RICHMOND, Va.— U.S. Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., has called for ending government-run diversity programs in a newspaper column, saying they have disadvantaged struggling Whites and hurt the cause of racial harmony.
Webb wrote an op-ed column in this past Friday’s Wall Street Journal that said a “plethora of government-enforced diversity policies have marginalized many White workers. The time has come to cease the false arguments and allow every American the benefit of a fair chance at the future.”
Webb’s press secretary, Jessica Smith, said Friday that the senator felt the column speaks for itself and that he would not comment further.
As an author, Webb expressed misgivings about how affirmative action programs have grown beyond their initial intent in two of his books, Born Fighting and A Time to Fight.
Federal diversity programs now primarily benefit new immigrants over Whites and even Black Americans, their original beneficiaries, wrote Webb.
“In an odd historical twist that all Americans see but few can understand, many programs allow recently arrived immigrants to move ahead of similarly situated Whites whose families have been in the country for generations,” he wrote.
“The injustices endured by Black Americans at the hands of their own government have no parallel in our history, not only during the period of slavery but also in the Jim Crow era that followed,” he wrote.
