Webb Perpetuates a Myth of His Own.

The American Prospect
Posted by Monica Potts on July 26, 2010 2:52 PM

There's a way to care about and address poverty in every community where it manifests itself without positing that poor whites in America suffer with no help while poor blacks, Latinos, and new immigrants benefit from a slew of government programs. Unfortunately, that's not the kind of writing Sen. Jim Webb did last week, or Ross Douthat did before that, or Daniel Foster did when he wrote about Douthat's column. All of these authors write about poor whites as if they haven't gotten assistance from the government, but poor minorities have. Douthat and Foster were concerned with college admissions and a study that showed lower-income whites were not given extra consideration over their wealthier counterparts. Webb's concern was with non-black minorities and new immigrants whom he says affirmative action was never meant to help. (He also asserts that decades of affirmative action have marginalized white workers, but fails to show how. Such an assertion ignores that the current recession is worse for communities of color, especially black communities, in just about every way possible.)

Full Blog Post: http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=07&year=2010&base_name=theres_a_way_to_care