America's Future
The debate over affirmative action and the alleged disparity in opportunities for whites and blacks overlooks one thing -- not all blacks are alike, and neither are all whites.
by F.R. DuplantierIn a recent Wall Street Journal editorial, former U.S. Navy Secretary James Webb pointed out that "differences among white ethnic groups are huge, fed by cultural tradition, the time and geography of migrations to the country, and . . . the tendency of white Americans to discriminate against other whites in favor of their own class and culture." Webb cited a 1974 study by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center that divided white Americans into 17 distinct ethnic and religious backgrounds.
The study ranked these 17 separate groups according to their educational and financial status, and the results were not what you might have expected. "Contrary to prevailing mythology, the vaunted White Anglo-Saxon Protestants were even then not at the top," said Webb. Jews, in fact, led the list, followed by Irish, Italian, German, and Polish Catholics, in that order. Educational attainment and income levels within each group were consistent throughout the country, which would seem to indicate that differences among the groups are "culturally rather than geographically based."
According to that 1974 study, white families at the top of this list earned nearly $5000 more per year than white families at the bottom. The income difference between whites and blacks as a whole, at the time, was less than $4000. The obvious conclusion, according to Webb, is that, "even prior to the major affirmative action programs, there was a greater variation within 'white America' than there was between 'white America' and black America, and the whites at the bottom were in approximately the same situation as blacks."
The whites at the bottom are the ones who have felt the brunt of affirmative action, at the very time when a shrinking industrial base and a declining public school system are diminishing their prospects for self-improvement. But sympathy for their plight is not in fashion. "The prevailing attitude has been to ridicule whites who have the audacity to complain about their reduced status," said Webb, and to rationalize policies that discriminate against them as remedies for a "past wrong."
Webb says the working-class white male "sees a government system that seems bent on belittling the basis of his existence, and has established a set of laws and regulations that often keep him from competing. His ever-more-isolated leaders have mandated an 'equal opportunity' bureaucracy in the military, government and industry . . . whose sole function is to report 'political incorrectness' and to encourage the promotion of literally everyone but him and his kind." The current, coercive celebration of "diversity" has no appeal to the white male at the bottom of the ladder. To him, diversity is "a code word used to exclude him . . . no matter the extent of his qualifications and no matter the obstacles he has had to overcome."
America's Future