Ask Auntie Pinko
April 5, 2001

Tell a friend about Auntie Pinko

Dear Auntie Pinko,

Why do liberals want to give unfair privileges to people based on their race or color? I thought you all believed in equal opportunity! What about the opportunity for a white person who is denied a place in a college program or a good job, just because they have a 'quota' of minorities to meet? Is that fair?

Sincerely,

A fair-minded Conservative
Dearborn, Michigan

Dear AFMC,

I'm glad you asked that. I bet you think I'm going to respond with some tired old analogy about level playing fields or running races or something, don't you?

Auntie Pinko would do nothing so testosterone-laden. I prefer to think of the American marketplace of economic opportunity as a vast garden, with all kinds of lovely plants growing together. And if you know anything about gardening, you'll know that if a plant is weak or vulnerable, it can leave room for weeds, or attract pests and diseases that cause trouble for the whole garden!

We need every plant to be strong and healthy. But a garden has all kinds of different soil conditions and microclimates (that means 'small areas where the temperature, wind strength, sun exposure, etc., are different from the areas around them,' AFMC - sorry about those technical terms.)

Plants grown in poor soil or an unfavorable microclimate often need special attentions like extra fertilizer, deeper mulch, or protection from the wind, in order to grow strong and healthy. Sometimes we need to transplant them to better soil.

That's what affirmative action is all about - helping the plants in those areas overcome the unfavorable conditions of their microclimate so they can flourish and keep the whole garden vigorous!

Now, a good gardener knows that she can't keep pouring on extra fertilizer and staking up those plants forever - after all, the whole garden needs cultivating. So the smart gardener invests in long-term solutions to improve conditions in the places where plants struggle. We plant windbreaks, or carry out a program of regularly tilling in soil amendments to improve the ground. Eventually, we won't need to give as much extra attention to particular plants.

But these long-term improvements take a big effort, and they can't be completed quickly. It takes time for a windbreak to grow. A lazy gardener puts off making this extra big exertion, and ends up having to spend too much time and effort overcoming the poor climate conditions. Eventually, even that will be too much work-they won't be able to keep up with it all!

A garden full of weeds and pests should be no surprise to such indolent horticulturalists. America is paying the price now for the unwillingness of certain people (I'm sure you can guess who they are) to make the big investments needed to improve the microclimates that our minorities have grown in over the past hundred years.

The continual need to apply 'special attention' does indeed become wearisome-but if we let up on these efforts before we complete those long-term improvements, can we be surprised at the society full of weeds and pests that results? I think not.

I hope that helps clear things up for you, AFMC, and thank you for writing to Auntie Pinko!

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