Affirmative Anger At Affirmative Action
By: H. Elizabeth Falk
Tags: White Privilege, Race, Culture, Racism, Meritocracy

My father was a small business owner; he ran a few auto repair shops and gas stations in a small Midwestern city. His company employed a few dozen part time cashiers, a few mechanics and a full time bookkeeper/office manager. Once my father hired a woman I’ll call Lisa as his new bookkeeper. She was the daughter of one of my parent’s friends.

My father told me that he thought it was a “good investment” to hire her. He explained that Lisa got married when she was 18 and her marriage did not work out; she had three young children and her ex-husband was making her life difficult. Lisa had been working at the local grocery store in the bakery department and was struggling to get by. Her only job skill was decorating cakes but he said he hired her because he knew her character and work ethic was good because he knew her family.

My father gave Lisa several new job skills that are highly marketable along with valuable work experience in a management role. His company was small but Lisa could take what she learned there and build a professional career. Nothing about her background or experience qualified her for the job. She got the job and the opportunity to change the entire trajectory of her life simply because of who her parents where.

I doubt most people would fault my father for giving a chance to a young single mother who was down on her luck. It was a kind and generous thing to do. It was a smart business move too. He didn’t have to pay her as much as an experienced bookkeeper and he gained a loyal employee who was grateful for the opportunity. There is nothing wrong with hiring someone who isn’t qualified for a job and training them. And friends helping friends as a part of business, well that happens all the time, every day.

Here is the problem, my father doesn’t have any Black, Indigenous, Hispanic or Asian friends or acquaintances. His entire life, like most White people in America, has always been highly segregated. Almost every student and teacher at every school he attended was White. Nearly every business associate and vendor he knew was White. The professional associations he joined had virtually all White members. His neighbors, friends and acquaintances were all White. My father is not unique, this is still true for the vast majority of White people in America.

It’s common for People to do favors for people they know but usually it’s not as dramatic as the way my father helped Lisa. They may pass a resume along to a hiring manager at their job, they may refer a client to a small business, they may let someone know about a special program or opportunity. They might put in a good word for someone and that may end up being just enough to break a tie between two equally qualified candidates. White people provide Affirmative Action for other White people all the time, we just don’t call it that. We call it helping a friend out.

Since White people mostly only know White people in their social and professional circles, they often only help other White people get ahead. BIPOC folks are far less likely to know someone who owns a small business or has a job in upper management at a company, or knows about special opportunities because mostly White people are in those positions. Affirmative Action was created as a way to artificially create a small advantage in a few circumstances similar to the help that naturally comes from connections and relationships that people already have with each other.

I can certainly understand why Lisa or someone like her would think she didn’t have any White privilege and believe she didn’t benefit from systemic racism. She worked very hard as my father’s bookkeeper. She raised three children mostly on her own. She had a modest middle class upbringing in a small rural community. Yet she was given at least one advantage in life that could pull her out of poverty. There is no way that a Black woman who had only worked in a bakery would have been given that advantage because my father doesn’t have a personal relationship with any Black people.