Thoughts on the “Role Model” Model of “Affirmative Action”

As everyone well knows, the rationales offered in defense of “affirmative action” (a.k.a. preferential treatment) are legion. One can, of course, poke a hole through every last one of them, but this hasn’t stopped our liberal friends from presenting a veritable cornucopia of excuses aimed at prolonging this odious exercise in un-Constitutional social gerrymandering.

Of all the jejune defenses of “affirmative action,” however, perhaps the “role model” rationale strikes us as the most mealy-mouthed. You know how it goes, dear reader: The reason “underrepresented” minorities fail to achieve in school is a lack of adequate professorial role models. Thus American universities must hire as many “underrepresented” minorities as they can find, in order to ensure the future success of these students—almost all of whom were admitted due to preferential treatment anyway.

Thanks to this moronic justification, darn near all professorial job annoucements offer Orwellian rhetoric like: “The University of Southeastern Montana is an equal opportunity-affirmative action employer. Women and minorities are especially encouraged to apply.” Naturally, the question beckons: If you’re so darn concerned about “equal opportunity” why do you especially encourage any racial or gender group to apply?

Although we’re no experts on the matter, we’d wager that this “role model” rationale for “affirmative action” has also kept many non-“underrepresented” minorities out of high school teaching gigs. Ah, heck, our lefty pals say: It’s only the education of our children; why bother hiring the best person for the job when you can assuage liberal guilt instead?

All of this wouldn’t rankle so much if the “role model” model of social gerrymandering actually made sense. We, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” insist that it’s utterly specious. And we aim to prove this by means of a fitting comparison.

Many people complain that there are far too few high-level minority coaches in collegiate and professional athletics. According to plenty of folks, the lily-white faces taking charge in our nation’s locker rooms are a blight on our society. For this reason, one occasionally hears calls for more, say, black head coaches in, say, football or basketball.

Interestingly, however, the “role model” rationale is never offered in this context. And for good reason: It makes no sense. Although there’s apparently a manifest lack of black coaches in the NFL, this hasn’t served to alienate blacks from succeeding in football. Quite the contrary, in fact: Black players dominate the NFL—and many other professional sports leagues—even though there are few black head coaches to serve as role models.

So why, exactly, must we believe that a lack of professorial role models is to blame for comparative minority underachievement in school?