Strange title, wouldn\’t you say?
But after reading the blog by Josh Gerstein, Maggie Severns and Stephanie Simon of politico.com, I have to wonder.
Read the first three paragraphs and see why:
TheSupreme Court delivered another setback to affirmative actionTuesday, easing the way for states to bar public colleges fromconsidering race in admissions and to prohibit officials from takingrace into account in hiring and contracting.
Thedecision upheld a constitutional amendment in Michigan votersapproved in 2006, banning preferential treatment based on race,gender, ethnicity or national origin.
Theoutcome of the case was not a shock, but the lopsided, 6-2 votesignaled the court\’s continuing rightward shift on issues of race.
Banning discrimination by race, gender or ethnicity or national origin is a rightward shift??????????????
I keep re-reading those words, trying to figure out how it could be, given that the corollary, allowing discrimination based on those criteria, would then be more centrist in nature. Do the folks at politico.com think intentional discrimination is a centrist position? (Actually, the truth is that discrimination, these days, is far more a left wing position than right wing. But that deserves a full blog, not just a squib within this one).
Let me ask another question: if preference based on race, gender, ethnicity or national origin is centrist, then does it follow that the segregated south, which engaged in overt racial discrimination – something I have always thought of as despicable – had a valid point? Gender-wise, does it mean that the companies my wife applied for work at, with her newly acquired college degree, were correct in primarily being interested in how many words a minute she typed?
Let\’s remember that this is not the 1950\’s or 60\’s, when overt discrimination was rampant and few serious laws offering redress for such discrimination were on the books. This is 2014, over a half century later.
Yet, as can be seen above, believing in equality apparently is a very thorny issue to some people. I happen not to be one of them. Are you?
Oh, one other thing, in the form of a quick one-question quiz: which President initiated race-based affirmative action? Was it FDR? Was it JFK? Was it LBJ?
Uh….no. Actually it was RMN. That\’s right, Richard Nixon. His “Philadelphia Plan”, in 1970, was the first of its kind. And, at the time, it was a damn good idea. Many people, with consummate ignorance, write Nixon off as an ultra-conservative. In fact, as proven by the Philadelphia Plan, his endorsement of the Equal Rights Amendment, implementation of wage-price controls, the EPA, OSHA and détente with China among others, Nixon was actually a remarkably successful social engineer.
