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

Suppose the Civil Rights Act were now REPEALED?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 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

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.

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.”