Chris Rufo has written what I think is an interesting article in the City Journal. It’s called, “A New Civil Rights Agenda:
The only hope for a diverse nation is a regime of colorblind equality.”
Rufo points to the Civil rights Act of 1964 and some of the later additions to it for our unfortunate situation. He claims that both Libertarians and the Dissident Right advocate solutions that he feels are unworkable.
“The question is what to do about it. Libertarians have long argued that the Civil Rights Act compromises core freedoms of speech and association to such a degree that only repealing the law can restore them. Another faction argues that the solution to minoritarian identity politics is majoritarian identity politics—that is, if the legal regime has become a racial spoils system, then Americans of European descent must develop “white racial consciousness” and fight for their share.”
Instead, he outlines three steps that he feels would eliminate reverse discrimination:
“First, reformers should outlaw affirmative action and racial preferences of any kind. … The next president should rescind Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 Executive Order 11246, which established “affirmative action” and marked the initial deviation from the standard of colorblind equality.
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Second, reformers must eliminate the “disparate impact” provisions in the Civil Rights Act of 1991 and overturn Griggs v. Duke Power Co., both of which have entrenched the doctrine that disparate group outcomes are de facto evidence of racial discrimination.
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Third, legislators should abolish the DEI bureaucracies in all American institutions, which openly discriminate against disfavored racial groups, impose ideological orthodoxies on American citizens, and restrict freedoms of speech and association. In addition, federal legislators should radically reduce the size of the federal departments of civil rights enforcement.”
I am not a politician or a lawyer but even an uninformed layman can see that those changes will require either control of both houses of Congress and the president or the Supreme Court to get involved in outlawing whole bureaus of the executive branch out of existence.
I’m not saying it can’t be done but I can understand why there might be a high degree of skepticism on the part of dissidents. Conservatives have been bamboozled by the Republican establishment into hoping for colorblind reform forever and it’s never happened.
But recently we had the Supreme Court strike down affirmative action in college admissions. If they decide to strike it down entirely then possibly all of the three actions that Rufo outlines might actually be covered under this decision. With a conservative president and the Supreme Court outlawing reverse discrimination we might see sixty years of injustice eliminated in short order.
Okay, enough happy, happy talk. Rufo’s thesis is that conservative government would be well within its rights to eliminate almost all of the most obnoxious components of today’s racial reverse discrimination policies. But what he describes would take a courageous Supreme Court and a conservative president willing to use his authority as head of the executive branch to bring the various agencies to heel.
Let’s just say that I completely understand the Dissident’s Right’s skepticism. And all this depends on a conservative president. Will we ever see another one of those? Stay tuned till November.
Affirmative action is just racial discrimination under a different title, and codified by legislation. If I was an affirmative action hire I would feel that my skin color, or group identification was my major hiring factor not my skill set, education, or competency. This automatically brings any DEI hire under suspicion as just a diversity hire, and not really expected to perform, outside of professional sports. Somehow this is fair, to set quotas, and cutouts as a form of reparations, that are never acknowledged or admitted to existing and are concealed under leveling the playing field. The right of free… Read more »
I think that the fed.gov should eliminate all laws requiring affirmative action/reverse discrimination and ban such within the confines of government/public entities. But let the population outside of government associate with whom they will. A general law, pertaining to AA, banning such would be the crack in the door. For example, a Haitian company who only wanted to hire only other Haitians could be interpreted as a form of AA. Freedom of association should be the overriding principle, outside of government that is. I you want to start a organization populated entirely by Hispanic green haired trans lesbians, go for… Read more »
Milo and Tom, I’m right there with you. And the Supreme Court of late has been moving in the right direction. But the federal bureaucracy will probably fight even the Supreme court tooth and nail to keep affirmative action in place. An actual conservative presidency would really help just about now.