Obama's Win and Its Consequences for Social Welfare

With presidential candidate Barack Obama leading in the polls, many people predict that he is about to sit in the White House. However, his success might create new victims (blacks) in the United States.

The United States of America is a society where racial matters are brought up daily. Racism has become weaker and weaker throughout history, but most Americans do not feel ashamed about this miserable period in their history. The U.S. government has tried to compensate blacks through a series of political measures, including equal opportunity laws among different races and so on, especially in education. When you pay a visit to any university in the U.S., you will find that blacks usually have the lowest scores while Asians have the highest, which shows that admission standards for blacks have been set lower than for other races. This policy made sense initially; blacks were steadily on the receiving end in a racially discriminatory society for a long time, with poorer elementary and middle schools supporting the fact that they can barely advance if they have to compete with white students. It is reasonable to lower admission standards to create more opportunities for them to be well-educated to make up for their disadvantages in a short period of time.

But since this policy has existed for a while, it has become unavoidably rigid while society has gone through a number of changes over the years. First, a number of black lives have improved and have assimilated into the middle-class. Skin color is no longer seen as a sign of the poor. Secondly, affirmative action still faces the following problem; the government setting admission standards according to skin color. Consequently, a black child who has attended a private high school and comes from a family with an annual income above 200,000 U.S. dollars will squeeze past an Asian child who has attended a public high school and comes from a family with annual income of only 50,000 U.S. dollars to enter one of the Ivy League universities. Once I was joking with a friend that “I am the same age as Obama, and my daughter is the same age as his daughter. If this rule applies, then when both of the girls reach college age, Obama’s daughter might harm my daughter’s chances of entering college–not because he is president, but because of their skin color.”

In fact, there have been a number of complaints regarding this policy of racial quotas –some people have even appealed to the Supreme Court. In some states, the local governments have already approved abolishing the policy of recruiting students based on their skin color. The social group that has complained the most is poor whites. They didn’t gain the upper hand financially, having instead to experience the frustration of seeing their children squeezed out by rich black children with lower scores when they apply for college. Isn’t it the rich bullying the poor in that case? Another group of dissenters are black conservatives. They argue that the benefits affirmative action afforded to blacks made them psychologically dependent while lowering their self-esteem. Black youth felt that since they have black skin, it is natural that they don’t need to do well. The only way for blacks to obtain real progress is to force them to compete with other races equally.

Obama himself was fully aware of this issue. During one of his campaigns, he emphasized in particular that his children will not enjoy this special right when they apply for good colleges. However, some conservatives attacked him by saying his performance at Columbia University was probably just so-so, otherwise his records would not be strictly confidential. And it is probably because of this policy that got him admitted to Harvard. On the contrary, Obama insisted that he didn’t know anything about his selection by the admission’s office and according to what criteria.

Now if he is elected, whites will say “We have already chosen a black man to be our president. How can you say United States is still racist? Why do blacks still get special treatment?” The calls to reform affirmative action are growing louder; racial equality can not defend the phenomenon of the rich muscling out the poor because of their black skin. However, many blacks are likely to lose the welfare they have enjoyed for years.

It can be said that whites will be relieved to see Obama win so that they can be more confident when competing with blacks. For blacks, getting rid of short-term welfare might be a blessing. As black conservatives pointed out, they can only obtain real racial equality through their own efforts. Without the favor created by affirmative action, it is the beginning of self-reliance. All in all, the United States is moving towards the epoch of post-racialism, which is in the interest of the majority of Americans.