Stop underestimating the crackpot ideas the race-left will cook up. The latest in-fashion example of America’s structural racism is the criminal background check.
The complaint goes like this. Racists who are looking for ways to engage in employment discrimination against blacks can use criminal background checks in hiring. Since blacks have been convicted of crimes in greater percentages than their population generally, using a background check is a stealth way to discriminate against blacks.
Stop laughing.
Consider how many nutty ideas you laughed at decades ago which are now the status quo. While you were busy laughing, they were busy making their nutty ideas policy, and this latest nutty idea has the full weight of the civil rights industry behind it. The nutty idea is so well matured that the United States Commission on Civil Rights just issued a 346 page report on the topic. (Link here, but beware, the report is so large it may take weeks to download in some rural areas.)
So you think it’s nutty that criminal background checks are racist? Tell that to the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which also issued policy guidance in 2012. The guidance is a classic federal government shakedown. It has no force of law. It exceeds the authority of the EEOC. It is confusing and unclear. But that doesn’t matter. It does what it is designed to do — conduct a racial shakedown of American businesses and protect lawbreakers at the expense of the law abiding, a common theme in the age of Obama.
The guidance is intended to scare employers into adopting a fringe policy of the civil rights industry.
Don’t take my word for it. Listen to EEOC Commissioner Victoria Lipnic address the Chamber of Commerce: “One bright-line policy you should not adopt is having a no-felons policy. If you have that policy, that’s going to be a problem if you’re subject to an EEOC investigation.”
Guess what, Victoria? I have a no-felons policy. I won’t hire a felon, ever. I can’t trust them. So sue me.
But the federal mobilization against criminal background checks for employers is another example of an out-of-touch Washington trying to fundamentally transform the nation. As Civil Rights Commission member Peter Kirsanow noted, “The Guidance will have other costs too. For small companies that have the resources to hire attorneys, figuring out how to comply with the Guidance will cost several thousand dollars – money that could have been used to hire a new employee.”
Yes, but that’s part of the plan: Make things so complicated for small businesses run by owners with common sense that they simply capitulate to the race radicals. Better to hire the felon than to hire the lawyers to find a way not to hire the felon. Who needs boycotts, lawsuits and investigations?
Civil Rights Commission member Gail Heriot notes that the EEOC policy is probably unconstitutional. “Because the criminal background check policy is based on a disparate impact liability, it violates the U.S. Constitution – at least in the form it is administered today,” she writes.
The Constitution, we know by now, is no barrier to bold action in the progressive age of Obama. The Constitution is an object of scorn among the most toxic advocates of the new wave of racialist policies such as banning criminal background checks.
Notice how the racialists have targeted American businesses. They are easy prey. The whole Alinskyite model is built around attacking business. The race radicals know that if they shout race, most businesses capitulate instantly. Once they are done capitulating, they usually donate cash to their oppressors, just like Pepsi, Anheuser-Busch, GM and FedEx do.
Folks like Al Sharpton know that corporate America has no stomach for a fight with the race crusade. So watch more American institutions fall.
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