The defenders of perfect meritocracy are whinging again. This time, it's Harold Ford they want to take down a peg.
I guess that people don't understand black power. It's clear that they don't respect it, and that's perfectly understandable. There is plenty of company in the crowd of whitefolks who assert (with grating frequency and volume) that everyone should go to the same schools and take the same tests and follow the same paths of rightousness as their long suffering immigrant parents. We've heard that one before. There will always be somebody white saying that blacks don't deserve what they get. So long as they continue this bleating and drop the words 'affirmative action' somewhere in their complaint, the American mainstream seems not to mind terribly.
I mind.
It was none other than Chris Rock who said the rule of American success is that only white people can profit from pain. If you are black, you have to be good, and whatever you do has to be positive and uplifting. If you profit from pain and are discovered, not only does your ass get kicked, your black ass gets kicked. There is a difference between an ass kicking and a black ass kicking, because a black ass kicking serves as a public service announcement. That is to say it is terroristic.
Today, Donald Rumsfeld is on the verge of an ass kicking. I think Cambone, one of his underlings, will get the ass kicking. But it won't be a black ass kicking. It won't call into question the judgement of the individuals who got him to his position. It won't tar the institution. Those things happen only when the black man screws up.
Q: Who let you in here, nigger?
A: Affirmative Action, sir.
Q: If you screw up, it's your ass!
A: I only expect that I be treated the same as anyone else.
Q: HA! You don't get that kind of equality boy.
A: Why not?
Q: The boy don't understand why not. Because, dumbass, you got here on Affirmative Action.
A: So?
Q: So!? Do I have to explain everything? Affirmative Action makes you a second-class citizen. Don't you know that boy? It ain't the color of your skin, you see. It's your participation in the corrupt racist system.
A: It wasn't corrupt and racist before Affirmative Action?
Q: Shutup and be glad you're here. I ask the questions.
In order to perpetuate the myth that Affirmative Action is a corrupt, racist influence on society, one must assert that the remedy is worse than the cure. It's not surprising that people arrive at such a twisted conclusion. It's precisely the same kind of logic that opposes the war and occupation of Iraq. Now that Saddam Hussein is gone (now that the Civil Rights Act is passed), all the people who agitated for it need to go home and leave us alone. But enough with the analogies.
The racial resentment attending the presence of Uppity Negroes is nothing new. Whatever their life experience, it will continue to be the benefit of Affirmative Action which will take the credit or blame for their success as soon as their beneficiary status can be proven. But the very fact and presence of Affirmative Action exists because it is a vote, it is a powerful force in society that everyone in society does not get, nor participate in. In that way it is like a religious scholarship. Its intent is to give someone a leg up, to boost them higher than they would get otherwise. It's a different breed of horse.
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