System Perverted Into Legalized Bias Anti-Action Eighty Percent Of Us Oppose It

You don’t have to be an “angry white male” to realize affirmative action has legalized reverse discrimination at work, on college campuses, and for government contracts.

Consider Charles Geshekter, a California professor who wrote in his local newspaper:

“Having taught university classes on the history of European racism toward Africa for 25 years, I am appalled to watch sexist and racist demands for equality of outcomes erode the principle of affirmative equality of opportunity.”

Surveys show 80 percent of us oppose affirmative action in employment and education. The backlash has frightened President Bill Clinton into seeking a program review.

But we don’t need a review.

We need to return to the original intent of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which targeted bonafide bias but has been systematically perverted into a quota system.

The act’s chief sponsor, U.S. Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota, issued a challenge at the time that if anyone could find “any language which provides that an employer will have to hire on the basis of percentage or quota related to color, race, religion or national origin, I will start eating the pages one after another, because it’s not there.”

It is now.

Horror stories abound. A recent National Review article provides examples, including:

Only 14 percent of Fortune 500 companies hire employees based on talent and merit alone.

A Defense Department memo cited by ABC’s “20/20” declares: “In the future, special permission will be required for the promotion of all white men without disabilities.”

The National Review article cited an exchange from the early 1970s between Supreme Court justices William O. Douglas and Thurgood Marshall that goes to the heart of the matter.

Arguing against quotas, Douglas contended correctly that “racial discrimination against a white was as unconstitutional as racial discrimination against a black.”

Marshall’s response?

“You guys have been practicing discrimination for years. Now it is our turn.”

MEMO: For the opposing view, see the story under the headline “Affirmative Action only a token threat Pro-Action White men still hold most top jobs”

The following fields overflowed: SUPCAT = COLUMN, EDITORIAL - From Both Sides