Affirmative Action, Lost in the Progressive Hall of Mirrors

what does it say, when fear of giving offense keeps you from stating your values?

I pitched a piece to a magazine recently about the common conservative insult that Kamala Harris specifically, and many minorities in general, have only “DEI” to thank for their success, calling Harris a “DEI candidate.” As I stressed in the pitch, this is of course racist terminology designed only to inflame. It’s also a good example of the stupid way that terms become memes and then are applied more and more loosely; Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion and affirmative action are both related to race and both associated with college, but they are genuinely very different things. In any event, the core of the pitch was this: in angrily dismissing the idea that Harris could have been the beneficiaries of any of the affirmative action programs that they themselves support, many liberal Democrats were inadvertently casting scorn on the whole concept of affirmative action. It’s racist and false to say that anyone gets a boost because of such programs! But if that’s true, then… what do those programs do?

I have no idea whether Harris ever actually benefitted from diversity programs, but if she did, good. And either way, if you think affirmative action is good, you should proudly state that of course minority applicants get into colleges (and achieve in other ways) thanks to admissions programs dedicated to promoting diversity. That’s the whole point. Affirmative action is perhaps the only policy program I can think of where the supporters of said program find it inherently offensive to frankly reflect the most basic definition of what such a program is for. Which I find bizarre and counterproductive; we should be proud of the programs we support! Simultaneously saying that we should have affirmative action and similar programs in place, but acting as though it’s bigoted to mention their impact - what they actually do - is a good example of the progressive snake eating its own tail. We don’t do this with public school or Medicaid, and we shouldn’t do it with diversity-enriching programs either. “It’s offensive to say that people on food stamps were able to access that food because of food stamps!” Just a really strange place we’re in.

Editor said no to the pitch, specifically because I was supposedly saying that Kamala Harris really was a DEI candidate. Which is not true. I was saying, instead, that to the degree that she may have been the beneficiary of these programs, that’s an example of the program functioning as it was intended. She became Vice President of the United States! Clearly she’s flourished in her personal accomplishments. To hide from the fact that affirmative action actually helps actual people to flourish is to completely hamstring our ability to intelligently defend such programs. More, though, it’s an artifact of a modern progressivism that’s utterly lost in its own pathologies, so scared of being called racist that it shies away from one of our most consequential anti-racist policies, so dogged by years of conservative mockery that it’s become incapable of simply and unapologetically stating its own values.