The
re-election of Barack Obama will be a disaster for the United States. Though I opposed many of his polices, I shall
discuss only one here. Yet, 1) this is
an important topic for all Americans; and 2) it is an issue that saddens me
personally on an emotional level.
(1) The Political
In the fall
of 2012 the United States Supreme Court took up, once again, the issue of
racial preferences and affirmative action.
There is little doubt that the Left of the Court, Bader-Ginsburg,
Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan will vote to continue affirmative action. Two have already done so in the Michigan
cases of 2003, and Sotomayor and Kagan have made clear their support for the
policy. On the Right, Thomas and Scalia
voted against the policy in 2003, and Alito will probably join them. Roberts was assumed to be in the Right camp,
but after his decision this fall upholding Obama Care as a tax, one cannot be
sure of his vote. Most commentators
thought Justice Kennedy was undecided on this issue. So, on the affirmative action issue the
line-up is 4 for, 3 against, 2 undecided.
Had the
Republican ticket of Romney-Ryan won the Presidency in November 2012, it MIGHT
have sent a message to the US Supreme Court.
I am aware that the Supreme Court is supposed to be above the fray of
mere election campaigns, but someone long ago asserted that the Supreme Court
follows the election returns. A Romney
victory might have been followed by a 5-4 high court decision disallowing
racial preferences. Romney, like most
wealthy Republicans, would attempt to side-step the issue (as he did in the
campaign). But as one more willing to
follow the law, his administration might have begun the machinery to dismantle
the massive affirmative action bureaucracy.
It is a large, ideologically committed bureaucracy, which would obstruct
any attempt to prevent it using racial quotas, preferences, and
privileges. (For an example of their
destructive tactics, recall how Mary Frances Berry refused to yield the chair of
the Civil Rights Commission when her term ended and an opponent of affirmative
action had been appointed to replace her.)
The politically correct bureaucrats would scream that ending affirmative
action is racist; they would be interviewed daily on main-stream media, with
protest marches on every campus (mainly by the unqualified students who do not
belong there in the first place, and who are there only because of affirmative
action). Dismantling the
institutionalized discrimination called affirmative action would be difficult,
but, with the Supreme Court and possibly the President and Congress behind the
move, America could begin to use merit, testing, ability examinations, even IQ
tests to admit students award scholarships, hire, promote, and give small
business loans – rather than racial quotas as is the case under affirmative
action.
That was
the OPPORTUNITY that would occur with a Romney win. He lost.
Now, what
happens with the Supreme Court? It is
now less now likely that the Court will gather 5 votes to end race preferences
and affirmative action. The Court is not
blind to the election. So the vote on
affirmative action will probably be 5-4 in favor of continuing race preferences. However, suppose the Court ignores the 50% of
Americans who re-elected Obama and decides instead to end affirmative action,
by a slim 5-4 decision? Who would
enforce the ruling? Obama is an
affirmative action President. Michelle Obama
as a student was writing in favor of the a-a system that gave her
privileges. Professor Barack Obama
openly supported affirmative action and preferences for Blacks and other racial
groups. Obama’s Attorney General Holder
even sued schools that suspended Blacks at a higher rate than whites (there
should be racial quotas for suspending students, according to the Obama
Administration. It fails to note that
the unruly students who are so bad they need to be suspended may not fit into
the Dept. of Justice’s racial quota categories.) So even if the Supreme Court decided that all
American citizens deserved equal opportunity, even if it decided to abolish a-a
racial preferences, Obama would first denounce the decision and the Court, and then
he would refuse to implement it.
Of course,
on this issue Obama is a total hypocrite.
And liar. In numerous speeches in
2012, in his State of the Union speech, in his speech accepting the Democratic
nomination in summer 2012, in at least one of the debates with Romney, and in
various campaign speeches, he has used the phrase, “We (the Democrats) favor
the system in which we all play by the same rules.” He lies.
Affirmative action MEANS we do NOT play by the same rules. Whites play by one set (and receive negative
action), Blacks by another (and receive affirmative action), Hispanics by
another, Amerindians, etc.
Unfortunately, Romney and the Republicans never called Obama on his lie
and his hypocrisy.
That Obama
includes that phrase in his speeches indicates that most Americans still
believe in the ideal that all should play by the same rules. But Obama lies to the people. Obama would do everything to prevent us from
playing by the same rules. He will do
everything to prevent a system that requires equal opportunity for all citizens,
including whites.
Elsewhere I
have pointed out that the result of affirmative action is that one hires NOT
the best qualified, but the quota person.
It is prescription for decline.
And America has been in decline since this system was instituted under
Republican President Richard Nixon.
A Romney
victory might have given this nation a chance to turn things around – to hire
the best qualified, no matter their race; to admit to university the best
qualified, no matter their race; to award the scholarship to the best
qualified, no matter their race, etc.
Romney’s defeat probably means a lost chance to make America the best by
hiring the best. Romney’s defeat
probably means a lost chance to have all American citizens play by the same
rules. Romney’s defeat probably means a
lost chance to end the legally required institutionalized racism of affirmative
action. Romney’s defeat is a lost
chance. Is it the last chance?
(2) The Personal
I am a
native of the South; I was born and grew up in what was then the largest city
of the South, New Orleans. I opposed the
legally required institutional racism called segregation. As a young man I participated in the first
lunch counter sit-in in New Orleans. I
was arrested with six others. My
parents, who did not agree with me, began to receive terrible phone calls at
all hours day and night. There were
threats to blow up their residence. My
father had to borrow a gun and bullets.
My relatives and many friends were unable to understand my motives. How could I do such a terrible thing? My defense, equal opportunity – that it was
right that everyone have equal opportunity, that we all play by the same
rules. The slogan of the era was simple,
“We should treat all without regard to race, color, or creed.” Therefore, segregation was wrong. We simply wanted equal rights for all. The segregationists responded, that that is
not what will happen. They responded
that the Blacks would soon have more rights than the whites; that segregation
was needed to prevent crime against whites and keep things fair. I disagreed.
It seemed
as if I won the argument. In 1963 at the
March on Washington, Martin Luther King declared in his “Dream” speech that he
awaited the day when all would be judged by the content of their character and
NOT by the color of their skin. In 1964
the Civil Rights Act was passed to guarantee equal opportunity, with no hiring
on preferences and no hiring for racial balance and quotas were illegal. (I have detailed the debates and contests of
the Civil Rights Act elsewhere). There
was a period of victory. No more
segregation! No more race preferences! America would be a land of equal opportunity,
and even the bureaucracy established to enforce the new law was the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission. Unfortunately,
the victory was pyrrhic.
There were
ominous signs, even early on. These were
the type where one feels uneasy, but remains quiet, for the good of the
cause. For example, on the day I was
arrested with six others in the first New Orleans sit in, at Woolworths on
Canal Street, we were taken first to the Rampart Street station, then to the
main Parish lock-up, and then back to Rampart Street. Bail
was posted for us, and we were out by about 10 pm. Because of the transfers, we were not fed;
and none of us had eaten all day. Archie, a Black who had been one of us
arrested, Carlos, an Hispanic who was a member of our CORE group but who was an
observer that day, and myself then went to a Black restaurant that night. The waiter came to our table and announced,
“I can serve you (to Archie), but not you two.”
Then he looked again at Carlos, “Well, I’ll serve you also, but not him
(me).” I was stunned. Should we have a 2nd sit-in on the
same day? Should two of us arrested at
Woolworths now be arrested for not being served at a Black restaurant? We were all in shock. Neither Archie nor I wanted to return to
jail, so we all left – the night of the first sit-in a Woolworths in New
Orleans.
In the
1970s I submitted a chapter of my autobiography about my experience in
segregated New Orleans during the 1950s and culminating with the events at
Woolworths AND the Black restaurant. I
was pleased when the J. of Ethnic Studies published most of it, but somehow the
last part, about the Black restaurant refusing us service for food, was
deleted. Reality that was not
politically correct, was usually censored by the individual; but if not, by the
media, the academic community, the politicians.
I was quite
active in New Orleans CORE during its first year of existence, summer 1960-1961. I was one of the first members of the
organization. I attended the CORE
training institute in Miami during the summer of 1960, at which some of our
teachers were baseball legend Jackie Robinson (who was openly supporting
Republican Nixon), and Martin Luther King (who was then quietly for John
Kennedy). Through that first year about
half the CORE activists were white students, often Southerners.
In 1962 I
was no longer active in CORE, for I had to try to make a living as a convicted
felon. (It would take a few years before
the NO cases would reach the Supreme Court.)
Some of my white Tulane friends were still in the group when I learned
that all the whites were expelled from the local CORE chapter. Interracial dating was the excuse, but this
was the beginning of a purge of whites in all the CORE chapters round the
nation and then the SNCC chapters too. Other
cities CORE groups would find other excuses, but the result was the same – the whites
were kicked out. This was Black
Nationalism rising. By 1966 “Black
Power” was the slogan. “We Shall
Overcome” was smothered by the fires of “Burn, Baby Burn!” Non-violence yielded to riots and massive
crime rates. SNCC, the Student
Non-Violent Coordinating Committee became the Student National Coordinating
Committee.
With ever
rising rioting and crime rates, the Left blamed the police and “institutional
racism.” The Leftists in the EEOC
subverted the law they were mandated to enforce. Using stealth, bureaucratic regulations, and
political pressures, they turned civil rights into preferential rights, equal
opportunity to the denial of equal opportunity, a ban on quotas, to quotas by
another name: goals and timetables, racial balance, diversity. The Left thus created institutional
anti-white racism. Republican President
Richard Nixon’s Labor Dept. promulgated regulations that made this national
policy. And so we have had the racial
quotas and preferences of affirmative action since 1970. America has been in decline since then.
Affirmative
action can do little more to harm me personally. I am now in my 70s and rarely seek new
employment. When I hear liberals justify
affirmative action, as I did last week on Wisconsin Public Radio, that whites
are still economically above Blacks and Hispanics, I cringe. I do not care if every CEO in this nation is
a white male, that is no reason to discriminate against poor and middle class
whites.
I struggled
for equal rights in New Orleans in the 1950s and 60s – and paid a price. Worse, my relatives probably paid a higher
price. But by the 1970s poor and middle
class whites have been denied equal opportunity, denied their chance to rise,
denied their chance to contribute to the creativity and wealth of American
society. Admittedly, I had no high hopes
for Romney on this issue, for he never called Obama’s lies about playing by the
same rules. Yet, I hoped a Republican
victory might allow the Supreme Court to make an historic decision voiding
affirmative action, and the beginnings of dismantling this institutional racism
could begin. With Obama’s victory,
institutional anti-white racism will become ossify making it harder to overturn
later. It means more discrimination
against better candidates; more hiring of the incompetents. It means more decline. And on the personal level, I must always
wonder now, were my relatives right, after all? --------Hugh Murray
