Affirmative action is nothing more than economic genocide.
I realize that’s an incredibly harsh statement. Many social engineers will argue, for example, that without affirmative action, ethnic and racial minorities won’t have platforms to succeed. And to that I say tough stuff.
In my opinion, the only reason that affirmative action has remained a viable agenda for so long is its conflation with the academic industrial complex. As you know, higher education has ceased to be about educating the future managers and leaders of industry. Instead, it has become a profit-generating enterprise but with favorable tax coverage.
But take affirmative action and apply its protocols and initiatives to any other endeavor: would we be so tolerant of preferential hiring based on immutable characteristics superseding meritocracy? If intellectual honest existed, I’d imagine 100% of the people would say no.
For example, I marvel that millions of Americans take watching the NFL or other professional sporting league religiously. During my time as a cubicle warrior, I’ve heard co-workers mention that they’re “scouting” for their team.
Their team? As if any NFL team cares what their silly fans do on “their” behalf! And yet every football season, you’ll witness the insane devotion that everyday folks have for their team.
Imagine, though, that their team drafted a quarterback not because he had a good arm, or understood the game, or was even moderately talented, but instead, had great skin tone. Would they be happy about the decision? Of course not! The pitchforks would come out in full force.
But when elite universities accept students for their race, that’s not stupidity: instead, it’s progressivism.
Affirmative Action Hurts Its Beneficiaries
Ask any devoted parent: the worse thing you can do for your child is to not correct them when they do something wrong. Otherwise, they will grow up to be entitled adults at best and worthless pieces of s—t at worst.
However, affirmative action is doing exactly that. Rather than raising the standard for students to achieve, this initiative lowers them. Such policies devalue premium brands within academia while discouraging affirmative action beneficiaries, who are clearly in over their heads.
A recent article from National Affairs demonstrated this very dynamic. Beneficiaries of race-based acceptance policies at elite universities failed to make grades once inside the target institution, thereby discouraging them from pursuing higher academic and professional ambitions. On the other hand, minorities who earned their way into perhaps lower-ranking universities performed much better.
It’s a familiar principle: if you work hard for something, you tend to honor it.
Progressive may cry and moan that without affirmative action, minorities will decline in power and prominence. Again, I say, tough s—t. It is not the responsibility of the government to lower standards for underachievers; rather, it must protect those standards and ensure that they are fairly applied based on meritocracy.
Look, I don’t think it’s fair that, by virtue of being born without professional-caliber athletic genes, that I can never be in the running for an NFL quarterback position. But hey, tough s—t. If the standards were lowered so that I could become an NFL quarterback, it really wouldn’t mean much.
Inherently, everyone understands this when it comes to sports. But for some reason, when it comes to academia, some of us freak out.