04/24/2009
Mark Steyn’s request of the week is an old column from before 9/11:The Bush administration, for example, has inherited an awkward court case from its predecessor, in which it feels obliged to defend 'affirmative action' quotas in federal highway construction contracts. Three decades ago, 'affirmative action' meant that the 10 per cent of the population who were black got a bit of preferential treatment over the remaining 90 per cent. But, with the ever-spreading tide of victim culture, so many other groups have been dealt into the game that two-thirds of the population qualify as 'presumed disadvantaged', the various categories extending into the dozens to embrace Pacific Islanders, women, veterans, and people from 'Juvalu', which doesn’t seem to exist but is most likely a typo for 'Tuvalu'. Neither Tuvaluans nor Juvaluans have suffered historic, systemic discrimination in the US, but if a federal highway contract is up for tender and the choice is between, say, a tenth-generation Yankee or a Juvaluan who just got off the boat, you're obliged to give it to the guy from Juvalu.See also Homicide of the West, by the late Sam Francis, on the same subject.Nearly 70 per cent of the population are entitled to preferential treatment over the remaining 30 per cent — white men, the sole surviving non-victim group in American society, and thus the only people you're allowed to victimise.[SteynOnline — DURB AN' DURBER, originally published in the Spectator, September 8, 2001]
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