tunnel
Donald G McNeil Jnr
A Second Look
The first 15 years of affirmative action are hell. But painful as they are, you have to go through them. In the United States the alternative was the race riots that burned cities down. Here, you won’t get off so easy. The alternative is civil war.
For the next 15 years, every white passed over for a job will say a black – not his own stupidity or laziness – snatched it from him. Every talented black will know whites silently think that, so every gaffe by a stupid or lazy black co-worker will taint him too. Blacks will be pitted against blacks: “You go talk to him.” Every black passed over for managing director will think he is just window-dressing, and will never know if he’s incompetent, the victim of racism, or just unlucky. Self-doubt gnaws; the chips on shoulders grow into huge second heads snarling “racist” and “Uncle Tom” at everyone. It’s hell.
There is some light at the end of the tunnel – but not for anyone working today. It’s 15 to 20 years down the line, when five-year-old black kids finally getting decent educations enter the workforce. When there are rainbow legions of talented people to choose from, bosses can revert to the old hiring standards: brains and aptitude. And looks, great legs, school pals and family connections.
Whites who think there wasn’t affirmative action before are kidding themselves. Never mind Afrikaners and the Post Office. Look at how I got my job. I went to a good university, Berkeley, and edited its newspaper. But when I moved to New York, aged 22, I couldn’t even get hired at a second-rate Long Island paper; I got lost on the train and came for my interview three hours late. But I had an older distant cousin who knew a New York Times business editor, who saw me as a favour, then passed me to a personnel director, who passed me to his secretary who hired me as a copy boy to carry pages and fetch coffee. I worked my way up, but the point is that my foot in the door was family.
As with Harry Oppenheimer. Or Thabo Mbeki.
As a wittier writer than me once said: “America won’t have achieved equality when a brilliant black kid gets into Harvard. It will have when a not-very-bright black kid does because his grandfather left the place a pile of money.”
Meanwhile, what are you South Africans in for?
Well, some battles that to a foreigner seem pretty bizarre. Where did you white people ever get the idea that blacks can’t play rugby? Have you never seen our National Football League? We’ve got 113kg guys who can do the 100 in 10 seconds with another 113kg of angry helmeted meatloaf hanging off their butts.
Actually, the truth is, we went through this stupidity in the US too. Football started among white college boys. Now Harvard and Yale can’t even play in the top division. After blacks were let in, whites spent years saying they ran fast, but lacked the size or heart to play the line; for that you needed big Polish guys from the coal mines. Along came everyone from Roosevelt Grier to Refrigerator Perry. Then they said blacks lacked the brains to play quarterback. Along came Doug Williams. Then to coach. Meet Dennis Green. What nonsense. Forget about merit selection. Let the Boks and the Bulls suffer a few losing seasons to develop black players. Like I said – the alternative is civil war. If you let the other 70% of the population into the game (and pay black labourers enough to let their kids eat food as nutritious as yours do), you’ll never get whipped by Wales again.
You’re also in for many more of these Helena Dolny/Bonile Jack; Barney Pityana/Dennis Davis; Charles van Onselen/Malegapuru Makgoba cat fights, where a good debate vanishes into race- baiting. Few things sound sillier to a foreign ear than black liberals and white liberals calling each other patronising on the Tim Modise show.
Talk about your pots and kettles. Talk about your werfbobbejaans and chihuahuas. Whew!
You’re also in for a new elite of the hypersensitive coming out of the woodwork.
What do I mean? Example: Let’s deconstruct that last sentence. Donald McNeil used the expression “coming out of the woodwork” in a reference that might be to blacks. Could that be code for the real simile he didn’t know he was framing subliminally “nigger in the woodpile”? Aha! Racism!
You think I’m kidding. Wait.
Someday, if you waste enough money on national IQ tests, you’ll inherit our excruciatingly painful battle over “the Bell curve” – whether whites are, on average, more intelligent than blacks. Blame gets flung everywhere: the tests are skewed, the educational system is racist, television is to blame, black parents are to blame, and so forth. Ultimately, once everyone’s feelings are hurt, the conclusion should be – but never is – that IQ tests are stupid. The truth is, whatever the results, we don’t choose our leaders from averages – or written tests.
On many IQ tests, Jews and Asians do better than average. If you want to trim it finer, Hungarian Jews and Koreans may be the world’s smartest people.
Does that mean Hungarian Jews and Koreans rule the world? Doesn’t look like it.
So why does Bill Clinton rule the world and General Colin Powell not?
Clinton does very well on IQ tests – Rhodes scholar, Yale law, brilliant impromptu speaker. But would you call him smart? (There’s a reason the Chinese call the penis “small boss”.) But Powell’s brilliant too. And a war hero, not a draft dodger. Is it because Clinton’s white? I think not, but many black Americans smarter than me disagree – they believe whites still aren’t ready to vote a black man into the White House. We’ll never know, because Powell didn’t run – his wife was sure a white racist would kill him.
What’s my point? This: Powell got within shooting distance of the presidency by rising through one of the most (believe it or not) democratic, merit-based institutions in the US: the army. Clinton got there by rising through one of the least: state politics.
Then there’s the flip side: Powell’s going down in history as a dignified footnote. Clinton’s going down as President Blow Job. Who won?
So? So life isn’t fair. In my country or yours, it isn’t based solely on IQ, on race, on hard work or on luck. It’s hell. Quit arguing. Be nice.
Donald G McNeil Jnr is a foreign correspondent based in South Africa