Although many things in society have changed between the time when I was a middle school and high school student from 1975 to 1981 and today, I suspect there is one area in which older Gen Xers like me and today’s Gen Zs. For generations, students in required history courses have often questioned the need to study things that happened “so long ago.” Countless students, myself among them, back in the day, continue to raise the question, “What’s the point of learning this? Will I ever need to use it in real life?”
Today, I am a proud and resolute “history geek,” but I think one reason that I, and the generations of students both before and after me questioned the need for a study of history has to do with the shamefully unimaginative way in which history is often taught. In my high school, history classes were often taught by coaches and drivers education instructors and their lack of enthusiasm for their subject was, unfortunately, projected to the students and we, in turn, reflected the lackluster regard for historical references right back at them.
As I have grown older, however, I now understand that history is really nothing more than yesterday’s current events and if we approached history from the perspective that the lives we are living today will be the history lessons of the future. This would not only make history far more interesting, but I also hope that it would prevent us from repeating the mistakes of the past, that we currently seem in significant danger of doing.
During the U. S. Presidential election of 2024, candidate Donald Trump repeatedly attacked the intelligence and qualifications of his opponent, then Vice-President Kamala Harris as a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion or DEI hire. The term “DEI hire” has been used as a racist, sexist, homophobic dog whistle for supposedly unqualified “others” who “steal” jobs from “victims of reverse racism” (aka straight white males) ever since. Those who are uninformed about the history of inequality in the United States can be easily duped by this heinous lie and, as a result, blindly agree with calls to abandon DEI programs. I’d like to think there are at least some white, straight, male Americans who would perhaps have a different perspective if they knew the history of how these programs came about.
For example, it would probably surprise many to know that the idea for Affirmative Action and later, DEI programs started with a presidential executive order. In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802 which prohibited racial discrimination in the defense industry. When the U.S. became involved in World War II, the need for workers to build the planes, tanks, and other essential military equipment skyrocketed. Even so, there were still companies, including Bethlehem Steel and Curtiss-Wright among others who either refused to hire African Americans outright or assigned them to lower wage jobs based solely on skin color.
The term “affirmative action” came about as a result of another executive order. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 10925 which “required government contractors to take affirmative action to ensure that employment practices were free of racial bias.” In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson went a step further with Executive Order 11246 which “banned discrimination by federal contractors based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” President Johnson’s speech at the Howard University Commencement exercises in 1965 outlined the problem and the proposed solution quite clearly.
However, because some average white Americans of the time were not well versed in the Reconstruction Era following the American Civil War, they incorrectly concluded that Affirmative Action programs resulted in more qualified whites being passed over for jobs in favor of less qualified blacks. However, this was never the intent, (and I would argue, not the case, unless companies were being quite lazy in the way that they administered the programs.)
From the 1970s through today, using race, sex, or ethnicity as a factor have been systematically banned in public employment, education, and contracting. This trend has culminated with President Trump’s Executive Order 14173 which rescinds President Johnson’s 1965 Executive Order 11246. Now, Trump supporters will argue that the current Executive Order simply restores a merit-based system. However, a closer study of the history which led up to Civil Rights legislation wasn’t merit-based to begin with. Women and people of color were often denied the opportunity to even apply for certain jobs, so there was no opportunity for them to prove their merit and fitness for the positions.
In order to guarantee that only the best and brightest are selected, there must be some method in place that prevents employers, universities, and vocational programs from eliminating women, members of the LGBTQ+ community, people of color, and disabled people from the chance to demonstrate their merit. There have been a number of studies which have proven that resumes which are identical in terms of qualification are submitted, those on which the candidate has a “white-sounding” name receive a greater number of callbacks that those on which the candidate has an “ethnic-sounding” name. Also, there are a number of reported cases where African Americans who “sound white” over the phone when they made arrangements to see an apartment, were later told the apartment was “no longer available” when they arrived in person for the appointment.
Simply reversing the Civil Rights actions of the past are not the way to guarantee a merit-based society and I would argue that those who believe the contrary are just examples of the racist, sexist, homophobic beliefs that anyone who is different from the perceived “norm” of being a straight, white, able-bodied male can never be the more qualified candidate.
So instead of reversing protections for marginalized groups, why not just level the playing field in a different way? Why not input education, experience, and other qualifications into a database, without names or other identifying information and let Human Resources departments choose whom they wish to interview based on those characteristics alone? Why not do away with in-person interviews and let candidates be interviewed over the phone with a device to modify their voices using AI so that their race, ethnicity, or gender cannot be determined by the sound of their voice? Why not implement subjective measurements like the Civil Service exams, the Bar exam, medical boards, CPA exams etc. for all jobs to truly evaluate candidates on merit alone?
Instead of dismantling the Department of Education, why not invest in free universal Pre-K programs, free academic tutoring for all elementary, middle, and high school students, and free vocational training for young people interested in entering the skill trades? Why not also guarantee that all children have access to medical care and nutritious food throughout their lives? Why not remove as many economic barriers to success as possible to enable all children to be able to reach their full potential so that they can be competitive in a meritocracy?
Merely declaring that “discrimination is over” will not work. A clear-eyed study of the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras, the Civil Rights actions from the 1940s to the present informs us without a doubt that we cannot rely on some American citizens to play fairly without some type of guardrails. So, instead of doing battle by Executive Order, granting, removing and regranting and removing rights of marginalized groups ad infinitum, let’s use what we’ve learned from the past to do something different.
quietlyradical 