Milwaukee Spends $350,000 on Set-Aside Study
The city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, will spend $350,000 figuring out how to award government contracts based on race and sex.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, there’s a disparity in government contract awards between minority-owned businesses and the rest. And as we’ve been told thousands of times, disparities equal racism.
The city had utilized racial-neutral contracting, but a 2007 study found that it “underuses” minority-owned businesses in government contracting. “The city-sponsored study could provide a legal basis to fend off challenges if it confirms disparities and the city returns to a race-conscious program.”
The city assumes black-owned businesses should represent a certain percentage of government contracts. Former mayor Marvin Pratt said, “Hopefully, we can show statistically that we can have a race-based ordinance.”
But Mr. Pratt, why must the city color-code contracts? Perhaps streamlining the process would benefit black-owned businesses and help them compete without resorting to race-based decisions.
Is there a race-neutral way to help black-owned businesses? Streamlining and simplifying the contracting process probably would help such businesses. But the changes also would benefit the other businesses…unless they’re limited only to so-called minority-owned businesses, and that’s discriminatory. Whether you’re for or against “affirmative action,” doesn’t this reek of unfairness?
