(x-posted at Social Science Lite)
I recently went on a road trip with my uncle, traveling from Boston to New York for my brother’s high school graduation. As we drove through western Massachusetts, our conversation eventually drifted to employment and the economy. In what would prove to be a fascinating discussion, my uncle began to recount his first job interview after college. He graduated from Northeastern University in the ‘70s—right around the time President Nixon institutionalized affirmative action and quotas served as the nation’s predominant employment policy. He had worked in Northeastern’s admissions office for a few years, so when a full-time position opened up at the University of Michigan’s admissions office, he made the 14 hour drive halfway across the country to interview for the job.
A funny thing happened during his interview, however. According to my uncle, his interviewer immediately apologized as he entered the room. ‘Look, I hate to say this,’ the interviewer said. ‘But there’s no way we’re going to be able to hire you. If you were a woman or black, I’d hire you on the spot. You are totally qualified, but we’ve got to fill our quotas.’ Naturally, my uncle was none too pleased, commenting plainly (but forcefully) that acts of “reverse discrimination” are unfair. I did my best to defend affirmative action policies, discussing their historical necessity, noting their negligible affect on white male employment, and even waxing philosophical about the entitlement associated with staking claim and ownership over falsely constructed “spots” in colleges or the workforce. It was all to no avail, though. Cliché as the phrase is, my uncle was “passed up” for the job, and there wasn’t much I could say.
We’d be naïve to trivialize my uncle’s experience or write it off as just another “reverse discrimination” fairytale. It happened. It’s a reality. The problem was not that this was an exaggeration; instead, it was that my uncle forgot about his lifetime of advantage as he harped on that one, single experience.
See, claiming reverse discrimination is a lot like recounting your golf score. It’s always the one or two bad rounds that leave the deepest, most painful impressions. You always remember the bogey on the 9th hole, but never the birdie on the 10th. Somehow, the abundance of good holes are taken for granted, while the one or two missteps are amplified and taken as indicative of the entire round. Sure, my uncle remembers getting passed up for the job with the University of Michigan—an event that (probably) happened the way he said it did. But, in the process of recounting this single experience, he forgot about a lifetime of job interviews in which he directly benefited from his whiteness or his gender. In all the jobs my uncle interviewed for, how many times were applicants immediately rejected for having “black” sounding names? How many women were turned away because employers didn’t think they could handle the stress of the job? How many times did my uncle’s employment prospects benefit from acts of statistical discrimination that weeded out potentially qualified minority applicants?
Still, many others that hide behind the “reverse discrimination” mantra often have few, if any, personal experiences to justify their outrage. But the golf analogy still fits. These folks are the ones that throw a fit over their buddy’s 10-stroke handicap. That’s not fair, they complain. But in their moral grandstanding, they forget all of their privileges that negate—and even surpass—their buddy’s handicap. These privileges may include the country club membership that afforded them hours of practice on the course, the childhood golf lessons their parents paid for, or the hand-me-down Callaways their father didn’t need anymore after he got his new set of clubs. Their buddy with the 10-stroke handicap was just allowed to join the country club recently, had parents that couldn’t afford to invest in clubs or other activities, and never inherited any valuable assets. In short, the two golfers didn’t begin the round on equal footing.
With some folks, claims of reverse discrimination are proxies for implicit assumptions of black or brown intellectual inferiority. The operative word here, however, is some. Other folks have had very real experiences with so-called “reverse discrimination”—it’s just that these isolated instances fill a disproportionate share of their memory. The real problem with the “reverse discrimination” debate (besides the logically incoherent label “reverse discrimination”—what is the reverse of discrimination anyway? Not discrimination?) is our inability to honestly discuss the issue. The question shouldn’t be whether or not this incident—or others like it—actually occurred. Instead, we need to ask ourselves, how often does this happen, and to what effect? Such acts rarely occur anymore, and the effect is almost always minor or marginal. And, of course, the folks that decry “reverse discrimination” have almost always benefited from other instances of privilege. They just tend to forget about them.
In the 1970′s, a fast food franchise near where I live used to hire teens, then lay them off before they could begin to get benefits. The girls were let go because “they just weren’t working out” and the boys were let go because “the government is forcing us to replace you with a black girl”. The place never hired a single person of color, but they were pretty successful in getting a whole lot of white teenage boys angry with affirmative action.
well other than the fact that i totally agree with you (as much as a lebanese can) i wonder if your uncle, and everyone he metaphorically represents, think why they HAD to hire black individuals or women? how come they have so little blacks and women that they cannot afford to hire white men anymore?
How many over-qualified minority members had to be rejected before so that now that the law interfered there is no way they can hire (another) white man?
“You don’t know how good you have it” isn’t really comforting to someone who’s unemployed. Isn’t there a better answer than instructing someone to get up on a cross and be martyred to correct racial inequality?
“Isn’t there a better answer than instructing someone to get up on a cross and be martyred to correct racial inequality?”
And that happened where? I do believe the good Uncle went on to live a full and successful life, no?
Afterall, being turned away from one job does not negate a degree from Northeastern.
Okay, granted my phrasing was a little melodramatic, but if you’re unemployed and this happens to you, I think it’s a fair evaluation of the way it feels.
but, Flash, the question this post was asking is why white men feel such entitlement to all positions on a team that not getting picked for one, even that giving up one, feels like getting on a cross.
You’re mixing up personal/individual. It’s like anecdotes in reverse. If you want to challenge his specific story of reverse discrimination, you can’t use the general rule that he benefited because of his race.
Obviously whites in general benefit hugely from discrimination. But just like there are outliers everywhere, a particular person may or not have benefited hugely from discrimination.
So it is fair and accurate to say “well, sure, maybe he got screwed. But other white people people have benefited hugely, so he’s just an outlier.” I agree 100% with that statement, FWIW. It’s just not fair and accurate to say “well, he didn’t get screwed because white people in general have benefited hugely.”
The whole reverse discrimination thing has always sounded weird to me. If anything it is discrimination as well. Perhaps the people the push the reverse discrimination idea are the ones that have taken on the notion that since discrimination only works one way that when it goes the other way it is the reverse of the standard definition hence it is reverse discrimination? I don’t know.
but, Flash, the question this post was asking is why white men feel such entitlement to all positions on a team…
But is it always entitlement?
The last paragraph of this post almost sounds like it is trying to say that since said person might have enjoyed advantages in the past its okay that they are sometimes looked over.
Instead, we need to ask ourselves, how often does this happen, and to what effect?
Is this an attempt to say that since it might not happen that often then it doesn’t matter that it happened?
I dunno… why doesn’t everyone feel entitled to those positions? I mean, I understand the structural forces that create the impression and partial reality that not all positions are opened to members of communities that lack privilege, but isn’t a better response to open up access, rather than give people with current access the impression that it’s being taken away from them? synergy, optimism, positivity…
I’m a woman of color. My run in with *reverse discrimination* was when I beat out a white person for a position based on MERIT but she believes it was because of race. I graduated early- she didn’t. I was a well rounded student- she wasn’t. I did unpaid but highly competitve and coveted internships, she refused to *work for free.* Ask er why she didn’t get the job and she will SWEAR its because I’m a minority and she’s white. Someone explain to me how the fuck THAT isn’t entitlement. I know all of this because we went to the same school and I actually mentored her into passing grades. Pound for pound she was not qualified save for the clout our school carries.
VERY often in the corporate world its WHO YOU KNOW that gets your foot in the door. On average, a hite person will know lots of white people, a black person will know lots of black people, a laina person will know lts of latina people, an asian person will know lots of asian people so forth an so on. WHen you consider that even the most open minded of white people who went to the best schools and qualified to be hiring managers in big companies went to schools that typically has VERY low enrollment rates of minotiy students- most of their peers were not people of color. When you consider that many of these people were born in middle to upper class families in middle to upper class neighborhoods, something that also is a world away from the average minority family- most of their neighbors were white. So when MOST of the people you know and love are white and you’re in a position to hire who passes up their buddy for an equally or slightly higher qualifying minority? NOT MANY if ever.
If this was solely about a man bitching about *losing* a job HE NEVER HAD TO BEGIN WITH to a qualified woman there wouldn’t even be a discussion.
“The last paragraph of this post almost sounds like it is trying to say that since said person might have enjoyed advantages in the past its okay that they are sometimes looked over.”
No, it sounds like the author is saying that because that person might have enjoyed *unfair* advantages in the past they should not continue to be *unfairly* favoured.
Racial and gender quotas are not the answer to disproportionate representation.
I reject that it is EVER okay to set quotas; answering a biased recruitment policy with a biased recruitment policy?
RhinoRyan, to say we shouldn’t replace one biased policy with another is to assume that the system minorities are up against and the plight of the white guy who didn’t get a job once are in some way equivalent. They’re not.
Hirers aren’t going to end discrimination on their own. What “answer” do you propose? Not worrying about it unless it looks like it might happen to you is not helping.
The way to fix discrimination is to not discriminate. Throw people who racially discriminate into jail, shut down their institutions, etc.
I’m curious as to why liberals, instead of trying to fix the root cause of the problem by eliminating discrimination at its core, are instead OK with a 2nd round of discrimination against the so-called “powerful majority.”
It does a disservice to everybody, minorities included. Aggressively pursuing anti-discrimination cases would be FAR MORE VALUABLE to the cause of justice rather than the token job they get thru affirmative action.
there is no such thing as “reverse discrimination.” its all discrimination, whether aimed at a black person OR a white.
[...] The Reverse of Discrimination is “Not Discrimination” [...]
I agree with Azalea, and thumb my nose at the idea that discrimination is just being a bigot to anyone for facts they cannot change.
Discrimination has to have a big dose of institutional and historical inequality and power-abuse in order for it to stick and have lasting everyday consequences. It has to posit one group as the norm and the other group as the “Other”. A poor kid in vandalizing a BMW parked outside is simply immoral. A rich kid brutalizing a homeless person for his enjoyment is an exercise of privilege. There’s a huge difference. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what it is.
Maybe once I might have been passed up for a position because someone of color applied. I doubt it. Maybe I would have thought it was because they were of color and I was white that they were hired. I could have brushed aside the fact that it’s very likely that they were more qualified and they had to try harder to get that way (racism tends to have the effect of making every single advancement all the harder). That would be privileged of me.
Maybe I’ve been hired somewhere because I was a woman. I doubt it. I can’t recall any time in which my gender was an actual boon on my application. Sure, people swore up and down that it was, but I never saw the supposed fruits of “reverse discrimination” against men. Time and time again, I’d put my resume up against men who had the backing of male professors and chums and businessmen who were all more powerful and noted than my paltry handful of women who overcame the gender discrimination in my field or a man who was willing to look past the fact of my breasts. And they won out, almost every time. It was either that or my disability or my orientation, or my class. These things all carried their manifest disadvantages, and gave people privilege over me, every day.
And for the life of me, I can’t recall anytime where I didn’t have to fight tooth and nail for the paltry “hand-outs” that the privileged gave me to make up for the fact of their privilege. They got to go home thinking that they’ve been forced into giving me a leg up against people like them that I didn’t deserve or earn. I got to go home to a resume still unpadded as ever, knowing that they thought all my achievements were unearned or because of people like them, the self-righteous bastards, and that it would still never be near enough to level the playing field. And I knew that wherever I applied next month or next year, they’d probably give the position to someone more like them, with a background more like them, who got to do things that they did because they were not like me.
If anyone actually thinks that one moment of “reverse discrimination” that they cannot prove is equivalent to the wrong of a lifetime of the shit I’ve faced, I have some land on the moon I’d like to sell you.
why doesn’t everyone feel entitlement? perhaps because yes affirmative action is still necessary. and it’s not just about some entitlement. if the statement is true that they needed to hire a minority, then many many white men already have positions. they already filled their entitlement.
Josephine, you lost me at “I’m curious as to why liberals…” I stopped reading your post after that.
I’m with Azalea and Jenn in the society we live in now: being white opens enough doors for me (in a variety of ways) that having some closed because of that isn’t really like martyrdom.