Last week I spoke at the Cato Institute’s celebration of Constitution Day (September 17) about the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Shelby County v. Holder.  The Center for Equal Opportunity had played an important role in this case, in which the Supreme Court struck down the coverage formula for Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.  We had urged the Court to take the case, urged it to strike down Section 5 — and, indeed, we had testified before Congress in 2006 that the law should not be reauthorized in the first place.   We pointed out that, in addition to …

Below is my review of Randall Kennedy’s new book, For Discrimination:  Race, Affirmative Action, and the Law, which appeared on National Review Online.  But first, I wanted to note also that the always formidable Harvey Mansfield recently provided his take on the National Association of Scholar’s important Bowdoin study, and that prompted an exchange between him and the school’s professor Paul Franco here in the Claremont Review of Books.  The Bowdoin study – documenting the political correctness and progressive politics run amok at that school – continues to have an impact and, one hopes, will prompt some real soul-searching at …

Here’s a slightly expanded version of an op-ed of mine that the Washington Times published last week: While 50 years ago this week, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., expressed his dream that our children not be judged by “the color of their skin,” that vision is not yet a reality. Racial preferences are used in four principal areas:  employment, contracting, education, and voting. The Supreme Court has just handed down important decisions in the latter two categories.  In Fisher v. University of Texas, it has ruled that the strict scrutiny given to racial preferences in university admissions must indeed be …

I was asked by National Review Online last week for commentary on the commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the 1963 “March on Washington” and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s culminating “I Have a Dream” speech there.  Here they are. Keeping Things in Perspective This Week:  So, how much of what Dr. King was asking for 50 years ago has been delivered? Well, to help put things in perspective, here is the paragraph in his “I Have a Dream” speech where he spells out his movement’s agenda most specifically: Related posts: TESTIMONY OF ROGER CLEGG, PRESIDENT AND GENERAL COUNSEL, CENTER FOR EQUAL OPPORTUNITY BEFORE THE U.S. …

In light of this week’s dubious court decision on New York City’s police department and racial profiling, it’s worth noting that some members of Congress are reintroducing that hardy (but never passed) perennial, the “End Racial Profiling Act,” which purportedly aims to end racial profiling by law-enforcement officers. This time around, the sponsors are trying to tie it in with, naturally, Trayvon Martin — even though the bill has nothing to do with the George Zimmerman case, since whatever you think of George Zimmerman and whatever he did, he is not a law-enforcement officer. In my statement before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the bill last …

Here’s an article that Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation and I wrote for National Review Online about the new voting-rights lawsuits that Attorney General Eric Holder has promised: The Washington Post reports that Eric Holder plans to file voting-rights challenges not only against Texas, which the DOJ did last month, but against a number of other states, too. These challenges are part of a crusade to, as Holder says, “use every tool” at the Obama administration’s disposal to continue federal oversight of the states in this area, despite the Supreme Court’s decision last month in Shelby County v. …

If we really want to diminish racial disparities in crime (which leads to racial profiling), If we really want to diminish racial disparities in education (which leads to university admission preferences), If we really want to diminish racial disparities in all kinds of other areas (income, wealth, employment, school discipline, you name it), If we really want to diminish all the racial disparities that, like it or not, make it hard to get rid of the remaining prejudice in this country – Then the single most important thing we can do is lower the out-of-wedlock rate for African Americans, which …

Here are a few thoughts on the President’s impromptu remarks on Friday, in which he helpfully (?) offered his thoughts on African Americans’ response to the verdict in the George Zimmerman trial. 1. You can’t claim to be having a serious discussion about race, crime, and African American young men without mentioning — not one word — that 72 percent of African Americans now are born out of wedlock. That’s where the “soul searching” he calls for is most needed, not on introspection about “bias.”  Growing up in a home without a father ties in with any social pathology you care …

I am not someone who has followed State of Florida v. George Zimmerman with rapt, 24/7 attention, or even 8/5 attention.  But it was easy for me to predict to a friend who asked me last Friday that there would be an acquittal.  How could a jury possibly find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, after all, when the state’s own witnesses seemed to help the defendant’s case as much as the prosecution’s? The saga had many villains and few heroes.  The foremost villains were the media — for more on that, see Linda Chavez’s pre-verdict column here – and the state …