Is Affirmative Action Obsolete?

“We have overcome the scourge of race,” says Ward Connerly, African-American founder and chairman of the American Civil Rights Institution. Connerly is a well-known anti-affirmative action activist who was more than delighted at the achievement of ballot initiatives for Nebraska and Colorado to “ban discrimination against or granting preferential treatment to people based on race, ethnicity, color, sex, or national origin”. Unfortunately for him and other anti-affirmative activists, the measures did not pass in Colorado, though they went through in Nebraska with 58% of the vote.
The Colorado Civil Rights Initiative, which would have effectively ended affirmative action there, was rejected, and many people, including Connerly, take issue with this development. Abigail Thernstrom, a Manhattan Institute senior fellow said Obama’s presidency is proof that “we do not need racial double standards because blacks can make it in every walk of American life.” “Times have changed,” said Deneen Borelli, a black conservative. “There are plenty of opportunities available, but to have this crutch . . . is just wrong. It’s discriminatory on all ends.” Contrarily, Cynthia Brown, education policy director for the Center of American Progress in Washington stated that blacks who have opportunities can make it, but “we have many, many black kids who didn’t have that and were born into families who couldn’t provide those experiences and couldn’t attend the schools that Obama did and took advantage of.”
But the question on everyone’s mind is this: Will Barack Obama himself make the decision to be instrumental in ending affirmative action? Barack has been rather vague on his plan of action regarding this hot-button issue, though he does seem to similarly lean toward the concept of opportunity being more of a “class” issue in these times than it is a “racial” issue. “I think that my daughters should probably be treated by any [college] admissions officer as folks who are pretty advantaged,” Obama said in an interview with ABC News. “We should take into account white kids who have been disadvantaged and have grown up in poverty and shown themselves to have what it takes to succeed.” Connerly stated that he thinks Obama is a very “bright man” and he believes that Obama “realizes the inherent flaw in race preferences“. All across the board, the issue seems to have changed, however, from a racial issue to a class issue. Black poverty, not simply the state of being an African-American, appears to be the issue. White poverty was also addressed by Obama in context with the issue.
So what to do about the issue of Affirmative Action? The problem is that it helps people who may not have otherwise been considered for employment to secure said employment, and that is a very good thing. People may not believe that racism exists in this country, and certainly not in the workplace, but most African-Americans find that to be false.
Imagine for a moment that you are an African-American male. Contemplate the difficulty of obtaining a job, making it through an interview with sweat on your brow and butterflies in your stomach, and watching your potential employer stare at you with reservation and irritation on his face. You suspect that this is because he is being personally confronted with your ethnicity and is struggling with his feelings about your representation of his company. You know that you are well-qualified for the job, perhaps overqualified for the job. But you can see the apprehension on his face as he begins to ask you questions, and the relief on his face when he is finally through. It may be that you are an articulate, well-spoken, congenial individual and that he may overlook his initial reaction to your racial orientation… but it is also possible that he may spend the entire interview watching and waiting for a single, minute detail about you, your manner of dress, your body language, or your answers that could justify his expulsion of your application. In my opinion, without affirmative action, we simply encourage racist employers to decline individuals based on their race at their whim; with affirmative action, we encourage racist employers to bite the bullet and hire the most qualified African-American at their disposal.
If there are employers who simply hire a racially diverse team of employees without regard to their qualifications, just to fill their number quotas, affirmative action itself is not responsible for those types of haphazard business practices. However, many argue that affirmative action is the cause of much dissonance between races, specifically in the workplace, but also all across this nation. When a black employee is hired, due to unprofessional business practices by employers who concern themselves solely with filling racial numbers in order to fulfill their obligations to the affirmative action laws, and that employee is inept and regarded by other employees as unqualified, this, in fact, creates resentment and racism within the workplace. However, when employers themselves are racist, the fact that individuals of certain races are consistently not being hired due to the color of their skin also creates divisiveness within the races.
My thought? Well… it is what it is. In my opinion, intolerance is the cause of intolerance in this country and in every other. Whichever direction Obama takes this country in, regarding “preferential treatment” or “discrimination”, there will always be different races, different colors, different people, different tastes and different opinions. The only thing that can save us from cutting off our nose to spite our face is TOLERANCE. With or without affirmative action, the one thing that Americans can support unilaterally is tolerance.
Although I’m inclined to agree that we have certainly reached a milestone in American history by electing the first African-American president, I am simply unconvinced that this indicates a necessary banishment of laws which are implemented to prevent racism and which encourage diversity. Are we ready for the abolition of affirmative action? I think we get closer and closer to that moment each day, as a nation. But while we are still obsessed with fear of homosexual marriage, gays serving in the military, and gay couples adopting children into a loving home; and while we are horrified of Muslims and consider them to be terrorists before they speak a word; and while we still consider Obama’s presidency to be a unique and surprising moment in this nation’s history, I think we might have a milestone or two to conquer before tolerance is a common inclination in this country. But I think the day is coming soon, and I think Obama’s presidency is proof - not that we no longer need affirmative action, but that we are closer to nationwide peace and tolerance that will, one day, make affirmative action obsolete language in our law books.