When most of us think of “affirmative action” we remember the Bakke case where a white was excluded from medical school because a black with fewer qualifications was given a special spot. This was a hugely important case but it was not decided in the US Supreme Court on the issue of affirmative action per se, but on an interpretation of the Civil Rights case. The court did not decide that affirmative action was, in itself, wrong. And the Justices were all over the lot in their reasons.

Many cases of affirmative action arose out of contracts, mostly in the South, where “Jim Crow” rules gave public contracts, for example for construction, to companies in which most employees were white even though the area itself had substantial, sometimes majority black populations.

I long opposed “affirmative action” on the basis that the most competent should not be artificially shunted aside to make room for the less qualified – but I changed. I changed because I realized the enormous system of mass affirmative action I benefited from and that it had very little to do with talent.

I was born to a white, middle class family in the west side of Vancouver. From childhood on I was with the “establishment” class and their children. One of my brother’s godfathers was later the Lieutenant-Governor of the province. I was educated in west side schools, including four years at St. Georges Private School for Boys, as it was then known. My high school, Prince of Wales, was a small school in the heart of “establishment” Shaughnessy.

At UBC I belonged to Zeta Psi fraternity which was one of two or three whose members came from my background or a similar background in Victoria.

I married into a family where the two boys went to Shawnigan Lake for Boys and the daughter to Crofton House, where my mother had gone to school.

When I graduated in law, I had a large and very important safety net of powerful connections. I must say that over the next 50 years I damaged if not destroyed that net but that was my conscious action. I carried a chip on my shoulder against the “establishment” and refused offers to “article” with one of the established Vancouver Law firms and selected a personal injury specialist Tom Griffiths who was hated by older firms because he used juries to extract large sums from their insurance company clients.

I don’t want to give the impression that I cast aside my birthright entirely because I didn’t. For example, I’ve been a member of the Vancouver Club for 45 years. And I retain many friendships that started when I was a child.

I mention all this personal history only to demonstrate the different start in life I had than, say, someone like Dave Barrett who grew up in East Vancouver and went to schools where then, as now, people in general did not have the same advantages as those who lived west of Cambie Street.

Of course some East End kids cracked the establishment; many found their own establishment in the labour movement and left wing political parties. The fact remains, though, that their upbringing and their friends came from outside the ruling cliques in BC and Canada and they had to work much harder to make it than I did.

As I’ve proceeded through life I’ve come to understand that the simple act of birth created huge advantages for me that I had done nothing to earn. How can I then complain that those born at the wrong end of the playing field are given a “hand up” by affirmative action? How can minorities even get a fair start if they are excluded from the prosperous and influential walks of life because all the spots are occupied by people born to dominate and occupy them?

Indeed there is injustice in someone being shoved aside by another who takes his spot with fewer attainments. But, in a civil society that wants to have the playing field leveled not in a century or two but starting now, some individual injustices must be tolerated to offset the inability of others who cannot get past the door to power and prosperity because they were born outside that door.

Click here to listen to an MP3 clip of Rafe’s appearance on October 13. The topics of discussion are Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize and the Rally for Wild Salmon on October 3.