God's Affirmative Action

“In a fractured decision that revealed deep divisions over what role the judiciary should play in protecting racial and ethnic minorities, the Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a Michigan constitutional amendment that bans affirmative action in admissions to the state’s public universities.”   --- N.Y. Times April 22, 2014

“While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us . . .” --- Paul to the Romans 5:8

God believes in affirmative action.  This is a theological truth before it is public policy.  But because it is a theological truth it eventually has political consequences.  The whole purpose of being a God-person/Christian is to try to the best of our ability to imitate the things that God does. 

The Biblical narrative is the story of God taking affirmative action on behalf of God’s people.  God chooses Israel, not because they were a great nation and had proven themselves worthy, but because God loved them, simple as that (Deuteronomy 7:7-8).  God’s choice is an affirmative action, unrelated to merit.  The same is true in God’s incarnation in Jesus Christ, extending God’s affirmative action to all the nations, “God so loved the world . . .” (John 3:16).  And so, Paul is able to make the most concise statement about God’s affirmative action, “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).  Regardless of our credentials, or lack of them, we have been chosen by God.  God has acted affirmatively toward us.

In public policy, affirmative action seeks to do what God does, to choose someone regardless of accepted standards.  There are indications that “accepted standards” are not race- or culture-neutral so that affirmative action is an artificial but necessary means of providing more opportunity for some in our society who have been denied such opportunity because the weight of historical prejudice has been their burden to carry.

So much of the opportunities I have had in my life have been mine simply because I was white and born to highly-educated parents.  I could easily claim that I have worked for everything I have achieved; but by virtue of my birth I was given a preferential option, an automatic “leg up” according to societal standards.  In a sense, because of my whiteness, society was offering me an affirmative action, a preferential position that had nothing to do with what I merited.  This preferential position gave me opportunities that my more ethnically diverse fellow citizens do not enjoy.  When schools are required by law to correct this cultural bias by offering a preferential option for ethnic diversity, this seems like a valuable counter-balance to the entrenched and systemic racism that continues to be a part of our society.

If affirmative action seems inequitable, it does so only if we believe our society is a pure meritocracy, which it is not.  We are born with great differences in opportunity.  Affirmative action as public policy is one means of expanding those opportunities to a wider spectrum of people.  Such preferential options might be among the more god-like things we humans might do.