printThe excerpt is from my WND.COM column, “Liberty And The Civil Wrongs Act”:
“The Obama administration, like the gang it replaced, has intervened on the side of a mutant strain of affirmative action – a ‘race conscious’ admissions process practiced at the University of Texas at Austin, now being contested by two white plaintiffs. In case the conservative base reverts to its default position – a belief in the superiority of Republican tyranny – I’ll remind it that Bush had helped to legitimize this proxy-for-race admissions process at the University of Michigan Law School.
In what was surely a triumph of Clintonian triangulation tactics, Bush, in a 2003 legal brief, ostensibly challenged racial preferences at Michigan Law, while simultaneously encouraging, instead, the use of racial cue cards in the admissions process. For example, an applicant could hint heavily at having overcome hardship (‘such as having been shot,’ quipped commentator Steve Sailer at the time).
Housebroken conservatives will reach for the smelling salts at what I am about to say next – they do so each time an attempt is made to explore the effects on liberty of one overarching and overreaching bit of legislation. The culprit in these crippling codes for university admissions – and in hiring, firing, renting, and money lending – is the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the ‘most radical law affecting civil rights ever passed by any nation’ …
The complete column is “Liberty And The Civil Wrongs Act.”
Do read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.
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Update (April 4): I hope I have misunderstood Myron’s anti-South stereotypes. Myron seems to have great faith in the power of legislation to renew communities. Alas, the Civil Rights Act most certainly did not “transform” the South for the better. Someone has swallowed whole “HOLLYWOOD’S HATEFUL HOOEY ABOUT THE SOUTH.” The South of John Randolph of Roanoke and John C. Calhoun was aristocratic, if anything. The War Between the States destroyed a patrician way of life.
I recommend Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America by historian David Hackett Fischer.
I’ll say this for you Mercer. When you pick windmills to joust you pick big ones. The whole civil rights, affirmitive action scam was transparent when it hit the public and is transparent now. I don’t see anything on the horizon that indicates anything other than continuation of this abomination. The concept has become so ingrained in our lives by academia and popular culture that it will remain, except when the left trots it out to add another oppressed group of victims.
Ilana,
You write:” in their quest for diversity, universities will pursue less conspicuous, race-friendly recruiting methods, which will, ultimately, preclude the Midwestern experience.”
And let us not forget the new student loan program will now be administered by our Department of Education instead of a local lender. I am sure they will be fair and are simply saving us from those evil bankers cutting cash for origination fees that can better be used by our governement. Another courageous essay, Ilana, that will have more than a few readers “reaching for amonia or smelling salts.”
1. The history Jim Crow Klanocracy of the post-Civil War South is nothing to be admired. To the extent that the Civil Rights movement stopped state/local governmental action (de jure and de facto since the daytime sheriff was often the nighttime Klansman), it did some good. In fact, private enterprises that wanted to practice equality were threatened and coerced during this time.
2. HOWEVER, as is often the case, the so-called “cure” decided to go beyond equal rights into the racial preferences and codify affirmative action and other malignancies. So government-based discrimination merely switched from one preferred group to a different preferred groups. Furthermore, the Act also swallowed up private action (distinct from government-based discrimination) in the name of insuring equality. And “rights” gets arbitrarily extended to sexuality, behavior, illegal trespassers (“immigrants”) and any other politically correct cause by the power structure.
3. As with nearly everything of the last 100 years, the distinction between governmental (“public”) and private property has been blurred/tarnished – most likely beyond any point of recovery short of eliminating most of the government itself. The Civil Wrongs Act is just another example of the elimination of private property and private enterprise of the 20th Century.
Myron that is probably one of the most clear and concise summaries I’ve read on the Civil Right Act of 1964. Well done!
Ms. Mercer, I hear mooing in the distance. Has anyone you know been throwing stones at sacred cows lately? 🙂
Roger Clegg of the Center for Equal Opportunity addresses the federal government’s response to unequal outcomes in education in this lead letter in Education Week, March 31, 2010, Civil Rights Enforcement: ‘Impact’ or ‘Treatment’:
“The U.S. Department of Education has promised to use ‘disparate impact’ claims to ramp up its anti-discrimination enforcement (‘Duncan Vows Tougher Civil Rights Action’, March 17, 2010). Such claims are brought against practices that lead to politically incorrect racial results, even if the practices are nondiscriminatory by their terms, in their design, and in their application.
“…such claims are misguided as a matter of policy. They are not about true discrimination, and they pressure schools either to abandon legitimate practices (for example, in disciplining students) or to adopt surreptitious quotas.
“But there’s another problem with disparate-impact claims: The regulations they rely on are themselves illegal. That’s because the underlying statute, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, bans only true discrimination (‘disparate treatment’). The U.S. Supreme Court has hinted that these regulations are, therefore, ultra vires, or beyond legal authority.
“Here’s hoping that some district will challenge them.”
LINK, subscribers only:
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/03/31/27letter-1.h29.html?r=1398749134
A combination of mobility, the Civil Wrongs Act, globalization, etc. transformed the South from the “Sahara of the Bozart” (Google that phrase to find a Mencken criticism) writing2.richmond.edu/jessid/eng423/restricted/mencken.pdf
of lynchings and demagogues to a place with orchestras and physics departments.
But we are now in 2010, not 1950 or 1915.
Suppose the Civil Rights Act were now REPEALED? Do people seriously believe that McDonalds, Marriotts, and Walmarts will become “whites only”? And with a Voting Rights Act, how viable would the old style demagogues be in 2010? And even if a few small places like “Bubba’s Burger Barn” wanted to discriminate, would it make any significant impact? There are bars in Southeast DC that are 99.999% black and hardly upsets anyone. So even conceding that the law aided in eliminating the malignancies of the Jim Crow South, why is this act STILL needed?
The reason that this law is still kept and (illegally) expanded (circa 2010) is because it is an instrument for power hungry bureaucrats to control human behavior whether local governments or private industry. It also provides as an excellent opportunity to engage in a political social spoils system to enhance the power of the politicians.
“The South of John Randolph of Roanoke and John C. Calhoun was aristocratic, if anything. The War Between the States destroyed a patrician way of life.” If Louisiana is an example, then it has not been destroyed; just withdrawn from public view. I had the rare opportunity to know one of the members of the old line New Orleans aristocracy for a short period of time. Mardi Gras was and is a time of numerous balls and events done privately far away from media attention. In the past the aristocracy was front page news but now in the age of the common man they keep a low profile. They are still just as active but secluded from the public eye. I believe that there is also a Black aristocracy as well that developed from the free Blacks in the south, but all my research to date has only left me with hints and no verifiable substance.
I hope Myron does not have to fly American (sic) Airlines.
On the morning of 9/11/2001 it proudly announced the appointment of a “Latina” as “VP of Diversity. It did so in an over-sized advertisement in the Dallas newspaper.
The airline could profile folks, but only certain ones. http://www.linkedin.com/in/diannsanchezsphr