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Affirmative Action’s “Race” Problem
If I were masochistic enough to live with the people advertising this apartment, I’d get a $50 a month discount based solely on the colour of my skin. No forms to fill out. No income declaration. No proof of historical oppression. A paper bag means test, if you will.
In Portland, Oregon, I’d qualify for a lifelong 15% discount at a spa called Luna Wellness. Why? Because “BIPOC people have been denied basic needs [like organic facials and Luna’s signature herbal massages] for far too long.“
At Blue Iris Mystery School, I’m eligible for a hefty 50% off their “Magic Self & Spirit Program,” for no better reason than that the selves and spirits of my ancestors came from sub-Saharan Africa.
And while I resent the implication that only white people can afford to pay their rent, while I’m insulted by the suggestion that my ancestry is something to be pitied, while it’s exhausting to be endlessly viewed through a lens of racial oppression, what really annoys me is how crappy these offerings are.
I mean, come on. If you’re going to pity me, at least give me something I can use.
On August 28th, 1963, the same day Martin Luther King shared his iconic dream, nine other civil rights leaders gave speeches focused primarily on ending employment discrimination. In fact, the march where King delivered his famous speech was called the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
A year later, in Why We Can’t Wait, King laid out the case for what would eventually be known as affirmative action:
…the nation must not only radically readjust its attitude toward the Negro in the compelling present but must incorporate in its planning some compensatory consideration for the handicaps he has inherited from the past.
It is impossible to create a formula for the future which does not take into account that our society has been doing something special against the Negro for hundreds of years. How then can he be absorbed into the mainstream of American life if we do not do something special for him now?
But the cruel irony of the civil rights movement is that as soon as it succeeded, as soon as it…
