In his remarks at the “Strengthening the Relationship Between Law Enforcement and Communities of Color Forum” last week, Associate Attorney General Tony West gets the ball rolling this way: “Let me also express appreciation to Reverend Al Sharpton, not only for joining us this morning but for his leadership, day in and day out, on issues of reconciliation and community restoration.”
Al Sharpton — a leader for “reconciliation”? Really?
Mr. West also praises New York City mayor Bill de Blasio: “In the short time the Mayor has been in office, the Justice Department has established a productive working partnership with the City of New York. Within weeks of assuming office, Mayor de Blasio helped broker a resolution to a long-running legal battle — in which the Department of Justice filed a statement of interest — over NYPD’s stop-and-frisk practices, helping to ensure that reforms are in place throughout the police department to promote constitutional policing.”
Then Mr. West devoted the balance of his speech to bemoaning a “criminal justice system that lacks integrity in the eyes of those it is supposed to serve,” and, it seems to me, suggests that this perception is, in substantial part, not mistaken. But you can read the speech and decide for yourself.
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U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) has been grilling the federal Small Business Administration about wasting the taxpayers’ money, and good for him. But we would add that this is not even mentioning the unfair, divisive, wasteful, corrupt, and unconstitutional use of racial, ethnic, and gender preferences in the Small Business Administration’s programs. We hope Senator Sessions is looking at that, too.
After all, why do race, ethnicity, and sex need to be considered at all in deciding who gets awarded a government contract? It’s good to make sure contracting programs are open to all, that bidding opportunities are widely publicized beforehand, and that no one gets discriminated against because of skin color, national origin, or sex. But that means no preferences because of those characteristics either — whether it’s labeled a “set-aside,” a “quota,” or a “goal,” since they all end up amounting to the same thing.
Such discrimination is unfair and divisive; it breeds corruption and otherwise costs the taxpayers and businesses money to award a contract to someone other than the lowest bidder; and it’s unconstitutional to boot.
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The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran some opinion pieces over the weekend about President Obama’s “My Brother’s Keeper” program, and the people there asked if they could include what I had written on the subject a few weeks ago. So you can read my piece, among others, here. Also down south, you can read my comments in the Florida Times-Union recently here and, still in the South, I moderated a panel on civil-rights issues last month in New Orleans at the Heritage Foundation’s Legal Strategy Forum.
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Earlier this year we had a National Review Online post on the proceedings at an event, held by the Maine Heritage Policy Center and National Association of Scholars, that built on NAS’s comprehensive study of political correctness at Bowdoin College. The focus of this latest event was on what Bowdoin proudly calls its efforts to ensure that students there are taught to be proper “global citizens.” Now NAS has posted videos of the presentations at the conference, which you can watch here.
The prime mover of the Bowdoin project, by the way, is CEO board member Tom Klingenstein.
Related posts:
TESTIMONY OF ROGER CLEGG, PRESIDENT AND GENERAL COUNSEL, CENTER FOR EQUAL OPPORTUNITY BEFORE THE U.S. COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS REGARDING THE PROPOSED EMPLOYMENT NON-DISCRIMINATION ACT
Too Many Asian Americans: Affirmative Discrimination in Elite College Admissions. (Harvard, MIT, Caltech)
Keeping skin color and sex out of government contractingPoliticized external review panels as unguided “diversity” missiles: California university administrators remain ultra-slow learners