Let’s hope affirmative action becomes obsolete

It’s not clear a roundup of unsuccessful university applicants, convinced they lost their spot to a less-deserving minority candidate, would yield any evidence of racial discrimination. What is clear is the Trump administration has picked its next Great White Wedge.

When news broke the U.S. Justice Department planned to investigate affirmative-action admissions policies at universities, many heard it as a battle cry. The department asserted its efforts related to a single complaint from 2015, not a policy direction.

Affirmative action was introduced by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to counter discriminatory hiring by federal contractors. Expanded policies eventually encompassed women and people with disabilities.

Of course white applicants resent the idea of being passed over in favour of a comparably qualified applicant of colour. Why should they be punished for the sins of their ancestors? Yet they often fail to account for the advantages conferred by the ancestry.

It is the nature of privilege to overlook how it has nurtured one’s achievements: Family connections to alumni; the freedom to pursue higher PSAT scores, while disadvantaged classmates work two jobs.

Perhaps the greater harm of affirmative action is in causing minority candidates to constantly defend their worthiness. Being branded as a “minority hire” or “filling a quota” can undermine their substantial qualifications, not only in the eyes of others, but internalized as impostor syndrome.

But the flip side of impostor syndrome is deluded entitlement: harbouring suspicion with every rejection they have been unfairly passed over for being white. Attacking affirmative nurtures this persistent sense of grievance.

Donald Trump is the king of wedge issues. Time and again, he has proven his ability to tug at threads of resentment to reveal where the social fabric is fraying. It turns out white males, born into the apex of privilege in America, are somehow its most aggrieved inhabitants.

Not to say white male Americans have no struggles. Many live in poverty. Some still pray for the return of jobs in manufacturing or coal mining. They’ve been served one trumped-up scapegoat after another: job-hogging immigrants, a raw deal under NAFTA, transgender military service members. Many accept the rhetoric of blame with an eager ear.

Nothing stirs the pot of resentment quite like affirmative action.

Admissions policies are often misunderstood as racial quotas. In 1978, in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled race can be a factor in university admissions — but not the only one. Universities shifted to a holistic review of applications, considering multiple factors.

Indeed, affirmative action policies were never intended to be permanent. “We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary,” Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote for the majority in Grutter v. Bollinger et al, in 2003.

The court reasserted the principle in another university admissions case last year, Fisher v. University of Texas. Justice Anthony Kennedy reaffirmed: “It is the university’s ongoing obligation to engage in constant deliberation and continued reflection regarding its admissions policies.”

There’s a perverse narrative in which white men are the real victims of discrimination. It’s worth remembering, the ultimate goal of affirmative action is the same as a child’s reading tutor: to no longer be needed.

Its highest hope is to be so effective it becomes obsolete.