Racial Quotas

            A Jesse Helms add that was put out in order to pursue viewers against racial quotas among the work place uses insensitivity to neutralize white privileges and make racial quotas seem unfair and unreasonable.  The advertisement shows the hands of an obviously white male crumpling up a job rejection letter while the narrator speaks of how white males are tired of being rejected jobs they are highly qualified for because of racial quotas that businesses must meet. 

            Blaming racial job quotas for not being able to get a job is a sad excuse that should not be tolerated in any sense.  Many have a difficult time understanding why racial quotas exist and why racial minorities are often given preference when it comes to getting certain jobs.  For a person who has never had any obstacles before these moments in life it is hard to imagine how much these obstacles affect racial minorities in everyday life.  When specifically speaking about racial quotas around the work place, think of all the obstacles that racialized person faced just getting there.  People who come from racialized groups are stereotyped and discriminated against from their birth to their death; they face obstacles like socio-economic disparities solely based on their race. 

Charles Mills argues that it is problematic to believe that we live in an equal society, as liberalism states, because there are so many barriers that racialized people face that people who belong to non-racialized groups cannot even grasp to understand or encounter (Mills, 2008).  Mills gives strong examples as to why racialized group not only face obstacles in everyday life because of their race, but also how they have been set up by society and governments to fail before they are even born.  One of the best points that Mills establishes is the idea of racial segregation, specifically speaking of blacks and whites in America.  Even though schools are not legally segregated anymore, public and private schools are segregated even more than they ever have been before (Mills, 2008).  More places where there are definite segregations are prisons and the correctional institutions.  African American men are over represented in prisons more than any other racial groups in the states, in the 1980s there were actually more African American males in prison than there were going to college (Mills, 2008).  These over representations directly affect the political world because in America, once a person has a criminal record they are unable to vote (Mills, 2008).  If African American males represent the largest population in prison they are also the largest group denied the ability to vote.  This becomes even more devastating when realizing that most of these individuals are in prisons because of socio-economic obstacles they are constantly forced to face.  Having workplace racial quotas for racial minorities is a fair and just policy as equality is an inexistent factor for most racialized people.

Work Cited:

Mills, C.W. (2008). Racial Liberalism. PMLA, 123, 1380-1397.