OPINION
JULY 22, 2010
Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege
America still owes a debt to its black citizens, but government
programs to help all 'people of color' are unfair. They should end.
By JAMES WEBB
The NAACP believes the tea party is racist. The tea party
believes the NAACP is racist. And Pat Buchanan got into trouble recently by pointing out that if Elena Kagan is confirmed
to the Supreme Court, there will not be a single Protestant Justice, although Protestants make up half the U.S. population
and dominated the court for generations.
Forty years ago, as the United States experienced the civil
rights movement, the supposed monolith of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant dominance served as the whipping post for almost every
debate about power and status in America. After a full generation of such debate, WASP elites have fallen by the wayside and
a plethora of government-enforced diversity policies have marginalized many white workers. The time has come to cease the
false arguments and allow every American the benefit of a fair chance at the future.
I have dedicated my political career to bringing fairness
to America's economic system and to our work force, regardless of what people look like or where they may worship. Unfortunately,
present-day diversity programs work against that notion, having expanded so far beyond their original purpose that they now
favor anyone who does not happen to be white.
In an odd historical twist that all Americans see but few
can understand, many programs allow recently arrived immigrants to move ahead of similarly situated whites whose families
have been in the country for generations. These programs have damaged racial harmony. And the more they have grown, the less
they have actually helped African-Americans, the intended beneficiaries of affirmative action as it was originally conceived.
How so?
Lyndon Johnson's initial program for affirmative action
was based on the 13th Amendment and on the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which authorized the federal government to take actions
in order to eliminate "the badges of slavery." Affirmative action was designed to recognize the uniquely difficult journey
of African-Americans. This policy was justifiable and understandable, even to those who came from white cultural groups that
had also suffered in socio-economic terms from the Civil War and its aftermath.
The 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. But the extrapolation of this logic to all "people of color"—especially since 1965, when new immigration
laws dramatically altered the demographic makeup of the U.S.—moved affirmative action away from remediation and toward
discrimination, this time against whites. It has also lessened the focus on assisting African-Americans, who despite a veneer
of successful people at the very top still experience high rates of poverty, drug abuse, incarceration and family breakup.
Those who came to this country in recent decades from Asia,
Latin America and Africa did not suffer discrimination from our government, and in fact have frequently been the beneficiaries
of special government programs. The same cannot be said of many hard-working white Americans, including those whose roots
in America go back more than 200 years.
Contrary to assumptions in the law, white America is hardly
a monolith. And the journey of white American cultures is so diverse (yes) that one strains to find the logic that could lump
them together for the purpose of public policy.
The clearest example of today's misguided policies comes
from examining the history of the American South.
The old South was a three-tiered society, with blacks and hard-put whites both dominated by white elites
who manipulated racial tensions in order to retain power. At the height of slavery, in 1860, less than 5% of whites in the
South owned slaves. The eminent black historian John Hope Franklin wrote that "fully three-fourths of the white people in
the South had neither slaves nor an immediate economic interest in the maintenance of slavery."
The Civil War devastated the South, in human and economic
terms. And from post-Civil War Reconstruction to the beginning of World War II, the region was a ravaged place, affecting
black and white alike.
In 1938, President Franklin Roosevelt created a national
commission to study what he termed "the long and ironic history of the despoiling of this truly American section." At that
time, most industries in the South were owned by companies outside the region. Of the South's 1.8 million sharecroppers, 1.2
million were white (a mirror of the population, which was 71% white). The illiteracy rate was five times that of the North-Central
states and more than twice that of New England and the Middle Atlantic (despite the waves of European immigrants then flowing
to those regions). The total endowments of all the colleges and universities in the South were less than the endowments of
Harvard and Yale alone. The average schoolchild in the South had $25 a year spent on his or her education, compared to $141
for children in New York.
Generations of such deficiencies do not disappear overnight,
and they affect the momentum of a culture. In 1974, a National Opinion Research Center (NORC) study of white ethnic groups
showed that white Baptists nationwide averaged only 10.7 years of education, a level almost identical to blacks' average of
10.6 years, and well below that of most other white groups. A recent NORC Social Survey of white adults born after World War
II showed that in the years 1980-2000, only 18.4% of white Baptists and 21.8% of Irish Protestants—the principal ethnic
group that settled the South—had obtained college degrees, compared to a national average of 30.1%, a Jewish average
of 73.3%, and an average among those of Chinese and Indian descent of 61.9%.
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.
Memo to my fellow politicians: Drop the Procrustean policies
and allow harmony to invade the public mindset. Fairness will happen, and bitterness will fade away.
Mr. Webb, a Democrat, is a U.S. senator from Virginia.
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