Re: Affirmative Action.
By Ted Rall
Democrats benefited in November 2022 from the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. They probably will not get a similar boost from Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.
An Economist YouGov survey found 59% of Americans, including 57% of independents, approve of the court decision against racial preferences in college admissions. Only 27% disapprove.
Even 36% of Democrats approve of the ruling. Many of them are probably left leaning white men like me, who never cared for race based affirmative action. Like most white guys my age I turn 60 next month I have been told more than once that I was being passed up for a job, an award or a gig because my demographics were now disfavored. I shrugged and moved on, these slights neither destroyed my life nor turned me into a racist. But I came to see how affirmative action can sour race relations. My ancestors were poor European immigrants who arrived in the 19th and 20th centuries.
What does slavery have to do with me?
My senior year at Columbia University, I received no financial aid. I was 28, returning to finish my degree after six years, and the $36,000 I had earned the year before disqualified me. My first job after graduating was as an office assistant at the admissions and financial aid office. As I was struggling to pay my student loans, I processed an application from a black woman my age. I was told she had a multimillion dollar trust fund and was awarded a full scholarship because the university needed her for diversity reasons.
Later I worked as a math tutor at a private school in Manhattan. One day the director called me aside to inform me that I was being let go. I asked what I had done wrong. Nothing, the kids love you,You are doing a great job. We want to hire a black tutor instead.
Do you know anyone? He smiled, showing no regret or sympathy.
As a good liberal, I was expected to understand
A few years ago a Hollywood producer approached me about developing one of my autobiographical humor books into a TV series. After a series of meetings, my agent called to ask if I would be willing to change the lead character, based on me, to a person of color. It is almost impossible to sell anything based on a white male these days,p
The idea did not bother me, and I agreed. It was not enough. My agent later told me that studios were not interested even in a project created by and based on the book by a white male.
Some people react to being passed over for being white, Asian or male with aplomb, regarding their own setbacks as a price worth paying to right past injustices. Some magnify every grievance and become hardened bigots.
Most handle it the way I have, by swallowing the unfairness and putting it behind them. Race based affirmative action is gone in college admissions, and perhaps soon in the workplace as well. People like me will not mourn it.
Mr. Rall is a political cartoonist, columnist and author, most recently, of The Stringer
