The “Jim Crow” label is being thrown out a lot these days by those on the left, including Joe Biden. They use it to smear those who dare oppose their radical policies.
Yet if that label comes close to fitting anyone today, it’s the left. They are the ones who have implemented a discriminatory racial-spoils system in government and academic institutions throughout the country. Democrats’ racial preferences have much more in common with Jim Crow than what Biden likes to call “Jim Crow 2.0,” referring to benign Republican efforts to ensure election integrity.
Let’s start with President Joe Biden’s announcement that he will consider only a black woman for the U.S. Supreme Court. This is something no private employer is allowed to do: disregard all other qualified job candidates to make a hiring decision based solely on race and sex.
In virtually every other context, such odious behavior would violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans racial and sex discrimination in employment and many other facets of everyday life, including education. That law not only made racial and sex discrimination unlawful, it helped change American society to make such discrimination morally unacceptable, as it should be.
The law does not apply to a president for constitutional reasons, but by ignoring it and engaging in such a discriminatory practice, what is the example Biden is giving the nation? Does he want us to believe that discrimination on the basis of race or sex is acceptable if it serves political ends, even though it means other individuals are hurt despite their outstanding credentials?
That’s not really judging individuals based on the “content of their character,” as Martin Luther King Jr. hoped, is it? Americans know that’s wrong. An ABC News/Ipsos poll finds that 76 percent of American adults say Biden should consider all qualified candidates. This shows just how much we have achieved in the almost 60 years since the Civil Rights Act was passed, and just how far we are from the Jim Crow era.
Jim Crow laws, imposed by the Democratic Party in the South after Reconstruction, affected employment, education, medical treatment, and more. It took the hard work of the civil rights movement and the passage of laws like the Civil Rights Act to end these abominable practices and set us on the path to equal protection under the law, regardless of race or sex.
Federal Government’s Racial Discrimination
But the left seems intent on steering us off that path. Consider the Food and Drug Administration’s new guidelines telling states they can prioritize delivery of limited Covid-19 medical treatments on the basis of race. That guidance clearly violates federal law.
It also lacks any basis in science. The people most at risk are the elderly and those with underlying health problems — regardless of race or sex. The FDA’s rank discrimination could lead to the death of patients who are refused treatment because of their race, which brings back memories of some of the worst outrages of the last century in the field of medicine.
Discriminatory practices are nothing new for the Biden administration. Last year, it authored a race-based farm loan forgiveness program. White farmers were barred from applying for the loans, no matter how bad their financial straits.
A federal judge blocked the program because, as the Pacific Legal Foundation argued, “Government can’t allow some people to take part in federal programs while denying others based solely on the color of their skin.” Apparently, no one bothered to tell the FDA.
Discrimination in Education
Unfortunately, racial discrimination is not confined to the Biden administration. Colleges and universities all over America engage in blatant racial discrimination, making race-based admission decisions. They discriminate in favor of black and Hispanic students and against white and Asian-American students. Not surprisingly, the Biden administration supports this practice too.
Kristen Clarke, head of the Civil Rights Division of Biden’s Justice Department, has not filed a single lawsuit against any of the universities engaging in this reprehensible behavior. In fact, she has voiced support for such “race-conscious admissions” (a polite term for racism) and dismissed the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Yale University for its discriminatory practices. There is little doubt that the Justice Department will file briefs supporting Harvard and the University of North Carolina, both of which engage in discriminatory practices in making their admissions decisions, in a pair of cases challenging those practices that the Supreme Court recently agreed to hear.
Many universities — American, Stanford, and Cornell among them — are now establishing segregated “black student-only” housing. Most of us thought the detestable separate-but-equal doctrine was discarded in 1954 with Brown v. Board of Education. Apparently, we were wrong. Judging from its total inaction, the Biden Justice Department sees nothing wrong in reviving this aspect of a foregone era that we had successfully discarded.
What’s Closer to Jim Crow 2.0, Then?
These colleges have merely changed which students they are discriminating against and which are benefiting from their “race-conscious” decisions. No matter their motivations, this behavior, aided and abetted by Biden and his administration, is just as wrong today as it was 60 years ago.
Modern “progressives” are rolling back the progress we have made in making discrimination unacceptable in our culture and society. They are teaching our young people that discrimination is not only acceptable, but laudable as long as the “right” sex and races benefit.
The next generation is learning that no matter how hard they work, no matter their qualifications, no matter their circumstances, they may be denied a college education, medical treatment, a job, and a host of other benefits based on the color of their skin or how many X chromosomes they have.
So, who is really closer to imposing “Jim Crow 2.0,” one of Biden’s favorite phrases? To answer that question, he and his cohorts need only look in the mirror.
