|
|
THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964: FORTY YEARS BETRAYED
by
Rod D. Martin, 2 July 2004
-- "If the Senator can find in Title VII...any language...that an employer
will have to hire on the basis of percentage or quota related to color...I
will start eating the pages...."
So said Hubert Humphrey as the US Senate prepared to pass the 1964 Civil
Rights Act, whose 40th anniversary is July 2.
Humphrey was right. Just look at the text.
Section 703(a) within Title VII forbids employers to "limit, segregate, or
classify" employees based on their "race, color, religion, sex, or national
origin."
And Section 703(j) reads:
"Nothing contained in this title shall be interpreted to require any
employer....to grant preferential treatment to any individual
or....group...on account of an imbalance."
Clearly, this landmark act, the most sweeping civil rights law since
Reconstruction, was meant to be a hammer blow to racial discrimination. Its
vision? A merit-based society where, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said,
people are judged on the content of their character, not the color of their
skin. Its goal? Individual empowerment and equal opportunity: a chance for
every individual to compete equally, and go as far in life as their works
allowed.
Yet one year later, in June 1965, there was President Lyndon B. Johnson,
speaking at Howard University, betraying that law and the spirit behind it:
"This is the next...stage of the battle for civil rights.... We
seek...equality as a result."
Vice President Humphrey must have gagged. Equality, freedom, opportunity: all
were out the window. In their place, Johnson had imposed a caste system.
The difference was stark. Just compare these two executive orders on civil
rights, one by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, the other by LBJ in 1965.
JFK's executive order (10925) required federal contractors to treat job
applicants and employees "without regard to their race, creed, color, or
national origin."
In other words, equal treatment for all.
But LBJ's executive order (11246), creating a contract compliance office in
the Labor Department, forced bidders to submit "manning tables" guaranteeing the
proportions of racial minorities they'd hire if their bid was accepted.
In other words, preferential treatment for some. Or, to put it more
bluntly, racial quotas: legally-mandated racism, just as in the days of Jim
Crow.
From here, governments fell all over themselves to get into the
discriminatory act, from Richard Nixonıs executive orders to myriad state
government actions to the 1971 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Griggs v. Duke
Power., which turned the 1964 Act on its head while pretending to uphold it.
Black was white and white was black, as "reverse discrimination" became the tool
of choice to achieve a state-imposed "equality of result" (elsewhere known as
"central planning"), and as the Dr. Kingıs vision was wiped away.
Some call this "affirmative" action. In fact, its an assault on the
dignity of the individual -- of all races -- and the deepest values and
dreams of the civil rights movement. Racial equality has been scuttled, and
racial unity is as distant as before.
Has there been progress since 1964? Certainly -- plenty indeed. Black
Americans have made remarkable strides in fulfilling and living the American
Dream. Enormous numbers enjoy executive and professional careers and have
entered the broad American middle class. The number of black millionaires has
risen exponentially.
Yet two points must be made.
First, thanks to quotas, a cloud of suspicion hangs over too many minority
individuals with good jobs and fine schooling. That's horribly unfair to
the vast numbers who've made it on their own merits since the 1964 Act
removed the unjust shackles of deliberate discrimination.
Second, quotas have done nothing to help the black underclass, or break the
vicious cycles of welfare dependency and drug abuse, unwed motherhood and crime,
fatherless families and dysfunctional public schools.
In fact, under the same "equal-outcome" obsession that led to quotas, Uncle
Sam spent trillions of dollars making a bad situation worse. An avalanche
of government welfare money -- no strings attached -- paid people not to
work or marry, save or invest, or confront the behavioral causes of their
poverty. As someone once said, "We fought a War on Poverty, and the poor
lost."
What good are quotas, let alone a civil rights law, if you haven't the
character to hold a good job, or the skills or education to get one? What
good is equal employment opportunity without equal educational opportunity,
which is absent when public schools fail and parents have no options?
As we mark the 40th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, now's a good
time to confront these questions afresh -- and embrace solutions. Continued
welfare reform is one of them: the 1996 law has freed countless families
from the clutches of poverty and despair. School choice is another; so is
real Social Security reform, so the poor can accumulate real wealth and
security of their own, and the resulting business expansion will create the
jobs they need.
And while we're reflecting, maybe, just maybe, it's time for Congress to
banish quotas and preferences forever -- by forcing bureaucrats everywhere
to interpret its civil rights laws as written, according to the merit-based
vision of its drafters and of Dr. King.
After all, after forty long years, isnıt it time?
Copyright: Rod D. Martin, 2 July 2004.
-- Rod D. Martin is Founder and Chairman of Vanguard PAC
<http://www.VanguardPAC.org>. A former policy director to
Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Special Counsel to PayPal.com
Founder Peter Thiel, he is a member of the Board of Governors
of the Council for National Policy, a Vice President of
the National Federation of Republican Assemblies (NFRA), and
author of the forthcoming "Visions of America".
=====================
To subscribe to "Vanguard of the Revolution", send the message
"Subscribe Vanguard" to listadmin@VanguardPAC.org.
Contact listowner@VanguardPAC.org
if you have questions.
Also featured at The Vanguard:
1. "Iraq Sees Brighter Days Ahead" by Terence P. Jeffrey.
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=4373
2. "Koch: Moore's Propaganda Film Cheapens Debate, Polarizes Nation" by
former Democratic Mayor of New York Ed Koch
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/breaking_2.html
3. "The Empty Cradle Will Rock: How abortion is costing the Democrats
voters--literally" by Larry L. Eastland, Wall Street Journal
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110005277
==============================
|
