By Zack Linly
The only thing more annoying than white people in general bloviating about how affirmative action gives Black people a leg up at the expense of white people is mediocre white people bloviating about how affirmative action gives Black people a leg up at the expense of white people.
Turning Point USA President Charlie Kirk is a prime example of this. The remedial white man who failed to graduate from a community college took to his talk show Thursday to flood his studio with white tears over prominent and successful Black women who may have benefitted from affirmative action, because, you know, American higher education has a long history of discriminating against non-white people. (Affirmative action, on the other hand, has a long history of benefitting white women more than anyone else, but facts rarely get in the way of a mediocre white man’s persecution complex.)
“Three weeks ago, if we would’ve said that Joy Reid, and Michelle Obama, and Sheila Jackson Lee, and Ketanji Brown Jackson were affirmative action picks, we would’ve been called the racist,” Kirk said.
“But now they’re coming out and they’re saying it for us,” he continued. “They’re coming out and they’re saying, ‘I’m only here because of affirmative action.’ Yeah, we know. You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.”
Kirk played footage of Jackson Lee saying that although the congresswoman was “a clear recipient of affirmative action, and particularly in higher education,” she graduated on her own merits. The point she was making was that benefiting from affirmative action had nothing to do with her lacking the necessary qualifications to attend Yale University and the University of Virginia School of Law, and her successful career since graduating (something race can’t help one do) is proof of that. And all of the Black women Kirk attacked can say the same. (Seriously, have y’all even seen Brown Jackson’s post-college resume?) But since Kirk lacks “the brain processing power” to differentiate between the housing crisis and—*checks notes*—apartment buildings being built too tall, he missed that point.
“It’s very obvious to us that you were not smart enough to be able to get in on your own,” said the guy who wasn’t smart enough to get into a prestigious college or complete a program at community college.
Kirk went on to perpetuate the myth that race is ever the sole qualification needed to be employed in a field under affirmative action by implying that the policy would have untrained Black people fly planes. But not just any untrained Black people—we’re talking about make-believe Black people named “Ramon” and “Cadillac.” (You can tell Kirk doesn’t actually know any real Black people since the only stereotypical Black names he was able to conjure in his Klan-ish mind were fake names that are not remotely common among Black people. I can say confidently that I’ve never met a Black person named “Cadillac” in my entire Black life.)
Again, if the women Kirk directed his inadequate white ire at weren’t actually qualified, they would not have enjoyed successful professional careers after college. They might not have even gotten any further than say, starting an ideological activism group and having a talk show viewed by MAGA rubes who think the number of counties a candidate wins matters more than the number of votes.
Oh, wait—sorry, that’s what Kirk himself thinks.
So, the guy who doesn’t understand voting math thinks he’s qualified to be a political expert, but Black women who have proven their qualifications didn’t have “the brain processing power” to get into good schools.
By the way, do you know who else benefitted from affirmative action and even admitted as much?
I wonder if Kirk has the same energy for him.
