Trump’s Affirmative Action Program
President Trump is reviving an Affirmative Action program that is as old as our constitutional republic.
At the dawning of the United States, the privileged class bequeathed privileges to the privileged. Caucasian male property owners were not only at the top of the heap, they were the entire heap and everyone else was just plain old other. Not a bad position to be in. It was actually pretty good if one had membership in the Caucasian male club.
It was so good that Africans who were totally dismissed in the American society and women wanted a piece of that American Affirmative Action – action. As it was, the best jobs, pieces of property, most arable land, and that precious right to vote were given to Caucasian males whether they were deserving or not. Most people at the time knew that was wrong, including a beneficiary of this colonial Affirmative Action, founding father Thomas Jefferson, who remained entangled in his declarations to one day free African slaves from bondage and his desire to remain a wealthy slave owner.
Everyone, who could qualify wanted to be a part of this exclusive American club, including the likes of activists Benjamin Franklin, and Sam Adams. Their Affirmative Action was connected to an informal wink-of-the eye, a handshake, or a shared whisky. As our nation grew, colonial Affirmative Action became more sophisticated in favor of Caucasians. Sinister, institutionally organized red-lining at the Federal Housing Administration and the mass denials of G.I. Bill benefits to African American veterans were just two of many negative actions, which resulted in Affirmative Actions.
But the sharing was communal only. Sharing on a universal scale in colonial times was a big no-no. Later, Affirmative Action became a problem in America after it was codified into law on a national scale and the cloistered, influential few had to share access. President Kennedy mandated Affirmative Action in the federal contractor system with an Executive Order and it was expanded by President Johnson. The ultimate intrusion on the – meet my nephew private handshake – type of Affirmative Action was the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Supreme Court decisions have watered down the effectiveness of legislated Affirmative Action, including a 2023 case won by Students for Fair Admissions who challenged Affirmative Action Admissions at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. One of the biggest complaints against codified Affirmative Action was the dog-whistle declaration that it promoted the underqualified over the qualified. Yes, that may have happened in some cases, but in the preponderance of cases, Affirmative Action led to equality in skills and performance.
President Trump has capitalized on the two greatest negatives of Affirmative Action; One is the colonial style that was privatized and allowed access to those already entitled, and the other was to promote the underqualified over the qualified. The newly minted Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth got the early America style Affirmative Action that placed privilege ahead of robust experience. I took a look at Hegseth’s LinkedIn page and compared it to the expansive military experience of the man he replaced, General Lloyd Austin and what did I discover? Colonial privilege – some call it white privilege, but that is a discussion for another day.
I have taught hundreds of college students at California State University Northridge (a Hispanic Serving Institution), Rutgers University, two HBCUs, Florida A&M, and now Morgan State University. Many of my students were the first in their families to venture into higher education to attain a better place in life than their parents. They will never have access to Trump’s colonial style Affirmative Action, borne of affinity rather than excellence. A good number of my former Caucasian students who could be considered hard-scrabble middle class, live in the multicultural mecca of southern California. It may be hard for some people to accept that one day Caucasians in southern California will one day need a form of Affirmative Action to compete in a diverse community in which they are not the majority.
Trump’s colonial-style Affirmative Action benefits the privileged and not the great American middle. Affirmative Action remains a necessary tool, but it should lead to the accession of supremely qualified candidates like Austin or first-generation hardworking students like the many I have taught over the years who do not have the advantages of the nation’s few.
Benjamin A. Davis is Chairman of the Department of Multimedia Journalism at Morgan State University. He is a board member emeritus for the Princeton Prize in Race Relations at Princeton University.
Ben served on the launch team for MSNBC.com as an Interactive Producer/editor. He was the Washington Editor for NPR and an Executive Producer for NPR’s Special Projects department. He also served on the Assignment Desk for ABC News in New York. He was a CBS reporter at WBTV News in Charlotte, N.C. In 1992 he was the inaugural Burton R. Benjamin Fellow at the University of Michigan Knight-Wallace Fellowship in Journalism.
Ben has won numerous awards for journalism, including two Alfred I. duPont awards for broadcast – one for reporting and the other as Executive Producer. He created a writing model, that builds on the century-old analog-based Inverted Pyramid, called the Digital Media Pyramid about which he wrote the e-book, The Digital Media Pyramid: A Guide for 21st Century Bloggers, Reporters and Citizen Journalists. Ben was a Fulbright Scholar Finalist in 2021. He graduated from Whittier College and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and studied international relations at the University of Copenhagen. He taught journalism for 10 years at Rutgers University, three years at Florida A&M University, and seven years at California State University Northridge.