The Election and Racial Preferences | Center for Equal Opportunity

Let’s start with some good news: On Election Day, Oklahoma passed a ballot initiative banning preferences and discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, and sex in state and local government contracting, employment, and education (including public universities) — a.k.a. affirmative action — by an overwhelming margin, 59 to 41 percent. It joins California, Washington, Michigan, Nebraska, and Arizona — the other states that have passed these measures.

You may recall from last week’s email that at a press conference in Oklahoma City on October 22 the Center for Equal Opportunity released its latest study, documenting the evidence of admission preferences based on race in undergrad, law, and medical school admissions at the University of Oklahoma. My op-ed ran in The Oklahoman, the state’s largest-circulation newspaper, summarizing the study; you can read that here, and our reply to the OU’s lame response is here.

I’m confident that CEO’s efforts were important in the landslide vote that followed.

Let me add this thought: Much is being made in the aftermath of the election of the nation’s changing demographics. Well, in an increasingly multiracial and multiethnic country, it is simply untenable for our governments and institutions to sort individuals by skin color and what country our ancestors came from, and to treat some better and others worse based on which silly little box is checked. Note that our fastest growing racial group — Asians — is frequently discriminated against in public university admissions by “affirmative action,” and that our largest ethnic minority group — Latinos — has recently been discriminated against in government contracting by such programs.

The worst response that the GOP could have to the elections would be to try to buy votes by supporting programs that give special treatment to, say, Latinos and Asians: That would be divisive, not to say unconstitutional, and Republicans will never be able to out-promise the Democrats here. Nor should they want to: E pluribus unum.

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But of course the vote in Oklahoma was not the only news on Election Day that has a bearing on the issue of affirmative action.

We don’t just elect a president: We elect an administration. That is, in choosing the president we also choose his appointments for the executive branch, not to mention his nominees to the judiciary. And on racial-preference issues, a second Obama administration will likely be even worse than the first Obama administration — and that’s saying something.

The Obama administration has consistently promoted the use of racial preferences, sometimes directly and always indirectly. Directly, as when it supports university and even K–12 race-based policies, contracting preferences by the federal government, racial gerrymandering, federal workforce “diversity” efforts, and legislative provisions in Obamacare and Dodd-Frank (to name just the two highest-profile administration bills). Indirectly, as in nominating executive-branch officials like Eric Holder and Thomas Perez and judges like Goodwin Liu — and aggressively pushing the “disparate impact” approach to civil-rights enforcement.

Through the latter, the federal government insists that the numbers come out right, even if it means that policemen and firefighters cannot be tested, students cannot be disciplined, that companies will hire criminals, that loans are made to the uncreditworthy, and that — I kid you not — whether pollution is acceptable depends on whether dangerous chemicals are spread about in a racially balanced way.

And I haven’t even mentioned the Supreme Court. Just imagine the decisions we will get if a third Obama appointee next term joins his first two (Elena Kagan and the “wise Latina” Sonia Sotomayor), along with Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Very, very scary.

The Center for Equal Opportunity will have its work cut out for it for the next four years. But we’re up to the challenge.

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I’ve been traveling and speaking a fair amount this fall, on a variety of topics. Here are some examples: at Ole Miss regarding felon disenfranchisement (from about 4:15 to 30:50 on the video); on a Charlottesville, Virginia, talk-radio show on affirmative action in university admissions (scroll down to the second 10-29-12 show on the link, and my segment runs from 20:40 to 38:30); and on the Fran Tarkenton radio show (also discussing affirmative action).

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