worker in a city agency. The agency (which will remain unnamed) has various offices throughout the city and primarily serves peole of color. The particular office where I worked served a primarily black population and about half the workers were black. My department supervisor (a black female) was replaced with a white man who promptly replaced the then-ethnically diverse support staff of six people with African-Americans. There was never an explanation as to why we were all laid off, but when we saw that all of our new replacements were black, we understood what was going on. To be fair, some of the staff who was laid off were blacks replaced with other black workers.

A supervisor (a Latina) at the agency’s personnel office suggested I apply to a branch of this agency which was located in a Latino neighborhood and therefore all the workers there would be primarily Latino. But then it occurred to me that if I were black, my chances of not being hired, or being hired and quickly replaced would be just as poor in the Hispanic-serving office as I did in the black-serving office.

I believe that Affirmative Action has done more to divide Latinos and blacks than anything else. This is especially a problem in New York City, where Puerto Ricans and African-Americans have enjoyed an unofficial alliance for decades.

At the risk of sounding like some racial militant, historically, white people have conquered various lands through the divide and conquer method, that is, to pit one group of people of color against another, let them wear themselves out fighting each other, and then defeat the already demoralized and exhausted survivors. When Hernando Cortes conquered the Aztecs in Mexico, he didn’t defeat tens of thousands of Aztecs only with 400 Spanish soldiers; he forged an alliance with the Tlaxcala, who had fought with the Aztecs for centuries. Once the Aztecs were defeated, the Spaniards turned on their Tlaxcala allies and enslaved them right along with the remaining survivors of the crushed Aztec empire.

In the U.S. South, slave owners gave preferential treatment to light-skinned black slaves that were not extended to their darker-skinned counterparts. This historical division has resulted in a subtle grudge between light-skinned African-Americans and dark-skinned African-Americans that persists to this day.

In North America, the British, French and then Americans made alliances with some Native American tribes in an effort to defeat other groups of Native Americans. The tribes that aligned themselves with the “pale face” newcomers saw it as a golden opportunity to defeat an old rival, but the white settlers soon turned on their “allies”.

I don’t see Affirmative Action as any different from any other divide and conquer method used by whites against diverse populations of people of color.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 29th, 2008 at 10:08 pm and is filed under History, Hypocrisy, Government Incompetence, Straight Up Scams, Government Corruption, Civil Rights, Race & Ethnicity, Education, Labor, Government Interference. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.