Race

Woo boy, race continues to be a hot button issue in the U.S.  Despite promises (and expectations) of a "post-racial society" with our first black President, race continues to divide many Americans.

Neither party nor its supporters can claim moral high ground on race with partisans exploiting race whenever it suits their purposes.  Some memorable examples: Reverend Wright, Judge Sotomayor, Henry Gates and Van Jones.  Most recently we have the Shirley Sherrod mess where everyone around her acted badly.  The left demonized Andrew Breitbart for his selective video editing, yet the NAACP and Agriculture Secretary Vilsack both called for Sherrod to resign - and she did.  Everybody got it wrong.

But the ensuing, full-throated armchair analysis by the left and right only digs deeper holes.  Until today's opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal by Virginia Senator James Webb.

Titled Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege, Webb gets to the root of contemporary race politics - opportunity, jobs and money:

"Forty years ago, as the United States experienced the civil rights movement, the supposed monolith of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant dominance served as the whipping post for almost every debate about power and status in America. After a full generation of such debate, WASP elites have fallen by the wayside and a plethora of government-enforced diversity policies have marginalized many white workers. The time has come to cease the false arguments and allow every American the benefit of a fair chance at the future.

"I have dedicated my political career to bringing fairness to America's economic system and to our work force, regardless of what people look like or where they may worship. Unfortunately, present-day diversity programs work against that notion, having expanded so far beyond their original purpose that they now favor anyone who does not happen to be white.

"In an odd historical twist that all Americans see but few can understand, many programs allow recently arrived immigrants to move ahead of similarly situated whites whose families have been in the country for generations. These programs have damaged racial harmony. And the more they have grown, the less they have actually helped African-Americans, the intended beneficiaries of affirmative action as it was originally conceived."

In a May post, I lamented, facetiously, the demise of WASPs in America, a cause about as popular as bringing back robber barons.  But eventually reason and logic does need to prevail.  Affirmative action, quotas, and diversity "targets" ignore real merit and only disadvantage another segment of society.  Just ask Arizona.