From
The Barnes Review:
A Journal of Nationalist Thought and Review, Nov-Dec 2001.
“.
. . here is the liberals’ dilemma—either white male privilege is a
myth and AA [affirmative action], erected upon that myth, should be
demolished; or, if white men are privileged, then Jews are even more so.
And if, because of white male privilege, AA is essential to aid
underrepresented minorities and women (the majority) until they have
achieved their ‘fair share’
(quota) of lucrative rewards in society, then because of Jewish
privilege, all the more reason to institute AA to aid underrepresented
gentiles (again, the majority) until they have achieved their ‘fair
share’
of lucrative awards in society."
See
also his
Affirmative Action
and the
Nazis,
The
Case against Affirmative Action,
and
Affirmative Action
and the Elite War against White Males.
Anthony Flood
June 8, 2009
Who’s to Blame for the Affirmative Action Fiasco?
Hugh Murray
Searching for employment in the late 19th century, many Irish immigrants
in America encountered the sign, “NINA” (No Irish Need Apply).1
Today, their descendants face much the same discrimination. Of course,
now, it is not limited to the Irish—for in America men are routinely
denied jobs, promotions, contracts and scholarships because they are of
Irish, Italian, English, German or general Euro-pean heritage. Worse,
not only is this discrimination government sponsored, it is performed in
the name of “Equal Opportunity.” How did this come about? Why do the
media prefer to ignore it? Who fostered this discrimination against
white men?
In high school a white boy may be denied entrance into special programs
because he is not a preferred minority; or, in some cases, he may be
denied because he is not a girl. There are scholarships available, but
many cannot be awarded to a white male (for example, Bill Gates of
Microsoft was recently lauded by the media for establishing
a billion-dollar scholarship program—one in which recipients are
restricted to blacks only.)2 When the teen applies to
university, the administration will admit “basically qualified”
minorities, but reject better-qualified whites. When applying for jobs,
the same discrimination occurs. If the teen finds employment, special,
on-the-job training for promo-tion may be denied him as it is reserved
for minorities, even if they are lesser qualified and have been on the
job a shorter period of time. Once hired, he may be required to attend
“diversity training” sessions, in which he is supposed to confess his
alleged guilt of racism and sexism. Simultaneously, he must deny his
own experience; he must never reveal the racism and sexism he has
suffered. If he does express some of this discrimination that dare not
speak its name, he will be judged “racist” and “disruptive.”
Consequently, he may face disciplinary action from his employers and
hostility from his colleagues. Finally, should he ever head a company,
he may be denied many contracts, as they are set-asides, reserved for
women and minorities.
How did this systematic discrimination arise? A century ago liberals
sought to judge a person without regard to his “race, color or creed.”
The latter phrase became a mantra of those who struggled for equal
opportunity—it was the common litany in American rhetoric until the
feminist onslaught of the 1960s made it politically incorrect.
Nevertheless, the phrase can still be found, if only anachronistically,
as at an NAACP website.3 Interestingly, the words conveyed
slightly different meanings during the last century. For example,
“color” was more akin to our use of the word “race”—white, black,
yellow, brown and red. “Race” at that time was more like today’s
nationality and ethnicity (the French race, the German race, the
Anglo-Saxon race etc). “Creed” was a combination of religion and
religious back-ground.
When cities and states began to enact “civil rights” legislation mid-way
in the 20th century, many of these laws incorporated the old phrase into
the legislation. Indeed, even the Civil Rights Act of 1964 echoes the
old mantra: most sections of the law forbid discrimination based upon
race, color, sex, national origin and religion. The main change in the
1964 act from earlier laws was the criminalization of discrimination
based upon sex.
What did it mean to forbid discrimination? From the early days of the
20th century through 1964, most liberals were clear as to what this
meant—show no bias against or preference for a person because of his
race, sex, religion etc. This was the dominant view. But in the debate
over the civil rights bill in 1964 some opponents declared that if
passed, it would lead to, among other things: racial quotas and racial
balance in the workplace, preferences for blacks over whites in
employment, promotion, bank loans etc.4 Or, as one
segregationist roared, the civil rights legislation “will give ‘niggers’
more rights than whites.”5 But liberals at the time
dismissed these assertions as foolish racist fears. On the other side,
there were a few on the left like
Stanley H. Lowell, chair of the New York City
Commission on Human Rights, who hinted that preferences might be
necessary—that “‘colorblind’ civil rights laws have been used at times
to defeat integration.” His solution was “seeking a ‘color-conscious
approach’—an ‘equalization program’ to overcome the effects of past
discrimination.” Similarly, the chairman of the New York State
Commission on Human Rights urged “creative interpretation of the law to
push positive integration,” rather than merely negative desegre-gation.6
But, in Congress, the debate went otherwise. No senator who favored the
civil rights bill spoke up for quotas, “positive integration,” racial
balance or preferences for minorities above whites. Quite the contrary.
In fact, these were the charges against the proposed legislation made
by its opponents—by se-nators like Republican Barry Goldwater
and Democrat Sam Ervin.
Still, it is instructive to recall some of the debate in order to
clarify the meaning of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In his special
message on civil rights on February 28, 1963, President John F. Kennedy
declared, “Our constitution is colorblind.”7 Martin Luther
King, in his speech at the March on Washington in August 1963, dreamt of
a day when his children would be judged “by the content of
their character and not by the color of their skin.”8 The
Civil Rights Act of 1964 attempted to enshrine these ideals. In the
Congressional debate liberal Democratic Sen. Hubert Humphrey declared:
[T]here is nothing in it [the bill] that will give any power to the
commission [EEOC, or Equal Employment Opportunity Commission] or to any
court to require hiring, firing or promotion of employees in order to
meet a racial “quota” or to achieve racial balance. In fact, the very
opposite is true. Title VII is designed to encourage hiring on the
basis of ability and qualifications, not race and religion.
Other senators favoring the bill like Joseph Clark (D-Penn.) and
Clifford Case (R-N.J.) defended it in similar language.9
To insure against distortion, two major amendments were incorporated
into the bill. Sen. Dirksen amended it so that only “intentional”
discrimination would be prohibited, while Sen. John Tower (R-Texas)
guaranteed that employers could continue to use, or to institute,
professional tests like the General Aptitude Tests, which were commonly
conducted so that businesses could ascertain, hire and promote more able
workers.10 Only with the amendments included were many
Northern Re-publicans, like Everett Dirksen, satisfied with the proposed
legislation, and therefore were they willing to break the filibuster of
Southern Democrats and vote on the civil rights legislation. With
Dirksen’s Re-publican support, the bill passed and became law in July
1964.
How then did a law which promised to end discrimination by outlawing
discrimination against any individual, a law that promised preferences
for no group, which agreed to retain testing to reject unqualified
applicants—how was this law subverted into its opposite? Here the role
of Alfred Blumrosen is crucial. Blumrosen was among the zealots working
for the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission who did not want the
agency to function as created. Though historian Hugh Graham recognized
no “conspiracy” in what occurred, he did consider the change “not a
grand design, but an honest groping.”11 Nevertheless, Graham
himself writes, “The early EEOC thus functioned as quiet co-conspirators
with the agency’s critics on the left.”12 Graham writes:
To move radically beyond the complaint model, the definition [of
discrimination] would have to be extended beyond the INTENT standard of
the common law tradition, which was stipulated by Congress in Title VII,
toward the EFFECT standard. This would require a shift in criteria from
invidious intent on the part of discriminators to harmful impact upon
members of the affected class. Such a radical shift was implicit in the
newly current metaphor of “institutional racism.”13
Alfred Blumrosen was instrumental in this and other shifts. He was a
professor at Rutgers University who became the EEOC’s liaison chief for
federal, state and local agencies, and he admitted that his “creative”
reading of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was “contrary to the plain
meaning.”14 But why worry? By 1965 when the Bank of America
instituted quota hiring under a euphemism, “the standard refrain of the
EEO bureaucracies, [was that]affirmative action [AA] had nothing to do
with racial quotas. That was illegal.”15 Unfortunately, that
deceptive refrain is still heard today.
The goal of Sonia Pressman, another ideologue in the EEOC, was “to
document large disparities in employment patterns, [so] that
discriminatory intent might legally be inferred.”16 This
would then place the burden of proof on the employer to show that he did
not intentionally discriminate.17 This logic “drove civil
rights lawyers toward a model of proportional representation, yet one
that seemed to require the disguise of euphemism, because it was
statutorily proscribed in the enabling legislation.”18 What
Gra-ham means is that the EEOC sought to impose quotas while not calling
them such because quotas were clearly illegal. The agency sought to
break the law. Graham adds, “The EEOC’s own official history records
with unusual candor the commission’s fundamental disagreement with its
founding charter, especially Title VII’s literal requirement that
discrimi-nation be intentional.”19 Furthermore, by 1967 the
EEOC “was prepared to defy Title VII’s restrictions”20 in its
march toward imposing quotas.
Blumrosen and Pressman pushed the EEOC to defy the Civil Rights Act of
1964 by imposing quotas, demanding racial balance in the workplace and
giving preferences to blacks over whites. Essential to the Blumrosen-Pressman
campaign was the collection of statistics to show “disparate impact,”
how minorities were underutilized, employed in a smaller proportion in
various occupations to their numbers in the gener-al population.
Liberal sociologist John Skretny concedes that the major change
occurred in March 1966 when the EEOC sent out its reporting forms to the
industries to be covered by the Civil Rights law: “Legal scholar and
EEOC advisor Alfred Blumrosen instigated the development.”21
Actually, the forms were sent to many industries beyond the
jurisdiction of the EEOC, for the law had given priority to state FEPCs
in those states that had them (and in 1964, most states had their own
FEPCs).22 Firms located in such states should have received
no EEOC forms. This was another example of Blumrosen’s “creati-vity,”
of going beyond (and defying) the law.
The collection of these statistics was essential to implement the
Blumrosen distortion of the law. Blumrosen had developed the theory that
would justify all the discrimination against white men to which we have
become so accustomed. That theory is based upon a proportional
representation model that includes a number of as sumptions. First, all
peoples are equally talented in all fields. Though individuals may vary
in intelligence, athletic prowess and character, large groups do not.
The races and sexes are equally talented in all fields, equally
intelligent, equally athletic, of equal character. Any deviation from
this article of faith is racist and sexist. Women are just as
intelligent, and, given a chance to prove themselves, just as strong as
men (though to maintain this credo some liberals will redefine strength
to emphasize endurance or areas in which women may outperform men).
Blacks have already proven themselves on the athletic fields, and given
a fair chance, can be seen as just as intelligent as whites (again some
liberals redefine intelligence to include emotional intelligence or
artistic ability to emphasize areas wherein blacks may outper-form whites).
And so the presupposition is made for all large groups—Hispanics,
Asians, Amerindians etc.
If all groups are equally talented, then why are white men so dominant
in business as CEOs, in government and in academia? The reason must be
prejudice, past and present. Because blacks were enslaved and then
denied equal educational and other opportunities during the era of
segregation, they could not rise to their proper place in government,
medicine and business. Women too, were oppressed, even being denied the
right to vote for president until 1920 and denied equal rights in other
areas until quite recently. And so with other groups. They lag behind
in America today because of their history of oppression—racism, sexism,
ethno-centrism. The beneficiaries of this oppression were and are white
men. Today, the imperative of justice is to break the historic chain by
ending the historic advantage inherited by white men.
Since all peoples are equal, it follows that in a just society, all
peoples, equally talented in all fields, will each have their
proportional share of lawyers, doctors, fire chiefs, criminals. But, as
this is clearly not the case in America today, the aim of justice is to
strive for such in society. Thus, it is necessary, and fair, to give
preferences to groups that have been excluded or underrepresented in
various fields. So if a white teen has a higher score than a black teen
from the same high school on an SAT for a scholarship, it is not really
discrimination to deny the white that award and give it to the black.
It only seems like discrimination; in reality, it is fair and just.
After all, why is the black teen not performing as well as the white on
the test? His father may be in jail; his mother on drugs; he may have
been discouraged from academic pursuits. His cultural milieu is the
heritage of slavery and segregation. The SAT test, far from measuring
the intelligence or academic abilities of the two teens, merely measures
the privileges inherited by the white. And so the SAT, the LSAT, the
medical exams, nursing exams, teachers exams and all other objective
exams are objective only in highlighting the degree of prejudice
experienced by blacks, women and other minorities. Such “objective”
exams are thus objectively racist and sexist.
Similar are police and firefighter exams, even if minorities help to
construct the tests. Even drug tests are racist because it is natural
that more oppressed minorities might be more prone to use illegal
substances. Clearly then, seemingly colorblind objective exams are
racist; sex-blind exams are sexist. The only test, the only examination
that should be allowed is proportionality. Only when the same
proportion of women and blacks and Hispanics do as well as whites on an
exam is that examination truly free of immediate bias and the effects of
bias past. The proportionality exam thus proves the test for
discovering bias, for discovering the measure of bias and the method of
overcoming such bias. The proportionality test is the test that tests
all other tests. Thus, the white teen and his successor should be
denied the scholarship until the black teen, and his successor, have a
proportional number attending college, teaching in college and as CEOs.23
Clearly, to implement any program based on this theory, Blumrosen and
Press man required the statistics so they could determine proportions of
races employed here or unemployed there. Disparate impact and
proportionality theory required statistics if it were to become the
basis of action by the EEOC. This is why Blumrosen defied the law and
got the EEOC to send out forms to collect statistics in spring 1966.
The essential omission missed by almost all historians of civil rights
is this—the forms sent out by the EEOC to collect data originally
referred only to race and national origins.24 Shortly
thereafter, they included sex. But the EEOC never inquired about
religion or religious heritage. However Title VII of the 1964 Civil
Rights Act specifically forbids discrimina-tion based upon race, color,
national origin, sex, and religion.25 If the data were
essential to implement the proportional representation theory of
discrimination, the “disparate impact” theory propounded by Blumrosen,
if the proportional test was to be the test to judge oppression
and discrimination, why was the data-collection process purposely
inadequate? Why were there no questions concerning the religious
heritage of those employed? Why did Blumrosen and Pressman not
want to discover the proportion of their fellow co-religionists working
in lucrative occupations? The reason is evident. Such statistics would
reveal that it is not white males who are the most overrepresented in
lucrative posts (and therefore, it is not white men who are most
“oppressive” toward women and minorities). The statistics would have
exposed Jews as the most overrepresented—and thus Jews as the most
oppressive toward other minorities, women and gentiles. Then, before
any attempt to provide preferences for underrepresented blacks or
Hispanics by curtailing “white male privilege,” there would have had to
have been consideration of providing preferences for underrepresented
gentiles and the curbing of Jewish privilege. The theory devised by
Blumrosen and Pressman, if applied fairly across the board to all
provisions of the civil rights act, would clearly restrict Jews to 2 to
3 percent of the legal, medical, academic, media and other high-paying
professions.
In spring 1968, after the EEOC had been sending out its questionnaires
on race and national origins, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, former assistant
secretary of labor under President Kennedy, denounced the policy of
proportional representation inherent with the collection of the data.
Moynihan recognized the implications and attacked the theory underlying
EEOC action as anti-Semitic, seeing that logically Jews would soon be
limited to a small percentage of professions.26 But Moynihan
wrongly assumed that the Jews in the EEOC would administer the law
impartially—imposing quotas (goals and timetables) on all
overrepresented groups and thus most especially, their own. Moynihan
should have known better. Blumrosen was set upon “selectively
enforcing” the civil rights act by using disparate impact theory and
proportional representation only when it affected others. (More
accurately, Blumrosen was “selectively malenforcing” the civil rights
law, imposing quotas for underrepresented blacks, using quotas to curb
whites; for women, against men; but never for gentiles and against
Jews.)
Of course, had the EEOC sought to restrict Jews as it has white men, the
storm of protest would have cast “disparate impact” theory into the
dustbin of history. Thus, the role of Blumrosen and his allies in the
media, academia etc., was to create a false target—the
“overrepresented,” “privileged” and “oppressive” white male. According
to the EEOC, the statistics proved just that. However, the statistics
proved otherwise. The partial statistics used by Blumrosen were simply
the effort to deflect criticism to another group instead of the one most
overre-presented, privileged and oppressive—his own.
By not asking the religious question on the EEOC questionnaires, the
EEOC created a scapegoat of the white male. Once smeared as
“privileged” and “oppressive,” the non-privileged, working-class and
poor whites began to pay the price for the “moral” system of affirmative
action by being legally discriminated against and denied equal
opportunity.
Note examples of the distortion. Liberals praised President Bill
Clinton for his Cabinet that “looked like America.” They should have
looked closer. Of the 14 members of his Cabinet in the summer of 1996,
eight were white men. As whites were about 76 percent of the national
population, those eight white men and two white women compose
approximately the “fair share” liberals would allot to whites. But
white men are 57 percent of the Cabinet, far more than their 38 percent
of the population. Again, just looking at the Cabinet one encounters
white male privilege. But look closer. Four of those white males are
Jewish. So, white male gentiles, who compose about 37 percent of the
population, form only 28 percent of the Cabinet—they are
underrepresented. Yet, Jewish males, some one percent of the
population, compose another 28 percent of the Cabinet. And because Jews
are so vastly overrepresented, the underrepre-sented white male gentiles
are branded by liberal Jews as the “privileged” group.27
Thus, gentile white males are called “overrepre-sented” and deemed
worthy of being discriminated against, when they may be underrepresented
and, by the liberals’ own standards, “deserving” of affirma-tive action
preferences. However, white male gentiles are denied any aid because
liberals consciously ignore their plight by using statistics that
include with their group the overwhelming overrepresentation of Jews.
Liberals thus camou-flage the overrepresentation of Jews by pointing
the finger of alleged “white male privilege.” However, what was true of
Clinton’s Cabinet is true in medical schools and law schools and other
elite areas. No wonder one liberal Jew gloated, “We no longer have a
‘Jewish seat’ on the Supreme Court because it is no longer needed.”28
Of course not. The reason: of the nine justices, two are now Jews. So
representatives of 2 percent of the population compose 22 percent of the
high-est court in the land. Similarly, some liberals complain about
there being too few women and minorities in the United States Senate.
They forget that both senators from Wisconsin are Jewish men. Thus 100
percent of Wisconsin’s senators come from less than 1 percent of the
population. True, a few liberals might complain, but only because it is
an all-male delegation. Then consider California’s senators—two female
Jews. Naturally, both Sens. Feinstein and Boxer support affirmative
action (AA), even though both of them are from the most privileged, most
overrepresented group in America.
A more recent example of the hypocrisy and chutzpah related to the
selective enforcement of the 1964 Civil Rights Act occurred in 1999.
Some Jews at Princeton complained that the university was unfair in its
admission policies because Jews constituted a mere 10 percent of the
incoming freshmen class, a decline from 16 percent in 1985. Jews
compose just above 2 percent of the general population in America.
Nevertheless, some Jews asserted that Princeton discriminated against
them when that university was compared to other Ivy League institutions
like Harvard, where Jews were 21 percent of the freshmen, or at Yale, 29
percent. Jews compose 25 percent of the freshmen class at Stan ford and
other elite universities. Some Jews were so disturbed that they were
only 10 percent at Princeton that they claimed discrimination, though
they were 4 to 5 times overrepresented.29 This is not only an
example of chutzpah; it is almost a definition.
Liberals use statistics to obfuscate and distort. They seek to portray
all white men as privileged because some are overrepresented in
profitable enterprises. And because of this “privilege,” prefer-ences
must be granted to all those who are not white men. However, the group
most overrepresented is not white men, it is Jews. Even economically,
the gap between whites and blacks is not as great as that between Jews
and gentiles.30 When liberals assert that the purpose of AA
is to narrow the economic gap between blacks and whites, how much
greater the necessity for AA on behalf of gentiles to narrow the even
wider economic gap between Jews and gentiles. The Civil Rights Act of
1964 prohibited discrimination based on religion as well as any based on
race, sex or ethnic origin. The EEOC and the civil rights lobby stress
that the individual is less important than the statistical aggregate in
exposing “discrimination”; that statistics are the method of revealing
what is wrong in the work place, and, with AA (quotas) goals and
timetables, providing the best means of overcoming the discrimination
proved by the numbers. Then, by their own system of determining
discrimination, it is clear that Jews are the most overrepresented group
in the most lucrative positions in the nation. Furthermore, the average
income of Jews exceeds that of gentiles by a massive gap. By their own
system, the white male ogre should be replaced by the image of the
oppressive Jew.
The proportional test, the liberals’ test of all tests, when applied to
the religious clause of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, shows Jews to be
the most privileged and oppressive of people in America. The favorite
test of liberals reveals white men to be less privileged than the Jews.
Why does not The New York Times, the EEOC, NBC, CBS or ABC
report that statistic? The media remain silent on the issue of Jewish
privilege while simultaneously exposing every time white men are
somewhat overrepresented. Why the silence regarding Jews? A glance at
the owner-ship of the media just might have something to do with this
disparity in exposing “privilege.” And if any individual in the media
dared to expose some Jewish privilege, there would be a thunderous
assault upon that individual’s “bigotry.” However, daily, reporters
write of white male privilege, but almost no one denounces this
anti-white bigotry.
Concisely, here is the liberals’ dilemma—either white male privilege is
a myth and AA, erected upon that myth, should be demolished; or, if
white men are privileged, then Jews are even more so. And if, because
of white male privilege, AA is essential to aid underrepresented
minorities and women (the majority) until they have achieved their “fair
share” (quota) of lucrative rewards in society, then because of Jewish
privilege, all the more reason to institute AA to aid underrepresented
gentiles (again, the majority) until they have achieved their “fair
share” of lucrative awards in society.
Once smeared as privileged, the non-privileged middle-class,
working-class, and poor whites pay for the “moral” system of AA by being
legal-ly discriminated against and denied equal opportunity. But then
the history of America since the 1960s is often the record of wealthy
liberals using the law to curb and oppress blue-collar whites, because
the blue-collar folk are deemed privileged, prejudiced and provincial.
Therefore, such blue-collar whites deserve to be passed over in
scholarships, jobs and promotions; the blue-collar crowd should be
shunted aside, and instead the “pets” of the elite should be elevated:
the children of illegal immigrants, of wealthy minorities and the
daughters of rich liberals. And this is done in the name of morality,
fairness, and justice.
In summary, the great hoax concocted by Blum-rosen and his collaborators
in the media, academy, and government is “white male privilege.” Most
white men are not privileged. Those who are, often support AA because
it is no loss to them—their children will not require a scholarship, an
entry-level job, a position as policeman or fireman, or a promotion. It
is the poor and middle-class whites who, denied equal opportunity, must
pay with thinning wallets and shrunken dreams for the “morality of
diversity” imposed by the wealthy, liberal elite.
Even if every CEO in America were a white male, that would be no reason
to discriminate against a poor, white teenage boy seeking a scholarship
and give it to a lesser qualified girl or minority. “White male
privilege” is a social construct created by liberals. They have used
their power in government, media, and academia to deny equal opportunity
to white men, to undermine and stigmatize America’s working class, and
to immobilize with guilt the white middle class. America does not
suffer from white male privilege and oppression; it staggers beneath
Jewish privilege and oppression.
Notes
1 Bob Considine, It’s the Irish (Garden City, N.Y.:
Doubleday, 1961), 5. Almost any work on Irish-Americans will mention
the “No Irish Need Apply” phrase.
2 The New York Times, Sept.
16, 1999, 1. Even Asians were excluded from winning this award. Bill
Gates not only instituted this hefty scholarship program, but, when
affirmative action was up for consideration by the voters of the state
of Washing-ton, Gates poured funds into the camp opposed to Ward
Connerly and the quest for equal opportunity for all. The ballot
proposition was based on the wording of the original 1964 Civil Rights
Act. Gates and the wealthy elite opposed the ballot proposition because
it would discontinue preferences for their pet groups. Despite the
funds contributed by the elite, the people of Washington, like their
brethren in California, voted by a wide margin to stop affirmative
action preferences.
3 As of mid-September 2000, the first
sentence at
www.naacp.org/labor reads, “Since its founding in 1909,
the NAACP has been concerned about the dignity of black workers and
their right to equal access to employment without regard to race, color
or creed.”
4 Milwaukee Sentinel, April 4,
1964, 5, contains a full page presenting grounds for opposing the
proposed civil rights legislation. Alabama Gov. George Wallace,
campaigning in the Democratic presidential pri-mary, had accused the
paper of cowardice in failing to publish the ad. When it did, the
Sentinel congratulated itself in the same day’s editorial, 8. The ad
was sponsored by the Coordinating Committee for American Freedom,
chaired by New Hampshire publisher William Loeb. Wallace ran well in
Wisconsin and other Northern states against Lyndon Johnson’s state
stand-ins. Wallace used his opposition to the proposed civil
rights legislation as one of his main campaign themes.
5
J. B. Stoner even sought to use this
phrase in TV ads in his political campaign in Georgia in the early
1970s. The television stations objected and the issue went to the
Supreme Court on use of the “n” word.
6 New York Times, April 3,
1964, 23.
7 Hugh Davis Graham, The Civil
Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy, 1960-1972
(New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 69.
8
Graham, 91.
9 Graham, 150-151.
10 Graham, 149-50. For a lengthier
account of the debate, see Charles and Barbara Whalen, The Longest
Debate: A Legislative History of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Cabin
John, Md. & Washington, D.C.: Seven Locks Press, 1985. Unfortunately,
they tend to be skimpy on the arguments by the opponents of the
legislation, however.
11 Graham, 191.
12 Ibid., 236.
13 Ibid., 191.
14
Ibid., 195.
15 Ibid., 198. In the 1930s
under the New Deal, some agencies did hire using racial quotas, but by
the 1940s the leadership of the NAACP generally opposed this concept.
See Paul D. Moreno, From Direct Action to Affirmative Action: Fair
Employment Law and Policy in America, 1933-1972. One might also
glance at my
“From Communist Policy
to ‘Affirmative Action,’”
Telos, summer 1996, No. 108, 179-88.
16 Ibid., 245.
17 Ibid., 246.
18 Ibid., 247.
19 Ibid., 248.
20 Ibid., 250.
21 John Skrentny, The Ironies of
Affirmative Action: Politics, Culture and Justice in America
(Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 127.
22 Graham, 193-97.
23 Many liberal academics have fleshed
out this theory. A few of their works are: Barbara Bergmann, In
Defense of Affirmative Action (New York: Basic Books, 1996),
Gertrude Ezorsky, Racism and Justice: The Case for Affirmative Action
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991); and Ronald J. Fiscus, The
Constitutional Logic of Affirmative Action (Durham and London: Duke
University Press, 1992).
24 Konrad Mark Hamilton, From
“Equal Opportunity” to “Affirmative Action”: A History of the Equal
Em-ployment Opportunity Commission, 1965-1980, 11, Stanford
University Ph.D., 1988, 141. Unfortunately, the doctorate displays the
decline of standards at a major university during the era of political
correctness. Hamilton, of mixed Black and Japanese ancestry, is an avid
supporter of affirmative action. But he allows his political beliefs to
distort his historical work. Thus, he dismisses in a few pages the
debate in Congress about what civil rights meant and what power the EEOC
would have, for to consider the debate might have jeopardized his pro-AA
thesis. Hamilton’s dissertation is not merely about AA, it is an
example of AA, and is thus an argument against AA.
25
For a handy review of the various sections of the 1964 Civil Rights Act,
see the appendices of John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss Jr., From
Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans, 7th ed. (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994). See page 629 for Title VII and how
religion is included among the categories protected by the act.
26 Hamilton, 143; The New York
Times, June 5, 1968, 29.
27 See the author’s letter in The
New Yorker, January 6, 1997, 6.
28 Bergmann, 97.
29 Christopher Jencks, Rethinking
Social Policy: Race, Poverty, and the Underclass (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1992), 28.