Ward Connerly on Ricci

The American Civil Rights Institute‘s Ward Connerly penned an op-ed for the Christian Science Monitor about Ricci v. DeStefano.

“Discrimination in employment on the basis of race, sex, skin color, ethnicity, or national origin is a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act,” he writes. “Yet that fact seems to either go unnoticed or is considered irrelevant by many public officials.”

Indeed, the Civil Rights Act is clear, and its language plain. So why, after all these decades, do government entities continue to take race into account and discriminate against certain groups? Connerly writes, “The underlying rationale for such discrimination is that women and minorities are, almost by definition, disadvantaged and that white males are privileged in America by reason of their sex and color.”

The days of “reverse discrimination” are on the wane, and the Ricci case is proof. Connerly briefly recounts the facts of the case and the Supreme Court’s ruling. Although the test had been painstakingly developed to avoid accusations of bias, New Haven threw out the results anyway. Why? The city “simply caved to pressure from influential local blacks, such as a very close personal friend and political ally of the mayor, the Rev. Boise Kimber, who objected to the fact that no blacks would be promoted if the test results were to be accepted.”

Connerly notes the problem of the court’s limited ruling. The court didn’t vanquish the “disparate impact” provision; the doctrine is alive and well. But the court may have made it a little bit tougher for those claiming disparate impact to prevail. Whether or not minorities disproportionately fail or perform poorer than whites, the government may not discriminate against whites even when faced with potential disparate impact lawsuits.

“[T]he more important milestone is cultural. The cultural significance of Ricci lies in the fact that it will promote a new era of awareness that the Civil Rights Act applies to white males as much as it applies to black people and women.”