Since 1967, affirmative action programs have addressed discrimination based on sex as well as race. Nell Irvin Painter received her doctorate in history from Harvard University and subsequently taught at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of North Carolina, and Princeton University. Despite these accomplishments, she heard complaints from white men that her success depended on the preferences she received because of her race and sex. In the following selection, she describes the dilemma facing many African American women and defends affirmative action.
I’ve always thought affirmative action made a lot of sense, because discrimination against black people and women was prolonged and thorough. But I’ve been hearing talk in the last several years that lets me know that not everyone shares my views. The first time I noticed it was shortly after I had moved to Philadelphia, where I used to live. One evening I attended a lecture—I no longer remember the topic—but I recall that I arrived early and was doing what I did often that fall. I worked at polishing my dissertation. In those days I regularly carried chapters and a nicely sharpened pencil around with me. I sat with pencil and typescript, scratching out awkward phrases and trying out new ones.
Next to me sat a white man of about 35, whose absorption in my work increased steadily. He watched me intently—kindly—for several moments. “Is that your dissertation?” I said yes, it was. “Good luck in getting it accepted,” he said. I said that it had already been accepted, thank you.
Still friendly, he wished me luck in finding a job. I appreciated his concern, but I already had a job. Where? At Penn, for I was then a beginning assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “Aren’t you lucky,” said the man, a little less generously, “you got a job at a good university.” I agreed. Jobs in history were, still are, hard to find.
While cognizant of the job squeeze, I never questioned the justice of my position. I should have a job, and a good one. I had worked hard as a graduate student and had written a decent dissertation. I knew foreign languages, had traveled widely, and had taught and published. I thought I had been hired because I was a promising young historian. Unlike the man beside me, I didn’t think my teaching at a first-rate university required an extraordinary explanation.
“I have a doctorate in history,” he resumed, “but I couldn’t get an academic job.” With regret he added that he worked in school administration. I said I was sorry he hadn’t been able to find the job he wanted. He said: “It must be great to be black and female, because of affirmative action. You count twice.” I couldn’t think of an appropriate response to that line of reasoning, for this was the first time I’d met it face to face. I wished the lecture would start. I was embarrassed. Did this man really mean to imply that I had my job at his expense? The edge of competition in his voice made me squirm.
He said that he had received his doctorate from Temple, and yet he had no teaching job, and where was my degree from? “Harvard,” I said. It was his time not to reply. I waited a moment for his answer, then returned to my chapter.
Now I live in North Carolina, but I still hear contradictory talk about affirmative action. Last spring I was having lunch with some black Carolina undergraduates. One young woman surprised me by deploring affirmative action. I wondered why. “White students and professors think we only got into the University of North Carolina because we’re black,” she complained, “and they don’t believe we’re truly qualified.” She said that she knew that she was qualified and fully deserved to be at Carolina. She fulfilled all the regular admissions requirements. It was the stigma of affirmative action that bothered her; without it other students wouldn’t assume she was unqualified.
Another student said that the stigma of affirmative action extended to black faculty as well. She had heard white students doubting the abilities of black professors. Indeed, she herself tended to wait for black professors to disprove her assumption that they did not know their fields. She was convinced that without affirmative action, students would assume black faculty to be as good as white.
That’s what I’ve been hearing from whites and blacks. White people tell me I must be on easy street because I’m black and female. (I do not believe I’ve ever heard that from a black person, although some blacks believe that black women have an easier time in the white world than black men. I don’t think so.) White people tell me, “You’re a twofer.” On the other side of the color line, every black student knows that he or she is fully qualified—I once thought that way myself. It is just the other black people who need affirmative action to get in. No one, not blacks, not whites, benefits from affirmative action, or so it would seem. . . .
I am one of the few people I know who will admit to having been helped by affirmative action. To do so is usually tantamount to admitting deficiency. To hear people talk, affirmative action exists only to employ and promote the otherwise unqualified, but I don’t see it that way at all. I’m black and female, yet I was hired by two history departments that had no black members before the late 60’s, never mind females. Affirmative action cleared the way. . . .
. . . The civil rights movement and the feminist movement have created a new climate that permitted affirmative action, which, in turn, opened areas previously reserved for white men. Skirts and dark skins appeared in new settings in the 1970’s, but in significant numbers only after affirmative action mandated the changes and made them thinkable. Without affirmative action, it never would have occurred to any large, white research university to consider me for professional employment, despite my degree, languages, publications, charm, grace, despite my qualifications.
My Philadelphia white man and my Carolina black women would be surprised to discover the convergence of their views. I doubt that they know that their convictions are older than affirmative action. I wish I could take them back to the early 60’s and let them see that they’re reciting the same old white-male-superiority line, fixed up to fit conditions that include a policy called affirmative action. Actually, I will not have to take those people back in time at all, for the Reagan Administration’s proposed dismantling of affirmative action fuses the future and the past. If they achieve their stated goals, we will have the same old discrimination, unneedful of new clothes.
Source: Nell Irvin Painter, “Whites Say I Must Be on Easy Street,” New York Times, December 10, 1981.