Webb’s curious op-ed

Virginia Senator Jim Webb started a firestorm when his op-ed, “Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege,” appeared in the Wall Street Journal. What Webb said is nothing new. His is a nuanced argument: that affirmative action, under the umbrella of diversity, has benefitted groups of people that it never was intended to benefit, and it is has done so at the expense of whites, particularly poor whites.

I have to admit that I was put off initially by the title of the piece, which, more than likely, Webb did not write. White privilege is not a myth: go read the Peggy McIntosh’s seminal article (pdf) on the topic and tell me that there is not an inherent benefit in our society for being white. Webb’s love for our shared Scots-Irish heritage tends to sometimes obscure the harsh reality: you can take the poorest, least educated white person, teach them how to dress and speak, and that person will be almost universally accepted. The same is cannot be said for a black person. Perhaps I need to send the Senator a copy of Noel Ignatiev’s book, “How the Irish Became White.”

Webb seems to be blinded by his desire to improve the lot of his Appalachian kin, who he thinks have been wronged by the expansion of diversity. He inches very close to the “reverse discrimination” mark as being the reason so many whites are poor and remain poor. Webb fails to acknowledge that many of the anti-poverty programs put in place in the 1960s were geared towards poor whites just as much as poor blacks. There are reasons, Senator Webb, why the white and black underclass remain. The two groups have much in common, even if politics mostly keeps them separate.

The timing of this article is curious as well. Given all that transpired last week with Shirley Sherrod, it’s just a weird read. To whom, exactly, is Webb speaking? His rich, all-white colleagues in the Senate? Or, in gearing up for a re-election campaign, possibly against George Allen, is he trying to send a signal to “real Virginia” that he’s one of them?

But I agree with him that in pursuing diversity, we have lost sight of the original purpose of affirmative action. The goal was redress for black Americans, who, along with Native Americans, had suffered discrimination at the hands of our government. Interestingly enough, Webb made no mention of Native Americans.  Nor did he mention that the largest beneficiaries of affirmative action have been white women.

Diversity has the same Latin root as diversion – diversus­ – and while not synonymous, the two terms are linked, at least in my mind. As America has embraced diversity in our culture, we have been diverted from the real issues that are unique to black Americans. No other group was brought here in chains, enslaved for 250 years, and subjected to second-class citizenship for another 100 years after that. When Webb says “generations of such deficiencies do not disappear overnight,” he is absolutely correct. One must actually have boots in order to pull oneself up by bootstraps.

There should be – and are – programs to assist the poor. That doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be programs geared towards black Americans – because there should be. When only five of the Fortune 500 CEOs are black, it’s hard to claim that the playing field is level.