Does Anyone Really Believe In Affirmative Action?

Diversity is a strength, we are told. The greatest strength even. And affirmative action is the way to achieve this panacea. But does anyone really believe in affirmative action for the sake of diversity, or for any other reason?

The strongest bastions of intellectual support for racial preferences for minorities are universities. But ask yourself this simple question – of all the professors who’ve ever advocated replacing Whites with minorities, were there any who left their positions to create space for the supposedly “disadvantaged”? Of course not! No hippie-wanna-be student refused admission to college to leave a spot for an African-American. No corporate official ever quit his job to create an opening that would allow the company to promote a Hispanic immigrant. No politician ever surrendered a political race to empower a woman, and no church ever gave up its own building to a Muslim congregation (other than for financial reasons). All parents hope their own children will succeed, rather than rooting for Shaniqua, Jose or Ahmad.

Likewise, very few will hire anyone based on race, rather than qualifications. Do you know of anyone who will hire an unqualified African-American as a plumber because of the “legacy of slavery”? When people face criminal charges, do they hire the best lawyer they can afford or a Third World immigrant who speaks poor English, got into law school via affirmative action, and was admitted to practice law only after he won a suit “proving” that the test is racist by showing higher rates of failure among Blacks and Latinos than Whites?

Whether hiring a babysitter or a doctor, nobody wants diversity – people want the best employee they can find. Nobody cares if the less qualified person is “suffering from the legacy of slavery” – the only thing that matters is the person’s qualification.

When people do discriminate, it is never to promote diversity, but rather to create the most uni-cultural environment possible. Whether a business is owned by Asians, Blacks, Italians, Poles, WASP’s or anyone else, you will find that given a choice people of two equals, people will hire “their own”. This is not racism, but rather a desire to be with people who understand your jokes, who share common life experiences, who eat similar food and share other cultural distinctions. Working with people different from you may be exciting on the first day, but one quickly finds that it’s far more interesting to be around people with whom you have something in common. Just as 18-year-olds do not want to be around 80-year-olds, people of different races do not desires to be around each other. In churches, in school cafeteria or any place else, when people are free to interact with the people of their choice, they inevitably gravitate towards their own. This is true not only for Whites, but for all races.

Large corporations and the government are the only exceptions to the rule that one must hire the most qualified person, but if all things are equal, one prefers “his own”. The public sector is like an orphaned child – nobody cares about it, so nobody minds a dysfunctional workforce. Therefore, supervisors hire a “diverse” workforce with utter disregard for the quality of employees.

Large corporations, on the other hand, are subject to constant and never-ending “civil rights” litigation. To reduce legal exposure, corporate officers have pretended to support diversity. Hiring some people who aren’t qualified harms the corporation a lot less than non-stop litigation in court. Unfortunately this has not stopped “civil rights warriors” from riding the law suit gravy train, and only encouraged them. The corporations are terrified of Jesse Jackson’s shakedown schemes and go along with his order to “donate” money to his friends’ alleged charities and hire “his people” out of pure fear of destruction by the politically correct elites in the media and universities.

Corporations also do not suffer as much as small business and individuals from affirmative action. A partially unqualified and under-qualified workforce damages the corporation as a whole, not any particular individual. Even the stockholders are usually not directly harmed because the damage is spread among all of them. On the other hand, if you hire an unqualified plumber, you’ll be stuck with a broken toilet, and “legacy of slavery” be damned!

Finally, corporate officers rarely have to work with the rank-and-file personnel, so they do not care about the lack of camaraderie and the potential petty conflicts that inevitably arise in diverse environments. They hire “multiculturalism specialists” and waste the workers’ time by forcing them into “diversity training” that resemble Communist re-education camps. But if diversity is such an obvious positive, then why do we need to be “trained” for it? And will Whites truly be “trained” to like diversity when the seminars they are forced to attend degrade and attack them?

Corporations embrace diversity only because they are forced to do so by politicians (for example, when governments announce that they will only enter into contracts to companies with significant minority participation) or by the “anti-racism” law suit industry. At the top levels, however, where the corporate officers have to deal with their co-workers and where each decision truly matters, diversity and affirmative action becomes less of a concern and even corporate officers prefer “their own” rather than affirmative action hires. No corporation uses affirmative action to promote an unqualified minority to the position of Chief Executive Officer. Just as regular people don’t like to hire unqualified individuals, neither does the corporate leadership.

Nobody likes diversity and nobody wants affirmative action. It is just a hoax to make yourself look “open-minded” and “progressive.