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Affirmative Action Is Not Racial Profiling
Author: Tim Wise
Editors: Carol Ullmann and Lynn M. Zott
Date: 2013
From: Racial Profiling
Publisher: Gale, a Cengage Company
Series: Opposing Viewpoints
Document Type: Viewpoint essay
Length: 2,238 words
Content Level: (Level 5)
Lexile Measure: 1440L
Full Text:
Article Commentary
Tim Wise, “Affirmative Action for Dummies: Explaining the Difference Between Oppression and Opportunity,” Timwise.org, October
22, 2010. Copyright © 2010 by Tim Wise. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission.
“Affirmative action does not seek to create a system of unearned black and brown advantage, but merely to shrink
unearned white advantage.”
Tim Wise is an author, public speaker, and antiracism trainer who has helped numerous corporations and government agencies
dismantle institutional racism. In the following viewpoint, Wise addresses the common question of how affirmative action is different
from traditional, racist discrimination. He examines the intent, function, impact, and outcome of affirmative action and traditional
discrimination, drawing distinctions between advantages offered to whites through discrimination and attempting to level the field
through affirmative action. Despite affirmative action, statistics show that whites still are advantaged in educational opportunities and
employment; proof, Wise argues, not that whites are more superior but that the work of affirmative action still has a long way to go
as the roots of traditional discrimination run deep.
As you read, consider the following questions:
According to Wise, how does the intent of discrimination differ from the intent of affirmative action?1.
According to Wise, does affirmative action deprive white people of equal consideration for enrollment at universities,2.
employment, and other opportunities?
Despite affirmative action, what percentage of white people hold management positions in the private sector, according to3.
the viewpoint?
Although discrimination against people of color and affirmative action both involve race-based considerations, historic and
contemporary discrimination against people of color differs from affirmative action in a number of distinct ways, both in terms of intent
and the underlying premises of each, and in terms of the impact or consequences of each.
In terms of intent, affirmative action is nothing like old-fashioned or ongoing discrimination against people of color. Discrimination
against so-called racial minorities has always been predicated on the belief that whites were more capable than people of color in
terms of their abilities, and more deserving of consideration with regard to their rights and place in the nation. So when employers
have refused to hire blacks, or have limited them to lower-level positions, this they have done because they view them as being less
capable or deserving than whites as less desirable employees. Likewise, racial profiling is based on pejorative assumptions about
black and brown criminality and character. Housing discrimination is rooted in assumptions about folks of color being less desirable
as neighbors or tenants.
Affirmative Action Corrects Problems of Equality Within the Social Order
Affirmative action, on the other hand, does not presume in the reverse that whites are inferior to people of color, or less desirable as
workers, students or contractors. In fact, it presumes nothing at all about white abilities, relative to people of color. It merely presumes
that whites have been afforded more-than-equal, extra opportunity relative to people of color, and that this arrangement has skewed
the opportunity structure for jobs, college slots and contracts. Affirmative action is not predicated on any assumptions about whites,
as whites, in terms of our humanity, decency, intelligence or abilities. It is based solely on assumptions about what being white has
meant in the larger social structure. It casts judgment upon the social order and its results, not people per se. Although one is free to
disagree with the sociological judgment being rendered in this case that the social structure has produced disparities that require a
response it is intellectually dishonest and vulgar to compare this presumption about the social structure to the presumption that
black people are biologically, culturally or behaviorally inferior to whites.
Additionally, discrimination against people of color has always had the intent of creating and protecting a system of inequality, and
maintaining unearned white advantage. Affirmative action does not seek to create a system of unearned black and brown advantage,
but merely to shrink unearned white advantage. In other words, unless one presumes there is no difference between policies that
maximize inequality and those that seek to minimize it, it is impossible to compare affirmative action to discrimination against people
of color, in the past or present.
Affirmative Action vs. Old-School Discrimination: Differences in Impact and
Outcome
In terms of impact, affirmative action and discrimination against people of color are completely different. Discrimination against people
of color, historically and today, deprives those people of color of the right to equal consideration for various opportunities on equitable
terms. While some may think affirmative action does the same thing to whites, in fact this is untrue. Affirmative action programs only
deprive whites, in effect, of the ability to continue banking our extra consideration, and the credentials and advantages we have
accumulated under a system of unfairness, which afforded us more-than-equal opportunities. There is no moral entitlement to the use
of such advantages, since they have not come about in a free and fair competition. History and ongoing racial bias against people
of color have served as “thumbs on the scale” for whites, so to speak. Or even more so, as the equivalent of a “Warp Speed”
button on a video game. Merely removing one’s finger from the warp speed button cannot address the head start accumulated over
many generations, nor the mentality that developed as a justification for that head start: a mentality that has sought to rationalize and
legitimize the resulting inequities passed down through the generations. So affirmative action is tantamount to hitting a warp speed
button for people of color, in an attempt to even out those unearned head starts, and allow everyone to compete on as level a playing
field as possible. To not do so would be to cement the head start that has been obtained by whites, and especially white men, in the
economic and educational realms. It would be like having an 8-lap relay race, in which one runner has had a 5-lap head start, and
instead of placing the second runner at the same point as the first, so as to see who really is faster, we were to merely proclaim the
race fair and implore the runner who had been held back to “run faster” and try harder, fairness be damned.
The Slight Impact of Affirmative Action
Finally, discrimination against people of color, historically, has had the real social impact of creating profound imbalances, inequities
and disparities in life chances between whites and people of color. In other words, the consequences of that history have been
visible: It has led to wealth gaps of more than 10:1 between whites and blacks, for instance (and 8:1 between whites and Latinos). It
has led to major disparities in occupational status, educational attainment, poverty rates, earnings ratios, and rates of home
ownership. Affirmative action has barely made a dent in these structural inequities, in large part because the programs and policies
have been so weakly enforced, scattershot, and pared back over the past twenty years. So despite affirmative action, whites continue
(as I document in my books, Colorblind and Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White) to receive over 90 percent of
government contracts, to hold over 90 percent of tenured faculty positions, to hold over 85 percent of management-level jobs in the
private sector workforce, to be half as likely as blacks to be unemployed (even when only comparing whites and blacks with college
degrees), and to get into their college of first choice at higher rates than African Americans or Latinos.
In other words, when institutional racism is operating, we can actually see the results. We can see the aftereffects in terms of social
disparities that favor the group receiving all the preferences. But affirmative action has produced no such disparities, in reverse. It
hasn’t even really closed the existing ones all that much. So if anything, a proper critique of affirmative action would insist that it
hasn’t gone far enough, or been enforced enough to break the grip of white institutional privilege.
The Racist Underpinning of Anti-Affirmative Action Sentiment
Although not all who oppose affirmative action are racists who purposely seek to maintain institutionalized white advantage, the
underlying premise of the anti-affirmative action position comes dangerously close to being intrinsically racist in nature. After all,
affirmative action rests on the premise that, in the absence of institutional obstacles to equal opportunity both past and
present people of color would have obtained positions across the occupational structure, and throughout academia and business,
roughly equal to their percentages of the national population. So, on this view, affirmative action merely seeks to create a distribution
of jobs, college enrollments and contract opportunities more similar to that which would have been obtained anyway in a just society.
To reject this premise is to believe, virtually by definition, that people of color are inferior, and that they would have lagged
significantly behind whites anyway, even if equal opportunity had ruled the day. Either because of biological or cultural inadequacy,
black and brown folks would simply have failed to obtain a much better outcome than they did under conditions of formal apartheid
and oppression. Therefore, to this way of thinking, affirmative action artificially elevates those who would have failed if left to their own
devices at least, relative to whites and injures whites who naturally would have ended up on top, and who because of their
merits deserve to do so.
Despite the fact that this is simply absurd and the research here is clear, indicating that contract dollars flow to old boy’s networks
largely unrelated to objective merit on a purely philosophical and analytical level as well, this argument is nonsensical.
Fact is, even were we to accept the fundamentally racist notion that whites as a group really are superior in terms of ability,
intelligence, drive and determination relative to blacks and other people of color, and thus, that even in a system without artificial
impediments, those people of color would lag behind whites in all areas of human well-being, the fact would remain, there were such
impediments, and many of these remain in place today. And those impediments matter, above and beyond whatever “natural”
inequities the racist mind might envision existing anyway. And those additional disparities require our attention, no matter what one
may think about the inherent inequities between so-called racial groups.
The Tennis Analogy of Racist Discrimination
By way of analogy, consider the following: Imagine that tennis stars, Rafael Nadal and Andy Roddick were to play 100 matches:
roughly two a week, for the next year. Statistically, Nadal is the stronger player. He is, simply, better than Roddick. But yet, the better
player doesn’t always win every competition, despite their advantage. So we might expect, rather than winning every time, that Nadal
would emerge victorious, say, 70 times. But imagine now that we were to place ankle weights on Roddick, or prohibit him, by rule,
from using backhand strokes, thereby forcing him to run around every Nadal ground stroke to his backhand court. Needless to say,
given such artificial limitations, Roddick would now lose nearly every time, certainly more often than nine in ten matches. The fact that
Nadal would have won most of the time anyway says nothing about how unfair the artificial impediments placed upon Roddick would
be in this instance. And had those impediments not been there, the results, though uneven, would not have been nearly as lopsided
as they were. Surely, even someone who starts from the racist assumption that whites would have naturally beaten out people of
color for most of the best jobs, contracts and college slots, cannot help but admit that if “only” nature had been operating rather
than nature plus artificially imposed obstacles for people of color and artificial boosts for whites whatever gaps emerged would, by
necessity, be smaller than the ones we see now.
Affirmative Action Is Necessary to Balance Out Racist Discrimination
So in order to create a just society, in which people can prove themselves on their merits, we must have as close to an equal footing
for all as possible. Even if the racists were right and they are not that some groups are simply “better” than others, there would
be no way to tell which of the individuals in those various groups were the superior or inferior ones, unless all are afforded the chance
to prove themselves, without the artificial burdens imposed by the society. If affirmative action were eliminated, we would not have
the equal and fair race. We would have institutionalized white advantage, unchecked by a countervailing force.
In the end, we really shouldn’t think of affirmative action as a matter of racial preference, so much as a preference based on a
recognition of what race means, and what racism has meant in American life. It is a preference that takes into consideration the
simple and indisputable fact that people of color have not been afforded truly equal opportunity. Whereas old-school discrimination
against people of color was (and is) predicated on actual value judgments about the ability, character, and value of black and brown
folks, affirmative action is predicated on no personal or group-based judgments whatsoever, but rather, upon the judgment that the
social structure has produced inequities that require our attention and redress.
We can deal with that reality or not. But for those who would rather not, at least know that this is where the rest of us are coming
from. Calling affirmative action a form of institutional racism doesn’t make it so. And analogizing it to racial profiling this time of
white people is historically and philosophically perverse.
Books
Martha R. Bireda Cultures in Conflict: Eliminating Racial Profiling. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010.
Michael L. Birzer Racial Profiling: They Stopped Me Because I’m . Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2013.
David Boonin Should Race Matter?: Unusual Answers to the Usual Questions. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Joseph Collum The Black Dragon: Racial Profiling Exposed. Sun River, MT: Jigsaw Press, 2010.
Elizabeth Comack Racialized Policing: Aboriginal People’s Encounters with the Police. Winnipeg, Canada: Fernwood Pub.,
2012.
Anthony Cortese Contentious: Immigration, Affirmative Action, Racial Profiling, and the Death Penalty. Austin: University of
Texas Press, 2013.
Alejandro del Carmen Racial Profiling in America. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2008.
Karen S. Glover Racial Profiling: Research, Racism, and Resistance. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009.
Vikas K. Gumbhir But Is It Racial Profiling?: Policing, Pretext Stops, and the Color of Suspicion. New York: LFB Scholarly
Publications, 2007.
David A. Harris Profiles in Injustice: Why Racial Profiling Cannot Work. New York: New Press, 2002.
Amaney Jamal and Nadine Naber, eds. Race and Arab Americans Before and After 9/11: From Invisible Citizens to Visible
Subjects. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2008.
Mareile Kaufmann Ethnic Profiling and Counter-Terrorism: Examples of European Practice and Possible Repercussions. Berlin,
Germany: LIT, 2010.
Cynthia Lee The Fourth Amendment: Searches and Seizures: Its Constitutional History and the Contemporary Debate.
Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2010.
Heather Mac Donald Are Cops Racist? Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee, 2003.
John H. McWhorter Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America. New York: Free Press, 2000.
Gregory S. Parks and Matthew W. Hughey, eds. 12 Angry Men: True Stories of Being a Black Man in America Today. New
York: New Press, 2010.
Marcos Pizarro Chicanas and Chicanos in School: Racial Profiling, Identity Battles, and Empowerment. Austin: University of
Texas Press, 2005.
Stephen K. Rice and Michael D. White, eds. Race, Ethnicity, and Policing: New and Essential Readings. New York: New York
University Press, 2010.
Stephen J. Schulhofer More Essential than Ever: The Fourth Amendment in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2012.
Jeff Shantz, ed. Racial Profiling and Borders: International, Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Lake Mary, FL: Vandeplas, 2010.
Judith Sunderland “The Root of Humiliation”: Abusive Identity Checks in France. Ed. Benjamin Ward. New York: Human Rights
Watch, 2012.
Carol Tator and Frances Henry Racial Profiling in Canada: Challenging the Myth of “A Few Bad Apples”. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 2006.
Michael Tonry Punishing Race: A Continuing American Dilemma. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Ronald Weitzer and Steven A. Tuch Race and Policing in America: Conflict and Reform. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2006.
Tim Wise Colorblind: The Rise of Post-Racial Politics and the Retreat from Racial Equity. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books,
2010.
Brian L. Withrow The Racial Profiling Controversy: What Every Police Leader Should Know. Flushing, NY: Looseleaf Law,
2011.
Periodicals
Julie Ajinkya “‘Stand Your Ground’ Law Leads to Trayvon Martin’s Death: Legal Deadly Force Outside the Home Meets Racial
Profiling,” Center for American Progress, March 21, 2012. www.americanprogress.org.
Aref Assaf “Israel’s Bad Example: Racial Profiling Is Un-American,” NewJersey.com, December 1, 2010.
Dallas Morning News “Can Big Airlines Like Love Field’s Southwest or Forth Worth’s American Airlines Tell You What to Wear
On Board?,” September 3, 2012.
Alan Duke “Tyler Perry: ‘We Are Still Being Racially Profiled,'” CNN.com, April 2, 2012.
Braden Goyette “Racial Profiling Is Ineffective and Wrong, So Why Does It Keep Happening?,” Campus Progress, October 7,
2010. www.campusprogress.org.
Jeff Jacoby “The Affirmative-Action Myth,” Townhall.com, December 23, 2011.
Scott Johnson “What Ever Happened to Racial Profiling?,” Power Line, March 14, 2012. www.powerlineblog.com.
Rush Limbaugh “Why the Left Dropped the Trayvon Story,” RushLimbaugh.com, May 16, 2012.
Michael J. Totten “Forget the ‘Porn Machines’: How Israelis Secure Airports,” New York Post, November 19, 2010.
Walter E. Williams “Is Racial Profiling Racist?,” Townhall.com, August 19, 2009.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2013 Greenhaven Press, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Wise, Tim. “Affirmative Action Is Not Racial Profiling.” Racial Profiling, edited by Carol Ullmann and Lynn M. Zott, Greenhaven Press,
2013. Opposing Viewpoints. Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints,
https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/EJ3010572240/OVIC?u=ccsf_main&sid=OVIC&xid=719e9d6b. Accessed 1 Nov. 2020. Originally
published as “Affirmative Action for Dummies: Explaining the Difference Between Oppression and Opportunity,” Timwise.org, 22
Oct. 2010.
Gale Document Number: GALE|EJ3010572240
Hill 1
Kyle Hill
Professor Hill
ENGL 1A & 1AS
3 February 2021
Sample Unit 2 Reading Journal: “Racism Today is Subtle, Insidious, and Systemic”
● Dr. Quist-Adade’s thesis or central claim is that racism is even more a problem
today because people are scared to talk about it for fear of being labeled racist or
losing privilege, so they silently participate in a system that advantages some
and disadvantages others; he also emphasizes that racism is a social construct
that people have created to signal insiders and outsiders and that behaviors can
change – this is not a hopeless situation.
● Dr. Quist-Adade’s paper seemed logical and well presented to me. The one thing
that I did not observe Dr. Quist-Adade do in the paper was handling opposing
viewpoints. While Dr. Quist-Adade does cite sources in his paper, he mainly uses
his sources to support and illustrate his ideas, not necessarily challenge them.
It’s hard for me to imagine what those opposing viewpoints might be since I tend
to agree with Dr. Quist-Adade. For this reason, I think it would have been helpful
for me to see how others might argue against the idea that racism is subtle and
systemic just so I have a better idea of what the opposition might say.
● “For example, racism in the USA has ceased to be the avowed commitment of
Southern white supremacists. Now its INSIDIOUS form is an unconscious habit
corrupting legions of Euro-Americans, including some well-meaning ones among
them” (Quist-Adade).
Hill 2
○ Adjective: operating or proceeding in an inconspicuous or seemingly
harmless way but actually with grave effect.
○ My cousin was ready to divorce her husband by the time she realized how
INSIDIOUS their daily quarrels and disagreements had become.
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