Court Stabs Integration in Ricci v. DeStefano

The Supreme Court has decided that New Haven could not throw out the firemen’s exam because no African-American and only two Hispanic-American test takers passed the test. According to the Court it wasn’t discriminatory because the test wasn’t intended to be discriminatory.

Unfortunately it is easy to whitewash real discrimination by saying “he didn’t mean it” – a formula we all learned as kids.

Sotomayor’s Resignation from a Women’s Club

Judge Sotomayor’s resignation from a women’s club is the result of the typical conservative failure either to understand or support the fight against discrimination. Saying that women or blacks cannot get together to support each other because we have insisted that whites and men admit women and blacks is like saying that with the score 89-0 we’ll all play fair from now on.

The Second End of Reconstruction

For broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, May 5, 2009:

There are two cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court that will probably change American civil rights law radically. Four members of the Court have never been friends of civil rights law and have just been waiting for a chance to kill it. A fifth professes concern but has rarely supported it. It’s hard to tell how much of a difference whatever the Court decides will make at this point. But it is not a group of people I trust for a realistic assessment of our anti-discrimination laws.