Civil Rights for Me But Not for Thee
I have often said that the beauty of America’s founding documents afforded future generations the ability to right wrongs in America. As our nation’s society and culture have evolved, we have done exactly that. From making sure that black Americans enjoyed every benefit of being an American after the Civil War, to making sure that women could make their voices heard with the right to vote, to everything in between, Americans have identified where we could do better and then went about doing it. There have always been those among us who would keep us divided. Racial animosity is big business, just ask multimillionaires “Rev.” Al Sharpton and “Rev.” Jesse Jackson. Then there are the people who work off the same principle of “the answer to bad speech is more speech.” Only their version of it is “the remedy to discrimination is more discrimination.” But maybe not for long.
Have you ever predicted something, maybe totally off the cuff, and years later it came true, and you wished you had written it down so you could prove that you said it way back when? Well, I became a member of that club a while ago. I am not completely sure how long ago I said it, and I have no idea what I was talking about and to whom I was speaking. But I know I said that, at some point, it was not only going to be socially acceptable but encouraged to discriminate against white people. Well, we are clearly here. Most often, it masquerades as something called ironically, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Fortunately, a group called America First Legal, headed up by former Trump advisor Stephen Miller, has been out in front, calling this exactly what it is. Miller has called his organization conservatives’ “long-awaited answer to the ACLU.” If Donald Trump is reelected this fall, America First Legal may get a break in the action. Trump has said that one of his goals would be to ensure that Civil Rights-era laws designed originally to prevent the discrimination of blacks in society, could also be used to prevent the current acceptable discrimination against whites. America’s Civil rights laws were put in place to right absolutely unacceptable wrongs. There is nothing that can be compared to that. But laws enshrining the civil rights of one group of people, also apply to everyone else. Only that is not what is happening. Before the landmark Supreme Court decision last summer eliminating college admissions processes based on race, ask anyone who is white or Asian who is trying to get into a college or university if that was a slam dunk process for them. The answer was an emphatic “no,” because, well, they were the wrong color. Not only did the Supreme Court recognize that this was just more discrimination, but others have recognized that as well. The well-known conservative group the Heritage Foundation is behind eliminating what it rightly calls “affirmative discrimination.” Gene Hamilton is a former Trump Justice Department official and contends that “advancing the interests of certain segments of American society…comes at the expense of other Americans – and in nearly all cases violates longstanding federal law.” Those laws would be…civil rights laws.
Before the active discrimination of white people is either denied or shrugged off, here are just a few examples, and they are indeed few among an ever-increasing number. In 2017, America First Legal sued CBS Studios and Paramount Global, CBS Entertainment on behalf of Brian Beneker, a script coordinator and free-lance scriptwriter who had written several episodes of the “Seal Team” television series. He was repeatedly passed over for a staff writer position on the show for less experienced writers who were non-white, LGBTQ, or female. On one occasion, Beneker was asked to be hired for a staff writer position and was told all the positions were filled. Several months later, a black writer with little experience was hired. When he asked his supervisor about the new hire, he was told he was hired because he was black.
In February of this year, America First sued the NFL over the “Rooney Rule.” Started in 2003 and expanded in 2023, the Rooney Rule, named after now deceased owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers Dan Rooney, stated that at least two minority candidates had to be interviewed for vacant general manager, head coach, and coordinator positions. The problem, there is limited time after the season to hire coaches and executives, therefore not affording enough time to interview non-minorities for the positions. Then there were two government-sanctioned discriminatory programs. One was a $29 billion COVID-era program for minority and women-owned restaurants. Are you a white restaurant owner and COVID is killing your business? Too bad. In 2021, a federal judge blocked a program that would have given $4 billion to help black farmers. Are you a white farmer who could use some assistance? Too bad. And just for good measure, throw in things like critical race theory, where white kids are taught that they are always the oppressors, and black kids that they are forever oppressed. If it talks like discrimination and quacks like discrimination…
Fortunately, there are people like Brian Beneker, and Beverly Buck Brennan, who recently sued Harris-Stowe State College, ironically a historically black university, for race and gender discrimination and won a $750,000 judgment. They didn’t just stay silent out of fear of perhaps being called a racist, or anything else that might have happened to them. But maybe that is the idea, scare people into silence. When I was in high school, I went to the mall one day, and a kiosk selling T-shirts had a shirt that said, “I dig the skin I’m in.” I wanted to stop and buy it, but I didn’t. Even then, I had the feeling it wasn’t made for me.