What’s wrong with affirmative action – and why we need it

By L.Z. Granderson, CNN

If I had a nickel each time a white guy e-mails or tweets that I have my job because I’m black, I wouldn’t need the job, because I’d be rich.

This is at the heart of a little talked about secret regarding affirmative action: A lot of black professionals don’t like it either. Not because they think the playing field is necessarily leveled, but rather their skills and talents are constantly being slighted by whites who think their jobs were given to them solely because of their race. It’s insulting, it’s demeaning and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it, because as long as race is part of the qualification metric, the perception that the bar was lowered so that we could jump over it will persist.

There are voters who think President Obama’s success came easy because of affirmative action, overlooking the fact he’s brilliant and oh, by the way, he and the first lady were still paying off their student loans 10 years ago. I can tell you from experience, there is nothing “easy” about paying back student loans.

Yes, there is an inherent hypocrisy of having such a policy in a post civil-rights world. But it is cynical to think we’re a post-racial society just because we have a black president….

One of the elements of the infamous “47%” video that didn’t get talked about a lot was Mitt Romney’s joke that if he had Mexican heritage, he’d have “a better shot” at winning the election. That joke was followed by a comment from someone in the crowd who suggested Romney could claim to have some Native American heritage like Elizabeth Warren, to get a leg up. In what socioeconomic metric is there a quantifiable advantage to being Mexican or Native American in this country? The outcry about the push for diversity in the workplace and in college admissions would lead you to believe we’re overcompensating for the sins of the past.

But look around: Does it really look as if the populations with the highest poverty rate — blacks, Latinos and Native Americans — are just cleaning up in the game of life? True, there are certainly examples of unqualified or incompetent employees being placed in positions they shouldn’t be because of flawed decision making from white superiors trying to be compliant with their HR department. However, that’s not what affirmative action was designed to do.

Read more of Granderson’s article here.

Learn more about Affirmative Action here.