Letter proves white privilege is the future of racism

I write in response to Joe Bialek, whose letter to the editor on July 5 (“Affirmative action unnecessary, improper”) championed the recent ruling by the conservative majority in the U.S. Supreme Court limiting the use of race in assigning students to public schools. I think it was the four Supreme Court justices who got it right, not the five. Of course, the minority often loses. But this isn’t a letter about affirmative action.\nBialek says, “Anywhere you look in the United States, minorities are well-represented,” and it is true that people of color are better represented than whites in many places in the United States. There are a disproportionate number of people of color stuck in predatory mortgages, in public school special education programs, serving their country in the military overseas and locked up in jails and prisons. The last time I took note of the demographics of the Capitol building, it seemed that the country still had a way to go toward reaching its dream of racial equality. But this isn’t a letter about affirmative action.\nBut, since Bialek mentions that affirmative action has outlived its purpose, I’ll take a stab at countering. Here you’ve got one program of awarding preferences based on race for the past 40 years trying to undo the injustices of a 500-year program of privileging whites over people of all other races on the American continent. Let’s face it – this is our history. \nBialek writes that “it is unfair to award preference based on race when all other qualifications are equal.” Yet this is exactly how a sneaky thing called white privilege works. It works this way in our mortgage companies, our schools and our courts. White privilege is the legacy of 500 years of affirmative action designed to give white people in America an advantage over others. I’d like to abolish that system of race-based awards, too, but this isn’t a letter about affirmative action.\nThis is a letter about racism. The racism in Bialek’s comment, “minorities have been given enough time to allow ‘the cream to rise to the top,’” is what pushed me to respond to his letter. Lurking in this comment is belief that those with a fair complexion will naturally rise, while those who are darker will naturally fall to the lower rungs of the ladder. It doesn’t matter if that’s not what he meant. The point is, it’s what he said.