Robert A. Taft – In the late 1960s, affirmative action was advanced because women and minorities, with similar skills to those of White men, were being discriminated against in landing jobs. The object of affirmative action was to level the playing field for people with similar skill levels. Over the years studies have shown that women actually have benefited most from affirmative action, not African Americans.

But over the years affirmative action has evolved into a matter strictly of race: Black people get preferential treatment, period. Why has it evolved so?

Since its origin, liberals, both White and Black, have actively denigrated African American students.

First, President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty began to cripple the Black family. African American women could get more money from Uncle Sam than they could from their working husbands. Actually, if these husbands were working, their families could not have access to government benefits. Fathers left the home, leaving the raising of children to mothers and grandparents. By 2021, over four million African American kids live with only their mothers.

Second, overwhelmingly Democrat-led cities promised hope, but ran down their cities creating increasing crime and slums: environments of hopelessness.

Third, for the past several years schools have been teaching Critical Race Theory, in which Black students are told they are systemically inferior and will never be able to compete fairly with White students.

Liberals and Black activists hate the removal of affirmative action for racial purposes. They contend that African American children are underprivileged and need racial bias in the college selection process. They say these students are underprivileged because they are poor and live in high crime areas.

Columbia University’s Poverty Tracker, though, contradicted this contention. It revealed that 23 percent of New York City’s Asian population was impoverished compared to 19 percent of the city’s Black population. And that in New York City, Asians’ relatively high poverty rate comes with exceptionally low crime rates.

Ironically the affirmative action case was brought before the Supreme Court by Asian Americans.

So why are Black students so disadvantaged? According to the Census Bureau, most Black-intensive school districts get the most amount of money for education, averaging over $28,000 per pupil. Is the problem more about Black culture? But Black leaders and activists do not want to acknowledge that. Rather they want preferential treatment for black students.

Yet Professor John Ogbu studied the issue of Black student underperformance and reported: a) Black students readily admitted they didn’t work as hard as Whites, took easier classes and read fewer books. And why? Black students said, “It was not cool to be successful or to work hard or to show how smart you are.”

Further, the Opportunity Myth study concluded: a) teachers who believe students are capable give students grade-level work; d) teachers who believe students aren’t give their students below-grade work; and c) students know if their teachers believe their students can succeed and that determines students’ motivation to learn.

CRT tells teachers that Black students cannot perform like White students. Thus, teachers look upon African American students as incapable by nature. Consequently, they give assignments at below-grade level. The Opportunity Myth study found that 40 percent of classes with mostly minority students never receive even one grade-level assignment.

Yet success rates on grade-level work between Blacks and Whites were similar: 56 percent Black students and 65 percent White students succeeded with grade-level assignments. Students — White or Black — who started the year behind grade level but had access to grade-level content caught up to peers within six months.

What does this tell us? It says that the liberal/Black activist approach to improving African American youth has been flawed for over 50 years. Rather than addressing issues of Black culture as Jason Riley pleaded people to do, these so-called psychological and anthropological experts have made excuses for African American students, basing their conclusions on bogus assumptions or inconclusive evidence.

The fact of the matter is that affirmative action the way it is now applied is racist. It benefits a person, not on what he or she has learned or achieved, but strictly on their skin color. Does this send a message to Black students that they are entitled to an education and don’t have to earn it? Perhaps because it does tell the student that he or she needs preferential treatment to succeed while it tells the other students that they matter less. Like CRT, affirmative action in this regard is a lose-lose proposition.

This proposition is exposed in the state of the art of higher education: lower admission and grading standards, easier course content, etc. This is a debilitating message to send African American students.

If colleges and universities adhere to the Supreme Court ruling instead of seeking ways around it, perhaps educators and activists can begin to motivate African American students to learn and understand the opportunities available to them.

For example, in top universities like Harvard and Vanderbilt, the graduation rate for Blacks rivals that of Whites. There are 21 colleges/universities where the Black student graduation rate is at least five percentage points higher than the rate for Whites. According to the International Monetary Fund, the Census Bureau, and the World Economic Base, African Americans as a group would rank in the top 46 of 195 countries economically.

It’s time to teach African American students that and not how bad off they are.

SF Source American Thinker Jul 2023