How An Advice Column Handles AA Stigma (It Doesn’t)

“Dear Ella,” writes a stigmatized promotee,

I have long been an advocate of affirmative action, but when I was recently promoted, the whispers (which I heard loudly) were that I was not promoted due to my hard work but due to the fact that I am black.

….

How do I better understand and explain my pro-affirmative action stance to those opposed to my promotion and to those who I promote in the future?

Good question! Alas, poor Ella was not up to the task, and her response never made it past obfuscating banality.

She began by referring to a bit of the history of one of the presidential executive orders mentioning affirmative action, but like so many others she neglected to mention the central fact (analyzed with citations here and here) that the orders signed by both presidents Kennedy (10925, signed March 6, 1961) and Johnson (11246, signed Sept. 28, 1965) emphasized that government contractors were obligated to “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” [Emphasis added] That’s a pretty big omission.

Then, amazingly, Ella proceeds to blame the stigmatized promotee for the stigma!

If you were promoted because you worked hard, paid your dues and preformed well, why would you feel the need to highlight affirmative action to substantiate your rise?

I suspect that you may be the one who has more doubt about the reasons behind your promotion than your co-workers and that in someway [sic] you feel this promotion is undeserved. You need to rethink how you think about yourself and about the people and teams you worked with that helped to make you shine.

A leader leads without focus on race, creed, religion or national origin — why should you be any different?

This advice is so bizarre that it’s both beneath criticism and beyond parody. Affirmative action, as it has come to be understood and practiced, means hiring/promoting/admitting minorities in part because of their race. But when one of its beneficiaries or suspected beneficiaries becomes concerned that colleagues or co-workers believe that, say, a promotion was based on race, he or she is told by the Ellas of the world to ditch irrational self-doubt, that stigma exists only in the delusional mind of the self-stigmatized, and to lead “without focus on race, creed or national origin”!

Until, presumably, that promotee must make some hiring or promotion decisions him- or herself, at which time, of course, race must be taken into account.

I couldn’t begin to make this stuff up.