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 European 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 promotion 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 senators 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 [ lawyer, not admittedly a Jew ] 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 the Jew 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 Graham 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 discrimination 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 general 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 “creativity,” 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 assumptions. 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 outperform 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 color blind 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 Pressman 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 discrimination 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 overrepresented, 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 underrepresented white male gentiles are branded by liberal Jews as the “privileged” group.27
Thus, gentile white males are called “overrepresented” and deemed worthy of being discriminated against, when they may be underrepresented and, by the liberals’ own standards, “deserving” of affirmative 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 camouflage 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 highest 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,” preferences 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 legally 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 Blumrosen 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 primary, 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 Employment 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.