The Soft Bigotry of Affirmative Action

The ability of racial preferences to stigmatize black achievements first hit home for me in college in the early 1990s. Just before the start of my senior year, I received a job offer from the local newspaper. A short time later, I happened to run into a former editor of the college paper where I had previously worked and told her the news. “Congratulations,” she said. “I heard they were looking for more minorities.” We were on friendly terms, so I don’t think it was her intention to offend, but the remark still stung. For me, the episode illustrated one of the major downsides of affirmative-action policies. No one with any self-respect wants to be perceived as a token, whether in the workplace or on a college campus, and racial preferences can facilitate those kinds of assumptions even for the most accomplished black professionals.