The Myth Of Reverse Discrimination

In the 1960s, the United States government introduced the concept of affirmative action in order to stop employer discrimination based on gender and/or race. Since then, affirmative action has become a controversial measure whose constitutional legitimacy has been questioned and whose very impact has become questionable.

There is a misconception — fostered by stories like that of Abigail Adams, who opened a Supreme Court-heard case against Louisiana State University in 2012 when she felt her admissions rejection was based on her being white — that affirmative action has resulted in reverse discrimination, the idea that majorities are being encroached upon by minorities.

“Critics of affirmative action argue that it denies educational or employment access to whites in order to favor a lesser qualified minority member,” says Wolfson Campus sociology professor Alejandro Angee. “But this is not true, and we must remember that increasing the chances of success for members of a minority group does not equal a decrease in the chances for a member of a majority group.”

In fact, affirmative action has yet to complete its original objective.

I was sitting down on a bench at a Metrorail station when I overheard an argument going on between a Hispanic man and a black security officer who wasn’t letting him through to the trains because he did not have enough credit on his EASY Card. The Hispanic man noticed how the same security officer let another older black woman through even though she didn’t have credit on her EASY Card. Visibly upset, the Hispanic man stormed off with his female companion, who was urging him to let it go. The pair drew increasingly closer to the bench I was sitting at, meaning I heard it loud and clear when he said, in Spanish, that if he had been black, the security guard likely would’ve let him enter the station.

No amount of government policy will correct this kind of racial bigotry, even in a world where affirmative action has been alive and well for decades.

For that to happen, people in the United States need to reappreciate that now, more than ever, a person who wants to succeed in this country can most definitely do so independent of the individual struggles that he or she may have to face.

Professor Angee validates affirmative action in today’s America, saying it helps fix “large gap[s] in university enrollment and completion by members of ethnic minorities, as well as labor related disparities in terms of employment-based diversity, types of occupation, and wages”. The things affirmative action fixes are socioeconomic inequalities natural of a capitalist system where success is inherently unequal amongst its constituents.

Leveling the playing field this way doesn’t take away from what the spirit of the United States is. In fact, arguing that reverse discrimination is real is a folly that seeks to supplant the present availability of opportunity with the harsh memories of previous times when discrimination kept that opportunity from being available.