Supporters of the Center for Equal Opportunity know that I don’t like the “disparate impact” approach to civil-rights enforcement. And while it’s a bad idea when used to challenge firefighter exams, criminal background checks, English proficiency, school discipline policies, policing, mortgage lending, and voter ID laws — to give just a few examples — I’ve always had a special place in my heart for its use by bureaucrats to challenge pollution that fails to strike the right racial balance. But, “[i]n recognition of Earth Day and Arbor Day,” the Obama administration recently highlighted those efforts in its own publication.
Now, I’m prepared to believe that the government needs to consider stepping in from time to time to stop pollution, but what I don’t understand is why racial considerations should ever be part of that consideration. That is, if the pollution is dangerous, then why should it be allowed — or not allowed — depending on the racial makeup of its victims? If a polluter’s activity will hurt those living nearby, why is it acceptable if that population is white or racially balanced, but not acceptable if those being hurt belong disproportionately to a racial or ethnic minority group?
But this is exactly the approach the government overtly takes. To quote from an example proudly showcased in the Obama administration’s publication, a violation was found “when the cities failed to assess the potential adverse disparate impacts stemming from relocation of a trolley maintenance facility to a historically Black neighborhood. As a direct result of [the federal government agency’s] involvement in the matter, city officials agreed to keep the facility near its current location.” That may be fine for the “historically Black neighborhood,” but what about the folks “near its current location”?
Too bad for them. The agency here insisted that those getting federal money “must consider and analyze alternatives [in location] to determine whether those alternatives would have less of a disparate impact on the basis of race, color, or national origin, and then implement the least discriminatory alternative.” In other words, the government insists that whether or not there is an environmental problem worthy of federal intervention depends in part on the skin color and ancestral origin of those put at risk.
Happy belated Earth and Arbor Days!
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Is the pollution example not silly or scary enough for you? Well, this article from Fox Business suggests that “disparate impact” and political correctness will also make airline travel less safe. Sigh.
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I noted in this National Review Online column that I sent to you last week that the Supreme Court is now considering whether to grant review (again) in Fisher v. University of Texas. In that column I discuss recent freedom-of-information efforts by the Center for Equal Opportunity and the state affiliates of the National Association of Scholars demonstrating that universities are not taking the Court’s 2013 decision in Fisher seriously, which in itself is a good reason for revisiting the case.
I should also note that universities’ good faith is likewise called into question by Abigail Fisher’s reply brief, which notes, for example, UT’s decision to run a “secret, race-based admissions program for well-connected applicants” (citing this amicus brief at pages 8-12), and — referring to Stanford and Yale — that schools arrogantly “believe they can systematically destroy application files” that might open them up to antidiscrimination claims.
And then there’s the fact that, more and more, schools are discriminating against racial minorities in in name of political correctness — see, for example, the administrative complaint filed last week against Harvard by a number of Asian-American groups. The Court was right to grant review in the Fisher case last time around (I summarized the many reasons at the time here), and it should do so again.
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To elaborate on that administrative complaint I mentioned in the preceding paragraph: According to this news story,
A coalition of more than 60 Asian-American groups filed a federal discrimination complaint against Harvard University, claiming racial bias in undergraduate admissions.
Asian-American students with almost perfect college entrance-exam scores, top 1 percent grade-point averages, academic awards and leadership positions are more likely to be rejected than similar applicants of other races, according to their administrative complaint, filed [on May 15] with the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights. Harvard denies any discrimination.
Similar allegations were made in a lawsuit filed in federal court last November. The more the merrier, I say, and the more Harvard is embarrassed and the more publicity that is given to this discrimination the better.
On the other hand, I suspect that the Obama administration will do exactly nothing with this latest administrative complaint, because (a) it doesn’t want to since it likes politically correct discrimination, and (b) it can say that this matter is already before a federal court.
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One last item, also connected to the Asian American angle to the racial preference issue.
The Chronicle of Higher Education has an interview with sociology professor Jennifer Lee about Asian American students and, in particular, the stereotyping of them. She was asked about the Harvard complaint discussed above. I didn’t like her response, and posted this comment:
Her answer to the penultimate question suggests that individuals support or oppose racial preferences based largely on whether or not those preferences will benefit them personally. I certainly hope that this is not true, for Asian Americans or any other group. If it had been true fifty years ago, the Civil Rights movement would have failed; it could not have prevailed without a majority of white Americans viewing discrimination against African Americans as morally wrong and opposing it for that reason, regardless of their own interests.
Likewise, racial preferences in university admissions should be ended principally for the same reason, and that reason ought to be appealing to all of us, regardless of color. There are certainly many other reasons to oppose this discrimination, and many of them are also extremely powerful, but the moral one — that it is wrong to treat people differently because of skin color or what country their ancestors came from — should always come first.
I should add that the second paragraph of her answer, in which she suggests that it is somehow selfish for people not to want to be discriminated against, is baffling. It is not selfish to oppose racial discrimination against one’s children; indeed, it is much more selfish to support racial preferences for one’s children.
