Ending Policies of Racial Preference

Virginia Sen. James Webb should be commended for his call for an end to racial quotas and set-asides in favor of needs-based policies:

Policy makers ignored such disparities within America’s white cultures when, in advancing minority diversity programs, they treated whites as a fungible monolith. Also lost on these policy makers were the differences in economic and educational attainment among nonwhite cultures. Thus nonwhite groups received special consideration in a wide variety of areas including business startups, academic admissions, job promotions and lucrative government contracts.

Where should we go from here? Beyond our continuing obligation to assist those African-Americans still in need, government-directed diversity programs should end.

Nondiscrimination laws should be applied equally among all citizens, including those who happen to be white. The need for inclusiveness in our society is undeniable and irreversible, both in our markets and in our communities. Our government should be in the business of enabling opportunity for all, not in picking winners. It can do so by ensuring that artificial distinctions such as race do not determine outcomes.

I hope more of our fellow Democrats accept that point-of-view.

Unfortunately, entire industries have grown up to take advantage of forty years of ill-considered policies. I doubt that those who’ve benefited by them will lay them aside lightly.

The sociologist Charles Moskos distinguished between African Americans, people who were originally from Africa or people who were wholly or in part descended from people from Africa, and Afro-Americans, people who are descended from American slaves. Their history, culture, and needs are distinctive. These Americans continue to suffer the consequences of their ancestors’ slavery, Jim Crow laws, exclusive covenants, and the unforeseen secondary effects of two generations of bad social policy. Unfortunately, for social, logistical, and other reasons the policies intended to ameliorate the consequences of

injustices endured by black Americans at the hands of their own government have no parallel in our history, not only during the period of slavery but also in the Jim Crow era that followed

have routinely benefited a different group, immigrants from the Caribbean or Africa or their children. You need look no farther than Gen. Colin Powell, a son of Jamaican immigrants, and the incumbent president, whose father was Kenyan, for examples. To the extent that these these men of considerable achievement have been the beneficiaries of social policies we must acknowledge that they received benefits for which they were not the intended recipients at the expense of Americans who were. You need only drive through the rural areas of Tidewater North and South Carolina or rural areas in many other parts of the Old South to see that there is a continuing need.

As recently as this week Shirley Jerrod, a woman who has been much in the news for being first terminated then rehired by the Department of Agriculture for comments from some time ago that may have been misconstrued, remarked that President Obama didn’t understand what she’d been through, referring not just to the events of the last few weeks but to the struggle of her entire life. I made observations to that effect back in 2008 and was castigated for them. It’s a fine illustration of the point I’m making.

Although their needs are distinctive, it may be the case that there is no better way to help Afro-Americans than by revising our policies to help the poor regardless of race rather than attempting to address the special needs created by history. It’s clear that our current policies of racial preference aren’t working.