A person holds a sign in support of keeping affirmative action during a rally outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on October 31, 2022. | Source: The Washington Post / Getty
Let’s be real about one thing: The only reason affirmative action has ever been such a hot-button issue is because white people have always associated it with Black and brown people. To know this, one needn’t look any further than the Supreme Court ruling that struck down the practice as it relates to college and university admissions on Thursday. In the white conservative-dominated court opinion, affirmative action was specifically described as race-based admissions policies and even more specifically described as “rudderless, race-based preferences” that “fly in the face of our colorblind Constitution.” (That would be the same “colorblind Constitution” that was written nearly 100 years before slavery was abolished and nearly 200 years before the Civil Rights Act was implemented, but OK.)
And yet, for literal decades, report after report after report has indicated that the demographic that has benefited the most from affirmative action is white women.
From USA Today:
A Labor Department report in 1995 found that since the 1960s, affirmative action had helped 5 million members of minority groups and 6 million women move up in the workplace.
“When we talk about institutions like higher education, we see that women in general are on par with men but we have severe underrepresentation of Black, indigenous and Latinx folks in colleges and universities and even greater disparities for women of color,” Texas A&M sociologist and lawyer Wendy Leo Moore told USA TODAY. “You can make the same analysis when we look at employment. Those are the kinds of things that indicate that on a structural level that white women have benefited.”
In the last six decades, women have leapfrogged men in earning four-year degrees while Black and Latino students are still underrepresented in college admissions and graduation rates, especially in four-year colleges.
A similar trend has been seen in the workplace, according to a USA TODAY analysis of named executives at the nation’s 100 largest companies.
In the last six decades, women have leapfrogged men in earning four-year degrees while Black and Latino students are still underrepresented in college admissions and graduation rates, especially in four-year colleges.
A similar trend has been seen in the workplace, according to a USA TODAY analysis of named executives at the nation’s 100 largest companies.
From 2020 to 2022, white women expanded their share of senior leadership jobs at twice the rate of women of color, though women remained outnumbered to 1. Despite marginal gains among men of color, white men still hold about two-thirds of the top jobs even though they account for just one-third of U.S. workers.
So, why is it that we’ve never heard any conservatives or other anti-affirmative action advocates acknowledge white women as beneficiaries of the practice at all, let alone the top beneficiaries? Why did the Supreme Court ruling make no mention of gender-based admissions? Are we to believe that all of these legislators and legal experts in the highest court in America are completely unaware that Caucasian women are at least among the largest beneficiaries of affirmative action? That the very Supreme Court justices charged with deciding affirmative action’s fate have bought into the most prominent among the many myths surrounding affirmative action?
I mean, in reality, conservatives have bought into all of the myths, such as the idea that affirmative action exists to require minority quotas, that it results in the unqualified taking positions from the qualified (read: white and male), and that race and ethnicity are ever the sole factors considered in school admissions or hiring practices under affirmative action. But the weaponized myth ultimately used to justify the demise of affirmative action is that the practice specifically discriminates against white people, or rather, it benefits Black and brown people at the expense of white people.
The same people who attack diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies used racist propaganda to end a policy that was meant to combat racist propaganda. Systemic racism was used to end a policy that was meant to combat systemic racism.
It’s not irony, it’s just America.
SEE ALSO:
Candace Owens, Who ‘Reaped All The Benefits Of Affirmative Action,’ Celebrates Its Demise
HBCU Leaders Suggest Affirmative Action Ending Can Affect HBCU Enrollment
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