Category Archive

I had occasion recently to post on National Review Online this short summary of why the accusation of “white privilege” is poisonous: It is, for starters, a divisive phrase, much more likely to hurt race relations than help them, as it lumps together all white people — many of whom cannot be considered “privileged” by any reasonable standard — and points an accusatory finger at them, asserting, “You don’t deserve what you have.” It is, at bottom, just another way of complaining about stereotyping, even though all racial groups — indeed, all groups, period — face stereotyping, some negative and …

A couple of years ago, a bad Senate resolution was introduced, encouraging the entire private sector to adopt a ramped-up version of the National Football League’s “Rooney Rule”: That rule originally required that at least one racial minority be introduced for any head coaching vacancy, and the Senate resolution now wants interviewed at least two “qualified minority candidates for each managerial opening at the director level and above” and least two minority-owned businesses for vendor contracts. Well, that bad Senate resolution is back.  What remains especially lamentable is that it’s being proposed not by Bernie Sanders but by Tim Scott, who should …

Let me begin my take on Barack Obama’s farewell address last week and the state of race relations as he leaves office by quoting what I wrote in 2004, after he delivered the Democratic National Convention keynote that vaulted him into the public eye: Barack Obama gave a fine speech, but it was not a speech that reflects the current Democratic Party. It celebrated America as “a magical place”; it did not bemoan our racism and imperialism. It professed that this black man “owe[d] a debt to those who came before” him; it did not call for reparations. It spoke …

The Department of Justice has law-enforcement responsibilities in all kinds of areas: antitrust, tax, environment, general criminal and civil litigation, and so forth.  But just about all the opposition to President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to head the department as attorney general, Sen. Jeff Sessions, is because of one area:  civil rights.  That happens to be the Center for Equal Opportunity’s area, too. Opponents to the nomination are trying to paint Sen. Sessions as a racist, and as someone who therefore will be unenthusiastic about enforcing the civil-rights laws.  But the real concern here is not that Sen. Sessions will not …

As we count our blessings at the end of the year, don’t forget to include thanks to Senator Mitch McConnell and the Senate Judiciary Committee for what they’ve done to keep the federal judiciary from getting any worse than it already is. It’s hard to win even good lawsuits with bad judges. A few examples that have come across my desk just in the past week or so: George Leef has a fine column on how Grand Valley State University has been sued, rightly, for violating the free-speech rights of its students. Microsoft ought to be sued if it decides …

I’m just a poor but reasonably honest civil-rights lawyer, not a political expert or psychologist, but I did have a few thoughts on the post-election fallout that I’m observing: No one can deny that there is racism in America’s past, and no one can deny that there are still racists. But the problem with the Left is that it willfully exaggerates the amount of racism that still exists — such as when it tells Americans about the racism in their past to the exclusion of everything else, and especially everything positive. That is, its problem is obsession with race and …

In addition to our speaking on campuses and other venues, media outreach, and general research and writing (in National Review Online, Commentary Magazine, The New York Times, and other magazines, newspapers, and publications), here are just a few highlights of CEO’s work this past year.  We continue to give unmatched bang for the buck.    Fisher v. University of Texas –This case challenging racial preferences in student admissions relied on a legal theory we developed, and before the case’s first trip to the Supreme Court we joined and helped write an amicus brief with the court of appeals, were the first to flag for conservative media …

Some questions for the Left, especially the campus Left: Do you really think it is a good thing for race relations on campus and elsewhere for Americans to be obsessed with race? Do you really think that it’s a good thing for race relations if every white student thinks of himself (or herself!) as beholden to any nonwhite student he meets — beholden in the sense that he must check his privilege and walk on eggshells? Do you really think it is a good thing for race relations if every nonwhite person focuses on past injustices to people who may …

According to this Washington Post article, black Maryland state legislators are “planning to propose emergency legislation to address the dearth of minority-owned businesses approved to grow medical marijuana in the state.”  There’s a federal constitutional problem here, though: A predicate for racial preferences in government contracting is a demonstration that there has historically been discrimination in the industry involved. Medical marijuana was legalized in Maryland only a couple of years ago, so one wonders how much discrimination there has been, historically, in an industry that does not yet actually exist.  But never mind all that.  “This is a good modern-day civil rights …