How 1980s Movies Might’ve Poisoned Americans On Affirmative Action

Conservatives have resented affirmative action for almost its entire existence. This is hardly a new MAGA development, and it’s not surprising that 75 percent of Republicans approve of the Supreme Court decision restricting the use of race as a factor in college admissions.

Overall, 52 percent of Americans approve. 32 percent disapprove and 16 percent “don’t know” or just won’t admit their true feelings in a poll

Fifty-eight percent of independents approve of the ruling and even 26 percent of Democrats are fine with it. According to the ABC News poll, about 60 percent of white people and 58 percent of Asian people support pretending race doesn’t exist in college admissions. Hispanics are split, with exactly 40 percent approving and disapproving. However, 25 percent of Black people are also on Team Clarence Thomas with this ruling, which is revealing because that would mean some overlap with Black Democratic voters.

The backlash to affirmative action was almost immediate after the passage of the Civil Rights Act. It wasn’t long before conservatives were selectively quoting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have A Dream” speech and ignoring, well, the entire body of his work. That’s only reasonable when it comes to M. Night Shyamalan and The Sixth Sense.

PREVIOUSLY:

Supreme Court Strikes Down Affirmative Action For Everyone But Rich White People

Conservatives Thrilled By Prospect Of Fewer Black Kids Going To College

Dr. King specifically said, “Whenever the issue of compensatory treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro.”

He later told Alex Haley that he believed “preferential treatment for the Negro” was fair:

Can any fair-minded citizen deny that the Negro has been deprived? Few people reflect that for two centuries the Negro was enslaved, and robbed of any wages–potential accrued wealth which would have been the legacy of his descendants. All of America’s wealth today could not adequately compensate its Negroes for his centuries of exploitation and humiliation. It is an economic fact that a program such as I propose would certainly cost far less than any computation of two centuries of unpaid wages plus accumulated interest. In any case, I do not intend that this program of economic aid should apply only to the Negro; it should benefit the disadvantaged of all races.

So leave Dr. King out of your “color-blind Constitution” fantasies.

Republican Rep. Bryon Donalds, who’s Black, claimed the Supreme Court’s “ruling is a massive win against the left’s equity agenda that seeks to achieve ‘equality’ through equal outcomes, not equal access.” This is something Republicans say a lot and it’s consistently bullshit. Donalds added, “There was clearly a time when affirmative action was needed to end racial discrimination, but that time is over.”

Before you hang that “Mission Accomplished” banner, sir, could you please explain when racial discrimination ended? Was it when “The Cosby Show” premiered in 1984? Donalds was born in 1978 and claims he once supported affirmative action, so racism must’ve ended some time after he graduated college in 2002. If that’s why Bush invaded Iraq, I owe him an apology.

Seriously, though, white people were complaining about affirmative action during the distant past of my 1980s childhood. You’ll recall that paean to racial sensitivity Soul Man from 1986, where C. Thomas Howell’s character — the white son of a wealthy doctor — pretends he’s Black so he can win one of those easy-peasy scholarships Harvard Law School has for Black people. He does feel bad later about screwing over a Black woman for the scholarship so he just screws her the regular way. This was a real movie that ran in theaters.

youtu.be

The next year, in Secret of My Success, Michael J. Fox‘s character, Brantley Foster, is desperately looking for work in New York, and at one point, he pleads with a hiring manager, “I want this job, I need it, I can do it. Everywhere I’ve been today there’s always been something wrong, too young, too old, too short, too tall. Whatever the exception is, I can fix it. I can be older, I can be taller, I can be anything.”

The hiring manager responds, “Can you be a minority woman?”

Apparently, in 1987, major corporations had all these cushy junior executive roles set aside for Black women and their natural hair.

Brantley later gets a job at his uncle’s company and inadvertently sleeps with his aunt. Don’t worry, they’re not related … wait maybe you should still worry. I confess that teenage me was deeply in love with Margaret Whitton. My God, those eyes. I would’ve learned to swim for her.

Brantley, who’s also posing as executive Carlton Whitfield, leverages this relationship and his boyish good looks to convince wealthy investors to back his eventual takeover of the company. See, he worked his way to the top through his merits and impressive aunt-fucking, not through affirmative action. That’s the American way.

OPEN THREAD!

youtu.be

[ABC News]

Follow Stephen Robinson on Twitter if it still exists.

Catch SER on his new podcast, The Play Typer Guy.

Did you know SER has his own YouTube Channel? Well, now you do, so go subscribe right now!

Click the widget to keep your Wonkette ad-free and feisty.