July 3, 2023

In the late 1960s, affirmative action was advanced because women and minorities, with similar skills to those of White men, were being discriminated against in landing jobs. The object of affirmative action was to level the playing field for people with similar skill levels. Over the years studies have shown that women actually have benefited most from affirmative action, not African Americans.

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But over the years affirmative action has evolved into a matter strictly of race: Black people get preferential treatment, period. Why has it evolved so?

Since its origin, liberals, both White and Black, have actively denigrated African American students.

First, President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty began to cripple the Black family. African American women could get more money from Uncle Sam than they could from their working husbands. Actually, if these husbands were working, their families could not have access to government benefits. Fathers left the home, leaving the raising of children to mothers and grandparents. By 2021, over four million African American kids live with only their mothers.

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Second, overwhelmingly Democrat-led cities promised hope, but ran down their cities creating increasing crime and slums: environments of hopelessness.

Third, for the past several years schools have been teaching Critical Race Theory, in which Black students are told they are systemically inferior and will never be able to compete fairly with White students.

Liberals and Black activists hate the removal of affirmative action for racial purposes. They contend that African American children are underprivileged and need racial bias in the college selection process. They say these students are underprivileged because they are poor and live in high crime areas. Columbia University’s Poverty Tracker, though, contradicted this contention. It revealed that 23 percent of New York City’s Asian population was impoverished compared to 19 percent of the city’s Black population. And that in New York City, Asians’ relatively high poverty rate comes with exceptionally low crime rates.

Ironically the affirmative action case was brought before the Supreme Court by Asian Americans.

So why are Black students so disadvantaged? According to the Census Bureau, most Black-intensive school districts get the most amount of money for education, averaging over $28,000 per pupil. Is the problem more about Black culture? But Black leaders and activists do not want to acknowledge that. Rather they want preferential treatment for black students.

Yet Professor John Ogbu studied the issue of Black student underperformance and reported: a) Black students readily admitted they didn’t work as hard as Whites, took easier classes and read fewer books. And why? Black students said, “It was not cool to be successful or to work hard or to show how smart you are.”