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Affirmative Action At Work
By Timothy Rollins
June 5, 2003

For the stink made about the virtues of affirmative action, let's look at its alleged gains in contemporary American society. For openers, we've come to a point that job applications cannot ask a person's ethnicity - nor should we, for ideally one should be hired on their merits and competence and not on the color of one's skin, though we all know in reality that different factors come into play out in the real world.

The whole notion of affirmative action was implemented as a means to encourage minority hiring; what happened along the way was the law was twisted so as to REQUIRE minority hiring in such a manner that denied private employers the right to choose who they hired; if you were in the public sector, you were doubly stuck, especially if unions were involved.

Many see affirmative action as a product from the devil's workshop; it is viewed as a perversion seen as coming straight from the entitlement mentality. It is a direct repudiation of a key principle of biblical teaching where God is no respecter of persons. It also flies in the face of the Constitution of the United States wherein 'all men are created equal.'

Politically correct forces in this country - (liberals), are so obsessed in their vision (or version) of a socialist utopia for this nation, that despite the unconstitutionality of their methods, they are destroying this great land in the process, and they don't care either.

With affirmative action having dug deep in America, we've seen it go amok as well. Perhaps nowhere has it been more visible than in the media. Yes, we've been watching the exposure of Jayson Blair and his fall from grace at The New York Times. His truth stretching and outright fabrication led to the collapse of the house of cards he had been building for some time. Due to complete lack of policing by his superiors, this was allowed to go unchecked for an extensive period. Could that lack of policing by superiors at the Gray Lady be because they feared invoking the wrath of the self-appointed black leadership?

Keep in mind Blair isn't the only example of affirmative action gone haywire in the media. Remember Janet Cooke, the disgraced ex-reporter for The Washington Post? Her treachery was even worse than Blair's. Cooke was a reporter for the Post and like any other reporter, was making her mark. She wrote an article in the September 29, 1980 edition of the Post titled 'Jimmy's World.' In it, she detailed the life of 'Jimmy,' a young boy who apparently became a victim of the thriving heroin trade that was devastating the low-income Washington D.C. neighborhoods. She wrote, "Jimmy is 8 years old and a third-generation heroin addict, a precocious little boy with sandy hair, velvety brown eyes and needle marks freckling the baby-smooth skin of his thin brown arms." She noted that Jimmy aspired to be a heroin dealer when he grew up. Made for a real compelling story.

Sure enough, anyone with a pulse knew this story was going to generate heat, and it did. Local city government went hunting for him to the point where they were getting ready to roll up every 8-year old boy's sleeves looking for needle marks. Meanwhile, rumors began swirling that 'Jimmy' didn't exist, and Cooke had simply made him up - a sheer fabrication. Suffice it to say, the Post stood by her until it all broke loose on April 13, 1981, when Cooke and the Post were awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her work on 'Jimmy's World.'

During this time, editors at the Post learned that Cooke had padded her resume about her educational credentials, and confronted her about the story. Under pressure, she admitted she never met Jimmy and that much of her story was indeed fiction. Humiliated, Cooke, like Blair, resigned in disgrace and the Post returned the Pulitzer Prize.

So in the end, what can be learned from all this? That affirmative action - either in principle or in practice, is indeed the spawn of Satan and has no place in the workplace, either in America or anywhere else. All it accomplished was the exact opposite of what it intended, and that was reverse discrimination, which in and of itself is illegal as a rule of law as well. To discriminate against someone for the high crime of being white and male is as repugnant as discrimination is against one who is either female or of color.

Wouldn't you agree?