Acting White: Calling for a New Affirmative Action

I may ruffle a few feathers with this post, but the heroics of US Air pilot Sullenberger reminds me of why the old affirmative action did not/does not work, and why we need something new.

Whenever, I get on an airplane I always hope to God that the pilot is there for a reason that has 100% to do with getting my backside to my destination, or somewhere in between, alive and well. If he or she, regardless of appearances, is there for any other reason, let me know, so I can take another flight.

Sully was the right person at the right time for this failed flight. He knew what to do and how to do it, not because he was white, or a man, or tall, or short, or slim or fat. He seems to be someone obsessed with airline safety and living – two things I want in a pilot. His passengers got lucky having him, as well as they all got lucky in this particular ditching into the Hudson River.

This reminds me when I first turned against traditional affirmative action, which unfortunately is notoriously flawed for putting good people in situations where they are destined to fail. I had a boyhood friend who always wanted to be a doctor. He was a smart kid, but I wondered if he was smart enough to have lives entrusted to him. I feared he was not, as I watched him struggle in undergrad.

My black friend benefited from every form of affirmative action available to get him into and through medical school, consuming huge resources in the process - probably double the normal level. In the end he failed the boards three times and was denied a license. Thank God AA ran out of bonus points for him, as he probably would have killed somebody as a practioner.

Affirmative action can only be a front-end program to encourage and support entry into the process whereby the disadvantaged Sully’s of the world get to save lives. It cannot be a last ditch effort to prove that the world is a good place, by handing out free reservations to come up short in the clutch. This is why the current affirmative action has to go, and why I spend my time pushing early childhood development programs, like Head-Start, that are more based on today’s disadvantages, not as punishment for the past.

James C. Collier

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