Incoherent: ‘Civil Rights’ and Modern Liberalism
Liberals increasingly seem to think that “civil rights” requires the implementation of the entire liberal agenda — from free contraception to freedom from exposure to unpleasant speech — and shields individuals from just about everything unpleasant except discrimination based on race, sex, or ethnicity.
Take Richard Kahlenberg, the Century Foundation’s tireless (if occasionally tiresome) advocate for class-based affirmative action. It is neither surprising nor objectionable that he opposes legacy preferences, as in fact do most critics of racial preferences. It is surprising, and more than a little odd, however, that he now argues that legacy preferences are or should be prohibited by civil rights statutes even though he is unwilling to say the same thing about preferences based on race.
I criticized his argument here, especially his curious notion that the 1866 Civil Rights Act prohibits admission preferences to legacies but that both that act and the even more robust 1964 Civil Rights Act happily tolerate admissions preference based on race. Somehow he manages to believe that awarding bonus points for legacy status runs afoul of the 1866 act’s prohibition of “ancestry”-based discrimination — even though the word “ancestry” does not appear in the act — but that discrimination based on race has nothing to do with ancestry.
Kahlenberg replied to my criticisms (my rejoinder follows his reply), and there and in other writings he does confess to being “somewhat ambivalent” about racial preference; admits to being “deeply troubled by the casual way in which many of my fellow liberals embrace the use of race in deciding who gets ahead in education and employment”; and claims to recognize ”the deep moral problems associated with judging people by skin color.” But, unlike what he managed to conclude about the illegality of legacy preferences, those hand-wringing qualms never lead him to conclude that the racial discrimination at the core of affirmative action as practiced today is or even should be regarded as unconstitutional or illegal. About as far as he ever goes is to say, as he does in a recent New Republic review, that “explicit preferences based on race are problematic” — not because they are morally or legally repugnant, but because so many whites oppose them.
Still, even though these ambivalent qualms pose no threat to the regime of racial preference and amount to no more than lip service to the principle of colorblind non-discrimination on which he willingly trespasses, perhaps even his ever-so-slight deviation from the party line on racial preference has created a need for Kahlenberg to burnish his liberal credentials. But whatever the reason, there he goes again, extending “civil rights” protections while ignoring their core purpose: he still regards the various Civil Rights Acts as no barrier to colleges awarding benefits and burdens based on race, but now wants to add a whole new area to what they cover.
In a forthcoming book, Why Labor Organizing Should Be a Civil Right, and a recent New York Times (where else?) op-ed titled “A Civil Right to Unionize” written with labor lawyer Moshe Z. Marvit, Kahlenberg calls for a revision of Title VII to protect union organizing. They write:
It’s time to add the right to organize a labor union, without employer discrimination, to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, because that right is as fundamental as freedom from discrimination in employment and education.
They recognize that firing someone for trying to organize a union is already “technically illegal” under the National Labor Relations Act and that past efforts over 40 years to strengthen labor laws “have gotten bogged down,” i.e., Congress has stubbornly refused to pass them, but they nevertheless see no impediment to having the National Labor Relations Board regard union organizing as protected under Title VII.
In the several days since the appearance of that op-ed, as he points out in an essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education extending and amplifying his argument, Kahlenberg reveals that his simultaneous contraction and expansion of the concept of “civil rights” is not an idiosyncratic fantasy:
Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO, endorsed the concept of amending the Civil Rights Act to protect the fundamental right of labor organizing. The other big labor federation, Change to Win, republished the Times op-ed on its Web site. And gender, race, and politics scholar Melissa Harris-Perry articulated the case on her MSNBC show. The book itself has blurbs from a broad cross-section of civil rights and labor advocates, including Benjamin Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, Amy B. Dean, former president and CEO of the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council, and David Madland of the Center for American Progress.
But wait; there’s more. Not only do Kahlenberg et al. want to redefine “civil rights” to include union organizing; they also want these newly minted rights to protect illegal immigrants, pointing an accusing finger at Pomona College because:
In the middle of the union drive [to organize kitchen workers], Pomona fired 17 workers for failing to provide documentation of their legal status.
According to Kahlenberg in the Chronicle:
[The Pomona case] illustrates the deep connection between the labor movement, the immigrant-rights movement, and the civil-rights movement.
Title VII, for anyone needing a reminder, declares that it is illegal for an employer:
(1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; or
(2) to limit, segregate, or classify his employees or applicants for employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
Kahlenberg and all his liberal friends, of course, are perfectly free to “construe” this statute to protect union organizing. Courts, after all, have done far worse, construing it and its companion, Title VI, to permit the very discrimination based on race that is prohibited by their clear text. As Kahlenberg acknowledged in his reply to me cited above:
Title VI’s prohibition applies to everyone … but [it] has been read to permit discrimination in favor of under-represented minorities — and therefore against whites — as part of affirmative action programs.
I suppose we can take some small comfort from the infinite malleability of words in the liberal lexicon. What does it matter, after all, if Title VII is rewritten to define union organizing as a civil right if no one is bound to recognize that the words mean what they say? And even if the rewriting effort is successful it may not be likely that colleges will be hauled before the National Labor Relations Board or the EEOC (if a difference remains between them) for failing to provide admissions preferences to union organizers who are illegal immigrants (although given the history of affirmative action, we can’t be too sure about that).
Still, the amazing new adventures of Kahlenberg and friends redefining the meaning of civil rights — finding that it includes prohibition of legacy preferences and protection of union organizing but not the very thing the statutes were written to do, banning discrimination based on race — reveal and reflect the deep incoherence about the nature of discrimination that characterizes contemporary liberalism.
“to freedom from exposure to unpleasant speech”
Does unpleasant speech also include crosses in urine?
Of course not. Don’t be silly.
BTW, did you see the story about the UN “human rights” experts calling for a ban on Dante’s Divine Comedy?
Yup. I can understand why marxists work with muslims: they both seek total control over people (next word to be banned is “individual”) in deed and thought.
And via The Blaze, apparently now there’s a Mass. school replacing St. Patrick’s Day with O’Green day.
>>And via The Blaze, apparently now there’s a Mass. school replacing St. Patrick’s Day with O’Green day
Please, tell me that’s a joke!
Sadly, no:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/ma-elementary-school-removes-st-patricks-day-name-to-remedy-faith-issues/
Blaze even has pictures.
Nor does it cover artwork depicting the Virgin Mary composed with elephant dung,
What is being described above is the final push to transform our constitutional civil rights—those rights which Barack Obama has disparaged as “negative rights”—into “human rights.”
Civil rights are the rights that the Constitution grants us against the government. The Constitution presumes that Americans have liberty, i.e., the right to do as they please, circumscribed only by the minimal amount of government necessary to protect the polity and maintain public order. The civil rights granted in the Bill of Rights exist to give us the ability to slap the government down when it begins to encroach upon our individual liberty.
“Human rights,” that term so beloved of the Left, are special dispensations granted by the government to favored constituencies. Affirmative action is a “human right.” Special footwashing stations are demanded by Muslim cabdrivers as a “human right”; mere freedom of religion is not enough for them. Most of the demands of the gay-rights lobby are for “human rights” special privileges, for there is no denial of civil rights to gays. On the world stage, “human rights” never, ever address the issue of liberty; they are always demands for repressive governments to lock up fewer people for exercising basic freedoms, or to use softer truncheons.
The Civil Rights Movement morphed into a “human rights” movement after passage of the Voting Rights Act. The causes which followed in its wake, such as the women’s movement and the gay-rights movement, were overwhelmingly “human rights” movements demanding special favors, though they used the rhetoric of the earlier Civil Rights Movement as a hermit crab does a discarded shell.
All legitimate civil rights claims can be easily identified; are they “negative rights”? If they are rights held by the citizen to reduce government power or to check government abuses, they are genuine. Anything else is a “human rights” fraud designed to give a special right to a favored constituency at the cost of someone else, and probably with an eye towards raiding the public treasury.
Not sure about that. I think all these movements wanted or want *equal* rights. But in order to achieve equal rights, they insist that the groups they represent need *unequal* treatment – meaning favored treatment. Special advantages to balance out their disadvantages.
This would be easier to swallow if someone could say “We’ll need special treatment UNTIL conditions x, y, and z are observed. After that, equal treatment will be good enough.” But as I’ve said before, the problem is that they cannot concretely define the end state that the special treatment is meant to produce. That’s because “equality” and “social justice,” as defined by the Left, do not exist and never have existed. Nobody knows what they look like.
All they know is that what they have now is not as good as what they can imagine, which means the special treatment hasn’t worked. But that’s not the fault of the special treatment – it’s the fault of their class enemies. If only those evil conservatives and capitalists would get out of the way, things would be perfect. What’s really needed is *more* special treatment…
And so it goes.
This is compounded by the desire of organizations to perpetuate (and expand) themselves. If the cause I pursue and which provides my livelihood were to be reached/fulfilled, my livelihood would cease to exist. Instead I would prefer to expand the problem to insure my continued livelihood.
It appears that you do not quite grasp the distinction between civil rights and “human rights.”
In the ideal Constitutional society, everyone has liberty, the ability to do as they will subject only to the minimum-necessary intrusion of the government for the sake of public order. Civil rights exist to ensure that the citizen, possessed of liberty, will have redress against the government if/when the government oversteps its bounds. Any other wrong experienced by the free citizen will be addressed either by the criminal law (robbery, burglary, murder, etc.) or the civil law (lawsuits for damages) or, on the mundane level, “let’s take it outside.”
“Human rights” are all those other things you lump together under “movements demanding equal rights.” The Civil Rights Movement began as a genuine civil rights movement; black people wanted the right to vote, assuming that being able to help chose their representatives would ensure that they would get better representation in the government and equal justice under law. It devolved into a “human rights” movement—i.e., a movement demanding special privileges and set-asides—once it had achieved its civil rights goals, and the people who were in the movement for self-aggrandizement purposes wanted a payoff.
There are no civil rights currently being systematically denied anyone in this country. There is a great deal of bleating from many quarters about the “human rights” that the various bleaters are supposedly being denied. But we do not have “human rights” in this country—the Constitution makes no place for them—nor do we need them, if we keep the liberty the Constitution was designed to safeguard.
Understood. I think your comment and Bob’s complement each other, though. Groups worked for and received “civil rights” but in the end weren’t satisfied with them. In my opinion, they weren’t satisfied because they weren’t really clear on what they expected civil rights to do for them. Civil rights no longer being enough, they expanded their goals to include your “human rights.” They still don’t know what the end state is supposed to be. And of course, as Bob said, the organizations working for “civil” or “human rights” had an interest in NOT achieving anything. If they ever said “OK, problem solved,” their reason for existing would disappear.
Our political discourse has been so confused by the post-60s generation that it is hard to find any rational discussion whatsoever. I laid out the confusion over the meaning of “popular sovereignty” here: http://clarespark.com/2012/01/28/popular-sovereignty-on-the-ropes/. I congratulate the author of this piece for laying out the contradictions and sheer insanity of the progressives in power. I hope it gets lots of attention.
“In the middle of the union drive [to organize kitchen workers], Pomona fired 17 workers for failing to provide documentation of their legal status.”
I never really quite understood why anybody who was in this country illegally had any legal status at all? Yet we keep them here, we protect them in “sanctuary cities,” we provide their kids and their families not only with a free education but free medical care as well, and depending on what state you live in, a lot more benefits as well (just look at California, which is going bust because of all the benefits they are giving to illegals). And yet labor unions want them to be seen as actual citizens. No wonder people are angry. You know, I think the Americans who would be most angry would be the people who came to this country LEGALLY and became a citizen LEGALLY. I’m sure they are thinking right now, “What saps we were following the rules and spending the time, effort, and money to come here legally.” These are the people I really feel sorry for.
I don’t see it as incoherent at all. Everything the left has done over the last 100 years has been aimed at stripping away individual rights and individual responsibility. They’re constantly pushing “collective rights” or “group rights”.
Look at the attempt with the phony contraception “right”:
1) A group alleges a right, that right is opposed by an individual, the group right then trumps the individual right. The group has spoken and the mob takes what the mob wants. Individual rights have no place in modern society.
2) The group alleges that “this” is so important that the cost must be borne by everybody. We all know the saying “when everybody is responsible then nobody is responsible” and when nobody is responsible then the “government must step in”.
3) The end result is the loss of individual freedom and more government control.
The left’s agenda of collective bargaining and collective rights is a continuing assault on individual freedom and individual liberty. The left hates freedom and individuality with every fiber of their being. They can’t tolerate dissent, they can’t stand differences, and they celebrate individuality by being just like everybody else in the lefty herd. They’re programmed like the Borg, talk to one leftist and you’re talking to all of them. They haven’t had an original thought in 100 years and they won’t have an original thought in the next eon.
Hey, the civil rights movement has accomplished a lot! If you watch the NCAA this week, you’ll notice that there are almost no white players on the court at any time.
Is satisfaction of every human desire to become a civil right? If so, there is no end to it and designating frivolous demands as civil rights diminishes the achievement of genuine civil rights victories – say by African Americans – in our society.
It really is The Culture of Narcissism (Christopher Lasch)writ large.
So, let’s see if I understand this. The U.S. got rid of nobility when it ratified the Constitution. Can’t have people who gain privilege through birth right. Legacy admissions to a college are a birth right as well – not really acceptable. But gaining an advantage because of race, also a birth right, is okay?
It is no surprise that the Left will use the Constitution and every other possible thing to reach their ends of controlling our economy and society. The Right watches and goes about its business of creating prosperity, which, of course, is undermined by the activities of the Left.
The Right needs to wake up and fight. This is the Second Civil War of the United States of America.
“It is no surprise that the Left will use the Constitution…”
Ted, I know where you are going with this but I believe the left is not using the Constitution but obviating and destroying that document in order to get what they want. Living under the constraints of the Constitution as said by The Won, only defines “negative rights” which he and the progs want to expand to all “rights” care of the government.
In Fuedalism, a legacy class with titles like King, Duke, Earl, Baron, Knight, ruled by virtue of their mostly inherited and occasionally earned titles. Capitalism, based primarily on what one earned and created with one’s intellegence, combined with the millions who fled fuedalism for America’s freedom, finally defeated fuedalism with a better system built on Merit prevailing in a free atmosphere of competition. The New Fuedalists who did not do well with competition, found out the down trodden would vote for them as their champions if they promised the return of fuedalism with the downtrodden as the new ruling class. It has worked so far. Economically, as proven in Russia, China, North Korea and Cambodia, the productivity of government protected fuedalism can only support maybe 10% of the population as competitive capitalism can. Economics 101 will tell you why. Hence the Socialists/Reactionalry Fuedal Lords/monopolistic capitalists (there is no difference) will, as they did in the 20th Century, condemn 100′s of millions to cruel early deaths of torture, over-work and starvation to support their fuedal powers. A fair trade I guess, but my vote is for freedom and competitive capitalism. Civil Rights to the individual always. Phony human rights to the fuedal group never.
In Fuedalism, a legacy class with titles like King, Duke, Earl, Baron, Count, Knight, etc., ruled and whacked up the spoils by virtue of their mostly inherited and occasionally earned titles. Capitalism, based primarily on what one earned and created with one’s intellegence and energy, combined with the inherent desires for freedom of millions who fled fuedalism for America’s promise, finally defeated fuedalism with a better system built on Merit which gave us the incredible economic fruits that can only come from free and unrestrained economic and creative competition.
The New Fuedalists who did not do well with competition, found out the down trodden would vote for them as their champions if they promised to them the return of the favored fruits of fuedalism with the downtrodden as the new ruling class. It has worked so far. Economically, as proven on the ground in Russia, China, North Korea and Cambodia in the last century, the productivity of government-fostered and protected fuedalism can only support maybe 10% of the population that fully competitive capitalism can. Economics 101 will tell you why.
Hence the Socialists/Reactionary Fuedal Lords/a.k.a.,monopolistic capitalists (there are no meaningful differences among these three systems) will in the next century, as they did in the last, condemn 100′s of millions of reluctant slaves to cruel, early deaths from torture, over-work, poverty, starvation and war solely in order to support the fuedal powers of the overseers. A fair trade I guess, but my vote is for freedom and competitive capitalism for all, not just for the few rulers with no conscience. Civil Rights to the individual always. Phony human rights to the phony fuedal groups — Never!
The title of this article is misleading. If I wanted to read about one author griping about another, I could just go to entertainment weekly. The entire article was just about semantics, “why do we need to amend when its already illegal”. The article totally failed to address the issue implied in the title.
Curious, legacy preferences in college admissions is called nepotism in the public or private sector employment arena. Neither one is merit based in that Harvard president’s coined term for a “meritocracy.” Of course, trying to conceptually conjoin an aristocracy based on blood and flesh with a merit based system based on performance and calling it a “meritocracy” is a contradiction in terms. There’s also an element of free riding with legacy preferences and nepotism or reverse racism; the lucky legacy preferences do not have to pay the merit based competition price to gain entry to those institutional benefits, yet they still get to enjoy the herd immunity benefits of “meritocracy.” Of course, if too many legacy preferences are allowed, as with allowing too many people to forgo vaccinations, at some point the institution looses its merit based herd immunity. In a political sense, the meritocracy of the best and the brightest then becomes illegitimate.
This is disturbing to say the least!
Obama’s Executive Order Authorizes Peacetime Martial Law WRITTEN BY JOE WOLVERTON, II SUNDAY, 18 MARCH 2012 http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/11232-presidents-executive-order-authorizes-peacetime-martial-law