As it relates to affirmative action, the underlying issue, which I have not heard anyone name, is the pervasive assumption that Black people are not/cannot be better or more qualified than any white person or a model minority.
Black people achieving or acquiring success is always assumed to have been given and not earned. Gifted and not worked for. A benefit and not a right. A handout rather than our just due. And always at the expense, detriment and insult of a better and more qualified white person or model minority.
Darrell Hamilton II
For instance, I have heard conservative pundits use the past and present racial demographics of professional sports to illustrate the importance of meritocracy. The point being that the all-white professional sports teams of the past are not as good as the predominantly Black-dominated sports teams at present. The assumption being when it comes to “athletics” (not “sports,” because some sports Black people are not smart or disciplined enough to play) is that Black people, broadly, are better athletes than white people, which is why Black athletes are predominant in sports such as the NBA and NFL.
This is an assumption that white people, by and large, are OK with. That Black people are tougher, meaner or more finessed than the rest of the world. But what white people and the rest of the world are not OK with is that a Black person could be smarter, work harder, be more qualified or simply equally smart, hard-working and qualified as a white person or a model minority.
Any time a Black person gains access to something a white person believes should be theirs, the backlash is that a Black person received it unworthily. Or that there is somehow an agenda and conspiracy taking place to elevate Black people over white people. At best, with the intent to give Black people something we don’t deserve; or, at worst, to secretly work to erase and exterminate the white race.
This is how racism always has worked. (Look no further than the hoopla surrounding Disney casting a Black woman to be “The Little Mermaid.” Critics tried to play it off as being about nostalgia, but the issue is that no one conceptualized that Halle Bailey earned the role and out-auditioned a white, red-haired actress. Therefore, Disney is now “woke” and part of a larger conspiracy to erase white people by taking away their fictions.)
“The assumption is still that we are lazy, but we are endowed with certain ‘gifts’ for physical activity that enables us to excel in physical activity.”
White supremacy always has been OK accepting that Black people are more “naturally gifted” when it comes to physical pursuits than white people, which is why we excel as athletes. But notice how the assumption still is not that we work harder to excel. That Lebron James, Steph Curry, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Patrick Mahomes, Jerry Rice, Jim Brown out-work their white contemporaries. The assumption is still that we are lazy, but we are endowed with certain “gifts” for physical activity that enables us to excel in physical activity.
This is just a remix of the same narrative that justified slavery. The narrative that Black people were created by God for the express use of our physical labor and when it is taken a step further, it is physical labor endowed to us by God for the express use by and for white people’s profit and entertainment.
But when it comes to merit-based education and corporate employment, those come against the same age-old opinions about Black people. Now, society can stomach a few exceptions, a few exceptional Negros. Not a talented tenth but a talented 10. And when Black people, as a collective, begin to elevate and progress in education and in corporate business in too large a mass and too quickly, then that is evidence of a conspiracy. And what is disheartening is how other minority groups feed into the narrative.
For Asians who feel they are discriminated against in education, I cannot understand how that may feel. But understand that the feeling Black people are the cause or enemies in any of this is the white supremacist narrative that has been bought into by the rest of the world. To think or assume that someone who is Asian is inherently more qualified (read intelligent) than the Black person who was accepted into an Ivy League school instead is the white supremacist lie. Not to mention the racist assumption about what it means to be Asian (read intelligent).
“How can the Constitution be colorblind when it directly says slaves (Black people) are counted as three-fifths a person?”
Undoubtedly, everyone deserves equal and fair opportunity for education. But Black people aren’t the punching bags for the disenfranchised’s frustration. (Even though we always have been while simultaneously riding on the back of our struggles and the wave of our freedom movements to gain more civil liberties.)
Whether you are Black, white, Asian, Latino or indigenous, more should be said about the affirmative action for legacy students who are able to buy their admission into education and take spots from more deserving people from our communities.
Taking down affirmative action only gives the illusion of more equality, all the while making boogeymen out of Black people. Thus, reinforcing a racist narrative. It also gives the illusion that America — and the Constitution — is supposed to be seen as “colorblind.” Also reinforcing a racist narrative. How can the Constitution be colorblind when it directly says slaves (Black people) are counted as three-fifths a person?
Taking down affirmative action is the first step in a 50-plus-year agenda to dismantle the guardrails that have kept our nation safe from reinforced segregation and establishing educational and economic parity between all Americans.
Darrell Hamilton II serves as administrative pastor at First Baptist Church of Jamaica Plain, Mass., and as Protestant chaplain at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass. He is an ordained Baptist minister and graduate of Wake Forest School of Divinity. His ministry and leadership are focused on advancing diversity, inclusion and advocacy for the vulnerable and marginalized to inspire greater justice and love for all people.