White Male Beneficiaries

In the last seventy years of social engineering, the vast majority of direct beneficiaries of affirmative action policies were not minorities; they were white males. Preferential social policies for those in need were not invented by civil rights leaders. Under Franklin Roosevelt, whom most white Americans still revere, the New Deal embarked upon a massive affirmative action approach to social crisis. With the critical exception of segregation, Americans approached their social problems -- unemployment, poverty of senior citizens, re-entry needs of veterans and GIs, farmers needing price supports -- through planned social engineering. The post World-War II Marshall Plan, a plan that provided billions of dollars for training and jobs, was a massive affirmative action plan for Europe. Former enemies got free training programs in Europe that were denied Black GIs at home in America.

The New Deal concepts became unpopular only after they were applied to the crisis and effects of segregation. It was not affirmative action itself, but the extension of affirmative action to minorities and women, that caused the backlash.

As white men whose own families got free medical care, unquestioned access to higher education through the GI Bill, who shared in the social uplift of the New Deal and Fair Deal, members of “Angry White Guys For Affirmative Action” support affirmative action for those who are still left out.

There is a normal tendency in most of us to overlook the social props, the network of special benefits on which we and our families depend. The late Mitch Snyder, advocate for the homeless, once gave an address to an affluent, white audience. He asked members in the auditorium: “Who lives in federally subsidized housing?” No one raised a hand. But then he asked homeowners to identify themselves. All hands went up, after which he pointed out that homeowners are subsidized. The Treasury gives up $46 billion each year to homeowner deductions in a system that predominately benefits people who earn more than $50,000 a year.

Tax breaks for home buyers may not be wrong. What is wrong is the smug psychology of the Bushites, the Rehnquists, who take advantage of all kinds of breaks for themselves while denying affirmative action for the most oppressed areas of society.

Affirmative action is already part of the fabric of American life. We are all bound together in a vast network of affirmative action, of mutual support systems we take for granted. It is hypocritical and profoundly wrong to call affirmative action for minorities “racism in reverse,” while treating affirmative action for bankers, farmers, white men of power, as entitlements.

There isn't a white judge on the U.S. Supreme Court that hasn't benefited from affirmative action.