Is Affirmative Action Affirmative?

“One moves swiftly and imperceptibly from a world in which affirmative action can’t be ended because its beneficiaries are to weak to a world in which it can’t be ended because its beneficiaries are to strong.”

Christopher Caldwell
Reflections on the Revolution in Europe — Immigration, Islam, and the West – p.326

Affirmative action was a foolish policy from the very beginning because,

1.) As Caldwell’s quote above implies, once affirmative action as a policy is pursued, it is nearly impossible to discontinue since special interest groups form around such a policy in order to protect it and to defend it. Such affirmative action special interests groups become roadblocks to ending affirmative action. Such an example of this is seen in the state of California which still has affirmative action programs designed to foster the hiring of non-whites even though non-whites now form a demographic majority in California.

2.) Affirmative action is a subsidy program. Whenever the government subsidizes something they get more of what they are subsidizing. In this case what they are subsidizing are people who are less qualified filling positions that would have otherwise been filled by more qualified people. A continued pursuit of such a policy leads inevitably to a culture that is less competitive with the world than it might otherwise be.

3.) Affirmative action creates and makes race pimping a profitable enterprise. Since affirmative action assumes the inequity of those receiving affirmative action a class of people arise who have it in their interest to professionally lobby in such a way that the putative inferior status of those receiving affirmative action can never be erased. Affirmative action policy creates men like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton who exist in order to ensure that the perception is that the recipients of affirmative action never cease in being victims that need affirmative action.

4.) Affirmative action communicates to the recipients of affirmative action that they can not compete without the scales being weighted and rigged in their direction. Affirmative action then creates a psychology in the recipient class that perpetuates the very inequity that it was created in order to remove.

5.) Affirmative action communicates to the majority population that those who receive affirmative action are indeed inferior. What else are they to believe given that the premise behind affirmative action is that the recipients of it advance not on the merits of their ability but rather because their inability doesn’t allow them to compete on a level playing field. In this case affirmative action perpetuates the perception of the inequity that it is seeking to address to the point where even if affirmative action was answering the problem of inequity nobody in the non victim class would believe it since the ongoing necessity of affirmative action continues to testify to the inferiority of those who it is extended to.

Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him. View all posts by jetbrane