Just when I begin to think that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has escaped the gravitational pull of his party, he crashes back to earth with a thud.

Grounding Kennedy this time was affirmative action. Last Thursday, he weighed in on the Supreme Court decision banning race-based admissions practices in higher education. So empty headed and elitist was his response that it could only have come from a liberal to the limousine born.

“‘Color-blind’ admissions tend to favor those who are already in the circle of privilege. It favors those who grew up in affluent, educated households,” Kennedy opined, adding, “Wouldn’t you like to invite in those who have been left out in the cold.”

“Color-blind” admissions tend to favor those who are already in the circle of privilege. It favors those who grew up in affluent, educated households. Wouldn’t you like to invite in those who have been left out in the cold?

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) June 29, 2023

The rhetorical “you” who Kennedy addresses did not live in my Newark, New Jersey, neighborhood. In my book, Untenable: The True Story of White Ethnic Flight from America’s Cities, I explore the fate of those who actually have been left out in the cold: the white working classes of cities like Newark.

Kennedy is oblivious to these people’s plight. He seems not to know that universities and most other institutions, public and private, have systematically disfavored them for the last 60 years.

Coming of age in Newark in the 1960s, the “circle of privilege” I enjoyed was not quite as affluent and educated as Kennedy’s. According to the 1950 Census — the most recent census publicly accessible — my street, just one block long, had 83 households, 81 of them headed by married males. As far as I could tell, not one of them was educated beyond high school, and clearly none was affluent.

By my count, 79 of the males held jobs outside the home, as did 30 of their wives. Every one of those jobs was either blue-collar or low-level clerk. Among the professions represented were rubber molder, casket maker, huckster, and, my favorite, “janitress.” This was a woman who embraced her sex and her work. On the block, too, were immigrants from 14 different countries.

No parent I know of “saved for college.” That was not part of the game plan in our world. Of the 25 or so boys in my eighth-grade class, only two I know of went to college directly from high school, myself and my friend Albert. 

In 1965, as a high school senior, I informed my guidance counselor that I hoped to attend Princeton. He laughed: “How are you going to afford that?” I couldn’t, not on my widowed mother’s school-crossing-guard salary. For the record, my mother never even went to high school, let alone graduated. My father attended the same vo-tech high as TV’s Junior Soprano.

When I asked Albert where he was going to college, he said sheepishly, “Columbia.” I was stunned. “How did you pull that off?” I asked. He was almost too embarrassed to answer. “Oh, it’s a black thing,” he said apologetically. Albert was a good student — but, we both knew, not Ivy League good. 

The presumed race blindness ordered by the 1964 Civil Rights Act had lasted no more than a year, if that. It was formally superseded in 1965 when President Lyndon B. Johnson issued Executive Order 11246, entrusting the secretary of labor with the power “to take affirmative action to ensure equal opportunity based on race, color, religion, and national origin.”

That executive order had little immediate impact on my neighborhood. With Vietnam heating up, the military was taking all comers. Of the dozens of guys I contacted in researching my book, a solid majority signed up or were drafted soon after high school. About half of them ended up in Vietnam. Not all of them came home.

Many of those who did return gravitated to public service jobs, especially in police and fire departments. As they would soon discover, the affirmative action regime had already taken root. This zero-sum game pitted working-class blacks against working-class whites and favored blacks for no reason other than the color of their skin. White workers deeply resented the system, but they had no place to take their complaints. White bosses protested affirmative action at the risk of their own careers. 

For black activists to acknowledge the reality of affirmative action was to kill the need for their services. The more radical among them had a vested interest in keeping their followers angry and discontented. Progress was anathema to their cause. It still is.

By 1975, when I was finishing up my Ph.D. in American studies at Purdue, women and sundry other minorities had hopped on the affirmative action gravy train. With more demand than supply for jobs in academia, universities sent letters to applicants proudly declaring their preference for candidates who were something other than white and male. This preference extended to foreign nationals.

Unwilling to fight for the scraps, I opted out of academia altogether. So did most of my white male colleagues. I only wish I had saved the rejection letters. Bobby Jr. really needs to read them. As a Kennedy, I am sure he never received one of his own. 

Jack Cashill’s Untenable: The True Story of White Ethnic Flight from America’s Cities is now available in all formats anywhere you can buy books.