MD Lawmaker Introduces Anti-Preferences Resolution
A county commissioner in Frederick County, Maryland, seeks to end government racial discrimination. John L. Thompson, running as a delegate to the Maryland General Assembly, introduced a proposal to demand a constitutional amendment to eliminate racial preferences in state government.
The Frederick News Post reports the measure is based on California’s successful Proposition 209, which barred the state from discriminating against or granting preferences to individuals or groups based on race in government employment, contracting, and education.
Maryland has a minority business program, which grants preferences to minority-businesses for government contracts.
Thompson believes, like most opponents of race-based government policies, individuals should be judged based on character, not skin color. As expected, the NAACP cried foul.
“The NAACP more than anybody else would like to see Dr. King’s dream to be a reality, just like the county commissioner has stated,” said Guy Djoken, president of the Frederick County NAACP. “We can’t just put a law in place and think the law is going to resolve the issue.”
The issue he’s referring to are racial disparities between the races in housing and education. The solution to the disparity “problem” is to penalize members of one race in favor of the race on the low end of the disparity. If a percentage of contracts is set aside for members of certain racial groups, members of others are shut out. Proponents of race-based set-asides support the government wielding this sort of power over taxpayers. If the government ever decides to wield the club in the other direction (when whites become a racial minority, for example), they’d better duck.
