The four major television networks’ capitulation to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP) demand to hire more black actors, writers, and directors promotes racism not cures it, said a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute.
“Racism is the elevation of membership in a racial group over individual merit,” said Robert W. Tracinski. “The injustice of racism, and the reason it must be opposed, is that it demands that individuals of ability be ignored or attacked for no other reason than their skin color.”
Tracinski said that the NAACP’s message is clear: considerations having to do with individual merit — are irrelevant.
“The only thing that is supposed to matter is the irrelevant fact that these actors, writers, and directors have dark skin — and will therefore be hired not because they can do the work but because they ‘represent’ their racial group,” said Tracinski.
Tracinski noted that the consequence of the NAACP’s demands will be the unjust branding of every black writer, director, or actor subsequently hired as a quota-filler, and not as an individual who earned his job.
Even more ominous is the NAACP’s attempt to make intellectual content a matter of race [just as Adolph Hitler did with the ‘Aryan’ race — Editor]. Comments Tracinski,
Expressing the most extreme form of the doctrine that the race takes precedence over the individual, the NAACP believes that there is inherently a ‘black’ perspective on ideas, which ought to be promulgated. Its complaint against the networks is that ‘black images’ and ‘black voices’ are being ‘excluded’ from television. This campaign is about more than just providing a racial patronage system; it is an attempt to gain an unearned stranglehold over the media — and then, presumably, to foist upon the public whatever the NAACP regards as ‘black ideas.’
What would be the proper approach to fighting racism? Tracinski gives the answer:
An organization that was actually concerned with fighting racism would take the opposite approach. Rather than advocate the indiscriminate hiring of token blacks, such an organization would highlight cases of individuals with demonstrable talent who are being unjustly ignored by some business. It would legitimately generate public criticism of such practices by showing that individuals are being excluded because of their race.
Unfortunately, this is precisely what the NAACP is failing to do in its quest to promote “black ideas” and “black quotas”.
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