{"id":2656,"date":"2011-08-08T17:43:32","date_gmt":"2011-08-08T21:43:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/?p=2656"},"modified":"2016-11-16T20:41:28","modified_gmt":"2016-11-17T01:41:28","slug":"in-their-own-words-the-victimhood-narrative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/in-their-own-words-the-victimhood-narrative\/","title":{"rendered":"In Their Own Words – The Victimhood Narrative"},"content":{"rendered":"

Each day this week, Amicus will feature an editorial post written by one of CRCL’s new General Board members.\u00a0 Today’s post discusses the topic of white victimhood in relation to affirmative action.<\/em><\/p>\n

While there has always been a resistance to affirmative action policies, the present debate has added a new dimension.\u00a0 There has been a rise in rhetoric concerning the notion of white victimhood, and policies like affirmative action are cited as justification for these theories.\u00a0 Many conservatives paint a portrait that depicts Caucasian Americans as\u00a0 victims of policies that place them at a disadvantage and promote \u201creverse discrimination.\u201d\u00a0 A study conducted by two Princeton sociologists on admissions and affirmative action policies at eight highly selective colleges and universities concluded that black and Hispanic candidates seemed to be the most favored, while whites were most disadvantaged by the process.\u00a0 In Texas, an Iraq war veteran started a new non-profit group called \u201cThe Former Majority Association for Equality.\u201d\u00a0 A key objective of the group is to fund scholarships exclusively for white males who have at least a 3.0 grade point average. This notion of victimhood is also evident in right wing racial politics, as pundits and politicans\u00a0 actually encourage Caucasians to identify with their own sense of victimhood. You can turn on Fox News any day and hear rhetoric promoting the idea that minorities don’t achieve in America on their own merits because they are unfairly helped by programs like affirmative action, which allow them to benefit from racism that has been long dead, while whites are unfairly cast as evil-doing racists.<\/p>\n

This victimhood narrative is important because of the way it portrays affirmative action policies as oppressive and discriminatory.\u00a0 Discrimination against people of color and affirmative action both involve race-based considerations, but historic and contemporary discrimination against people of color differs from affirmative action in numerous ways.\u00a0\u00a0 A large part of racial discrimination was predicated historically on a belief in white superiority — affirmative action, however, is not grounded in any similar theory because it does not presume that people of color are more or less capable than whites.\u00a0 Additionally, racial discrimination against people of color creates and protects a system of inequality where unearned white advantages are preserved, while affirmative action does not set up a structure that doles out unearned advantages.\u00a0 Rather, it simply seeks to reduce the unearned advantages that white have accumulated over time.\u00a0\u00a0 Furthermore, racial discrimination and institutionalized racism has actually created extreme imbalances and inequities in housing, education, poverty rates, earnings ratios, etc. Affirmative action has not, nor does it seek to create these inequities in reverse.\u00a0 Thus, the claim of reverse racial discrimination is misplaced.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While there has always been a resistance to affirmative action policies, the present debate has added a new dimension. There has been a rise in rhetoric concerning the notion of white victimhood, and policies like affirmative action are cited as justification for these theories. This victimhood narrative is important because of the way it portrays affirmative action policies as oppressive and discriminatory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center 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