At the risk of killing the joke, a common and resurging form of bigotry in the professional and academic space is the assumption that a black person or woman achieved a position not by being meritous for it, but indeed a more meritous white man was overlooked in order to comply with a diversity quota. Whether it’s a job, a school, or even a political nomination. I’ve heard people earnestly tell me that Kamala Harris didn’t have a platform and the Democrats just picked her because she’s black and expect us to vote for her or be called racist with no evidence other than “that’s something I think they would do”. The vice president of the United States was accused of being a “diversity hire” for the presidential ticket despite VP->Presidential Nomination being a very common career route. Nobody accused H.W. Bush of being chosen for reasons other than the nominators believing him fit for the job.
In reality merit for certain positions is so abundant right now in this golden age of higher education that it’s genuinely impossible to say with any confidence if this has happened. The assumption it has though, is *implicitly assuming white men are more qualified than black people and women* as if they cannot benefit from DEI or Affirmative Action their status is truly gained only on merit. When the justification for these corrective programs is in fact the opposite narrative, that highly qualified black and female applicants may get passed over or pushed out of a job because of unfair unequal skepticism levied towards their competence and merit, and are replaced with a mediocre inoffensive white guy.
The closest thing to this for white people is being called a “failson”, the assumption that you got your position by being privileged and incompetent, because white privilege allows white men to fail upwards in our society.
This is why “just hire the most qualified people” is a loaded phrase. Gosh why didn’t we think of that. Here I was just trying to treat important jobs as spoils for my dumbass cronies.
What’s depressing is this meme goes back to the Reconstruction. Southern democrats portrayed black Republicans as boorish and idiotic corrupt stooges for northern liberals demanding positions they couldn’t manage, and Republicans enabling this for no reason other than selfish ingroup power jockeying, rather than genuine belief that freedmen were capable of, and entitled to, representation and self governance.
And of course it was projection. Which party created the system of treating important jobs as spoils to give out to your unqualified cronies? It was the conservative and white nationalist party of the time, the Democrats. Democrats were accusing Republicans of doing exactly what Andrew Jackson did just with the wrong race.
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At the risk of killing the joke, a common and resurging form of bigotry in the professional and academic space is the assumption that a black person or woman achieved a position not by being meritous for it, but indeed a more meritous white man was overlooked in order to comply with a diversity quota. Whether it’s a job, a school, or even a political nomination. I’ve heard people earnestly tell me that Kamala Harris didn’t have a platform and the Democrats just picked her because she’s black and expect us to vote for her or be called racist with no evidence other than “that’s something I think they would do”. The vice president of the United States was accused of being a “diversity hire” for the presidential ticket despite VP->Presidential Nomination being a very common career route. Nobody accused H.W. Bush of being chosen for reasons other than the nominators believing him fit for the job.
In reality merit for certain positions is so abundant right now in this golden age of higher education that it’s genuinely impossible to say with any confidence if this has happened. The assumption it has though, is *implicitly assuming white men are more qualified than black people and women* as if they cannot benefit from DEI or Affirmative Action their status is truly gained only on merit. When the justification for these corrective programs is in fact the opposite narrative, that highly qualified black and female applicants may get passed over or pushed out of a job because of unfair unequal skepticism levied towards their competence and merit, and are replaced with a mediocre inoffensive white guy.
The closest thing to this for white people is being called a “failson”, the assumption that you got your position by being privileged and incompetent, because white privilege allows white men to fail upwards in our society.
This is why “just hire the most qualified people” is a loaded phrase. Gosh why didn’t we think of that. Here I was just trying to treat important jobs as spoils for my dumbass cronies.
What’s depressing is this meme goes back to the Reconstruction. Southern democrats portrayed black Republicans as boorish and idiotic corrupt stooges for northern liberals demanding positions they couldn’t manage, and Republicans enabling this for no reason other than selfish ingroup power jockeying, rather than genuine belief that freedmen were capable of, and entitled to, representation and self governance.
And of course it was projection. Which party created the system of treating important jobs as spoils to give out to your unqualified cronies? It was the conservative and white nationalist party of the time, the Democrats. Democrats were accusing Republicans of doing exactly what Andrew Jackson did just with the wrong race.