Sophia A. Nelson: the Real Affirmative Action Babies
[Sophia A. Nelson is a regular contributor to The Root.]
Last Sunday, veteran Washington Post journalist Juan Williams and conservative author Shelby Steele wrote two opposing op-eds on the pending death of affirmative action. Williams opined that Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was too optimistic when she predicted that affirmative action, born with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, had at most 25 more years to live. And Steele argued that persistent racial inequality today between whites and African Americans is primarily a result of black underdevelopment rather than racism. I think they both missed the mark.
For all of Pat Buchanan's angry bluster and "white men built this country" rhetoric, he too misses the glaring but often unspoken truth about affirmative action: that white American women have been the biggest beneficiaries of so-called minority preferences.
All economic indicators, higher education admissions' practices, and corporate and law firm figures show that when it comes to leveling the playing field in the past 30 years, white women—not black men, black women or other persons of color—have gained the most ground...
... All of the Republican banter over whether Judge Sonia Sotomayor will be a liberal, race-obsessed justice on the Supreme Court or whether she will follow the strict constructionist mandates of the Constitution misses the crux of why affirmative action emerged in America and why it is still needed.
Ironically, the original intent of affirmative action somehow spiraled out of control right from the get-go. The phrase "affirmative action" was first used in President John F. Kennedy's 1961 Executive Order 10925, which requires federal contractors to "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color or national origin." The same language was used in President Lyndon Johnson's 1965 Executive Order 11246. In 1967, Johnson expanded the executive order to include affirmative action requirements to benefit women.
This is key to understand, because it has been only in my lifetime (I was born in 1967) that the government has mandated that blacks and women be given equal opportunity and access in education, employment and contracting opportunities...
Read entire article at The Root
Last Sunday, veteran Washington Post journalist Juan Williams and conservative author Shelby Steele wrote two opposing op-eds on the pending death of affirmative action. Williams opined that Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was too optimistic when she predicted that affirmative action, born with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, had at most 25 more years to live. And Steele argued that persistent racial inequality today between whites and African Americans is primarily a result of black underdevelopment rather than racism. I think they both missed the mark.
For all of Pat Buchanan's angry bluster and "white men built this country" rhetoric, he too misses the glaring but often unspoken truth about affirmative action: that white American women have been the biggest beneficiaries of so-called minority preferences.
All economic indicators, higher education admissions' practices, and corporate and law firm figures show that when it comes to leveling the playing field in the past 30 years, white women—not black men, black women or other persons of color—have gained the most ground...
... All of the Republican banter over whether Judge Sonia Sotomayor will be a liberal, race-obsessed justice on the Supreme Court or whether she will follow the strict constructionist mandates of the Constitution misses the crux of why affirmative action emerged in America and why it is still needed.
Ironically, the original intent of affirmative action somehow spiraled out of control right from the get-go. The phrase "affirmative action" was first used in President John F. Kennedy's 1961 Executive Order 10925, which requires federal contractors to "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color or national origin." The same language was used in President Lyndon Johnson's 1965 Executive Order 11246. In 1967, Johnson expanded the executive order to include affirmative action requirements to benefit women.
This is key to understand, because it has been only in my lifetime (I was born in 1967) that the government has mandated that blacks and women be given equal opportunity and access in education, employment and contracting opportunities...