Affirmative Destruction

We need to find a way to wean the black majority off its dependence on special advantages. We need to instill a sense of pride in personal achievement...

Photo by Avel Chuklanov on Unsplash

Black people are victims.

Of geography – they come from Africa, where the living is easy.

Of history – the wheel, written language, steam, electricity, all passed them by.

Of slavery – most chose free food rather than fight for their freedom.

Of affirmative action, disguised as BEE.

They are victims of modern Western sympathy, of so-called “affirmative action”, embodied in the South African policy of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE). This insidious strategy has convinced blacks that they can't advance without special treatment. Affirmative action has tainted every black achievement with suspicions of unfair advantage. It has convinced many blacks that they aren’t good enough, that black merit and achievement is a myth, that success can be achieved without effort.

There are four famous modern black men, all intellectuals and writers, who loudly proclaim and prove the exact opposite. They are respected, influential and wise. And they all identify affirmative action as the greatest threat to long-term black success. They are Jason Riley, Shelby Steele, Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams.

Jason Riley

Jason L. Riley (born July 8, 1971) is an American conservative commentator and author. He is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board, is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and has appeared on the Journal Editorial Report, other Fox News programs, and C-SPAN. He has written about his black experience in America as a conservative. He is the author of several books including Let Them In: The Case for Open Borders (2008), Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed (2014), False Black Power? (2017), Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell (2021) and The Affirmative Action Myth: Why Blacks Don't Need Racial Preferences to Succeed (2025).

Using empirical data, Riley shows how black families lifted themselves out of poverty prior to the racial preference policies of the 1960s and 1970s. Between 1940 and 1960, for example, the black poverty rate fell by nearly half, from 87% to 47%. That drop predated the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society welfare state expansions, and racial preferences. Indeed, black wages, homeownership, and educational attainment were all trending upward in the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, and racial disparities were narrowing. Rising rates of crime, unemployment, family disintegration, and welfare dependency among blacks coincide with the post-1960s era of affirmative action, which also tainted black achievement with suspicions of unfair advantage.

Countering those who blame white supremacy and systemic racism for today’s racial gaps – and who insist that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives are necessary to sustain the black middle class – Riley offers a more optimistic story of black success without racial favoritism. The Affirmative Action Myth argues that equal treatment – not special treatment – is the key to real black progress. The better way forward is to focus on merit-based policies and universal standards of fairness that transcend race.

The Affirmative Action Myth is a damning indictment of liberal public policy – and of modern black leadership. The black leadership shifted in its focus from equal treatment to special treatment epitomised in the rise of the Black Power movement. There was also a focus among the black leadership to acquire more black political power. The thinking was: If we can get our own folks in office, our own people elected, the rest will take care of itself. It’s all about getting political power.

But that black political leadership did not translate into more economic gains for blacks. In fact, the black poor became poorer as black politicians became richer.

Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell is an American economist, economic historian, and social and political commentator. He is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. With widely published commentary and books – and as a guest on TV and radio – he is a well-known voice in the American conservative movement. He is one of the most prolific, intellectually independent, and iconoclastic economists alive today. Enormously learned, wonderfully clear-headed, he sees reality as it is, and flinches at no truth.

Sowell recently concluded a study of affirmative action programs around the world, from India and Malaysia to Nigeria and the United States. His findings? Such programs have at best a negligible impact on the groups they are intended to assist.

The empirical evidence is clear that most American blacks got themselves out of poverty in the decades preceding the civil rights revolution of the 1960s and the beginning of affirmative action in the 1970s. Yet the political misrepresentation of what happened has been so pervasive that this achievement has been completely submerged in the public consciousness. Instead of gaining the respect that other groups have gained by lifting themselves out of poverty, blacks are widely seen, by friends and critics alike, as owing their advancement to government programs.

Shelby Steele

Shelby Steele is an American author, columnist, documentary film maker, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He specialises in the study of race relations, multiculturalism, and affirmative action. He contends that blacks have been "twice betrayed:" first by slavery and oppression and then by group preferences mandated by the government, which discourage self-agency and personal responsibility in blacks.

In his view, white Americans see blacks as victims to ease their guilty conscience, and blacks attempt to turn their status as victims into a kind of currency that will purchase nothing of real or lasting value. There is absolutely no other way to gain the respect of your fellow man than to become competitive with him.

He believes that, while well-intentioned, affirmative action ultimately harms the very people it aims to help by fostering dependency and hindering true equality. Steele emphasises the importance of individual responsibility and self-reliance for advancement. He believes that focusing on individual effort, rather than group-based preferences, is the true path to equality.

Walter Williams

Walter Edward Williams (1936 – 2020) was an American economist, commentator, and academic. Williams was the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, a syndicated columnist, and author.

Williams held classical liberal and libertarian views, He earned both his master's degree and his PhD in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). As an economist, Williams was a proponent of free market economics and opposed socialist systems of government intervention. Williams believed laissez-faire capitalism to be the most moral, most productive system humans have ever devised.

In his 1982 book The State Against Blacks, he argued that laws regulating economic activity are far greater obstacles to economic progress for blacks than racial bigotry and discrimination. "The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery couldn't do, and that is to destroy the black family.

For more than four decades he reigned as one of the world’s premier champions of freedom.

Summary

Affirmative action:

– breeds resentment;

– lowers standards;

– has a negative effect on those it aims to help;

– ignores individual merit and agency;

– is unfair and inefficient;

– is extremely racist.

Who doesn’t want something for nothing, particularly if it's at the expense of people you don’t like or who despise you.

There is a better, but harder, way.

Proposal

How does South Africa shake off its dependency on BEE? Here are a few suggestions:

1. Stop calling blacks stupid. As described in the biographies above, they are clearly not.

2. Stop calling whites racist. Most have fully embraced the realities of the new South Africa.

3. Stop saying we should kill each other. It is not helpful.

4. Focus on our real problems:

a. high crime,

b. unemployment,

c. poor education,

d. cadre deployment,

e. massive over regulation,

f. corruption.

We need to find a way to wean the black majority off its dependence on special advantages. We need to instill a sense of pride in personal achievement, to destroy the myth of black inferiority, to create some independent winners.

How can we create and fund a class of independent black entrepreneurs?

1. Allow anyone receiving a SASSA grant (black or white) to take the value of that grant over 2 years in a single lump sum payment, to use as seed capital for their own new business. They would no longer receive the grant for at least 2 years.

2. Remove the many regulatory requirements stifling most startups – no BEE requirements, no minimum wage, no labour regulations, minimal safety laws, etc.

3. Give these startups a 2-year tax holiday.

4. There will be no state supervision, no monitoring. It is their money to use as they see fit. They must live with the consequences of their own mismanagement; else nothing is learned.

Advantages

1. The cost is largely transparent to government. These grants were going to be paid, just the timing is different.

2. Administration is a simple one-time payment through well-established channels.

3. Local economic development can be accomplished without expensive plans and agencies.

4. While some will fail and fall into hard times, I believe most will succeed.

Conclusion

The fact that the 80% of the black population of South Africa requires special privileges to protect themselves from the 8% white population is humiliating beyond all understanding. Blacks should refuse affirmative action out of self-respect.

Trevor Watkins is the founder of the Individualist Movement, the author of two books, and an Associate of the Free Market Foundation. He publishes on a blog at libertarian.org.za.