Affirmative Action Introduced Excused Racism: Bobby Burack
The Democrat Party all but ensured political advantage for decades when it introduced affirmative action in the 1960s.
As the civil rights movement neared an end, Democrats argued that racial equality under the law was not enough and that they alone could keep the racist boogeyman at bay.
Affirmative action enabled the concept of Excused Racism, the presumption that society must discriminate against certain racial groups to reach racial impartiality.
By definition, affirmative action is the very type of discrimination the civil rights movement fought against. But politicians excused it and institutions, especially American universities, practiced it.
Harvard is considered the most prestigious university in the United States. And for nearly half a century, skin color determined a Harvard applicant's chances of admission. In the top academic decile, Asian applicants have a 12.7 percent chance of admission. Whites have a 15.3 percent chance. Latinos a 31.3 chance. Meanwhile, a black applicant has a 56.1 chance.
Get your test scores out of my face. What color are you?
This month, the Supreme Court ruled that admitting applicants into college based on their race violates the 14th Amendment, the protection of equal rights.
Prohibiting schools from racially discriminating against applicants is an obvious step forward. Yet it hardly abolishes the mechanics, now deeply entrenched in our institutions, that permit punishing and rewarding Americans on the basis of their race.
The idea that controlled racism cures systemic racism has taken root in American society. Excused Racism has come to define race relations in America.
Today, corporations are beholden to a creepy, Chinese-like social credit score system called ESG, environmental, social, and corporate governance.
Why have corporations embraced odd policies and marketing strategies at the expense of their popularity? ESG.
ESG assigns a company a score that firms like BlackRock use to determine how much they will invest in it. The "S" represents a company's commitment to diversity and inclusion. Thus, ESG incentivizes corporations to prioritize skin color over competence in their hiring practices.
In 2017, the CEO of BlackRock and career-long stooge Larry Fink described ESG as a means to "force behaviors."
The LinkedIn employment service now allows recruiters to filter job candidates by race. If you are white, your application might not appear when Fortune 500 recruiters scour the database. Still, you can take comfort in that you were overlooked for a lucrative job opportunity in the name of "diversity."
Affirmative action offshoots like the "S" in ESG and DEI exist to prevent a colorblind workforce. They are in place to reduce individuals down to their skin color and divide society into racial categories.
Thereby even with the SCOTUS ruling banning affirmative action in most institutions of higher learning, skin color will continue to determine the trajectory of your career -- more than any skill or knowledge you possess.
Your race is still a factor in whether you are hired, fired, promoted, allowed to make a joke, or subject to repercussions.
In other words, your skin color defines your value.
Such "logic" accepts the premise that if someone of a certain skin color had success or a perceived advantage in the past, those with a similar skin color have already had their turn.
So, shut up and atone for your witnesses.
Proponents of a controlled distribution of racism justify their position by claiming that discriminatory practices have uplifted so-called marginalized communities.
First, such an argument is itself racist. Second, it's not even true.
According to an Atlantic study, affirmative action had actually hindered the success rate of black students. See, affirmed students are far more likely to drop out of college than those who attend a college for which they are suited.
"Blacks who start college interested in pursuing a doctorate and an academic career are twice as likely to be derailed from this path if they attend a school where they are mismatched (meaning accepted through affirmative action)," the study stated.
Perhaps the Court ruling will decrease dropout rates among black students.
Excused Racism has not uplifted the black community – but it has lifted up enough useful black Americans who make it seem as though it has.
For every Kamala Harris, whose race and gender combination catapulted her to the vice presidency, there have been several black students set up for failure at prestigious universities.
Similarly, receiving a job for which one is only qualified on account of their race is sure to increase their chances of failure.
Affirmative action also tarnished the reputations of qualified black students whom their counterparts presumed to be affirmative-action beneficiaries.
For an example of a so-called successful Harvard graduate who still claims to suffer under the shadow of racism related to affirmative action, we need look no further than MSNBC host Joy Reid.
Reid, though a racist, accidentally raised a point last week about the negative reputation affirmative action casts upon black students.
She recalled the time when a recruiter approached her to attend Harvard:
I didn’t go to a prestigious high school like Exeter or Andover. I didn’t have college test prep -- I just happened to be really nerdy and smart and have really good grades and good SAT scores.
But someone came to Denver to look for me. A Harvard recruiter flew in, met me at a restaurant, and did a pre-interview to pull me into Harvard. I was pulled in — affirmatively. This was not the recruiter saying, "We’re going to take an unqualified person and put them in Harvard." Rather, they were saying, "We’re going to take a very qualified person who we would never know existed and put them in Harvard."
But the minute I arrived at Harvard from my majority-black little town of Montbello in Denver — the first week or two that I was in class — my presence was questioned by white people. I was in a big conference class where some white students stood up and said, "Those students, the black students, they're only here because of affirmative action."
Whether Reid was ever branded as an affirmative-action Harvard admittee – and we aren't so certain she is telling the truth – other black students most certainly have been.
And we can't blame skeptical white classmates. Rules that allow people with certain skin colors to advance and prevent others from succeeding naturally engender skepticism from those inside and outside the system.
Since so few Americans benefit from racial politics, you have to wonder why our leaders ever introduced such policies in the first place. And the answer is, of course, to benefit themselves.
People in power have always governed to stay in power. And for nearly 50 years, affirmative action – and its offshoots ESG and DEI – have helped keep their adherents in power.
Equity, a supposed outcome of affirmative action, is a hallmark of the Biden Administration. The administration argues equity is the pathway to equality, even though equity and equality are almost always in direct conflict with one another.
So why do Biden and his ilk keep promoting a lie? It’s effective.
Politicians cannot manipulate a meritocratic society in which the most capable people succeed. Yet they can manipulate a weakened society of the racially aggravated.
A Gallup poll revealed Americans who worry a great deal about race increased from 31 percent to almost 50 percent in Biden's first year in office.
Somehow, a senile old white guy shouting at clouds convinced voters of all races that Democrat policies can dismantle the great plague called white supremacy.
Racial tensions also permitted Democrats to anoint useful sponges into positions of power, from Harris to Ketanji Brown Jackson to Karine Jean-Pierre.
When race matters, the person does not. When race is a person’s main identifying characteristic, a person has no true identity. Any society atomized by race turns people into pawns for the powerful.
Racial politics were never a prerequisite to a colorblind society. Of course, not. They were never supposed to be.
Excused Racism has hamstrung the progression of society and reduced all people to the color of their skin.
Affirmative action, ESG, and equity deliberately made us a more racist society, one vulnerable to the whims of the elites.
The end of the civil rights movement in the 1960s threatened the demand for racial control. Thereby Democrats first excused racism in the name of affirmative action, ensuring an insatiable need for ever more racial governance.
Bobby Burack joined the Will Cain Podcast on Fox News to discuss this column.