Discriminations

[NOTE: This post has been Updated]

Here are the visions of equality contained in the new platforms of the Republican and Democratic parties. One of them is clear and principled; the other is gauzy, ambiguous, obfuscatory, and disingenuous.

See if you can tell which is which.

Here’s the equality language from the Republican platform.

Ensuring Equal Treatment for All

Individual rights — and the responsibilities that go with them — are the foundation of a free society. From the time of Lincoln, equality of individuals has been a cornerstone of the Republican Party. Our commitment to equal opportunity extends from landmark school-choice legislation for the students of Washington D.C. to historic appointments at the highest levels of government. We consider discrimination based on sex, race, age, religion, creed, disability, or national origin to be immoral, and we will strongly enforce anti-discrimination statutes. We ask all to join us in rejecting the forces of hatred and bigotry and in denouncing all who practice or promote racism, anti-Semitism, ethnic prejudice, or religious intolerance. As a matter of principle, Republicans oppose any attempts to create race-based governments within the United States, as well as any domestic governments not bound by the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.

Precisely because we oppose discrimination, we reject preferences, quotas, and set-asides, whether in education or in corporate boardrooms. The government should not make contracts on this basis, and neither should corporations. We support efforts to help low-income individuals get a fair shot based on their potential and merit, and we affirm the commonsense approach of the Chief Justice of the United States: that the way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating.

Now, here’s the equivalent language from the Democratic platform.

A More Perfect Union

We believe in the essential American ideal that we are not constrained by the circumstances of birth but can make of our lives what we will. Unfortunately, for too many, that ideal is not a reality. We have more work to do. Democrats will fight to end discrimination based on race, sex, ethnicity, national origin, language, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, and disability in every corner of our country, because that’s the America we believe in.

We all have to do our part to lift up this country, and that means changing hearts and changing minds, and making sure that every American is treated equally under the law. We will restore professionalism over partisanship at the Department of Justice, and staff the civil rights division with civil rights lawyers, not ideologues. We will restore vigorous federal enforcement of civil rights laws in order to provide every American an equal chance at employment, housing, health, contracts, and pay. We are committed to banning racial, ethnic, and religious profiling and requiring federal, state, and local enforcement agencies to take steps to eliminate the practice.

We are committed to ensuring full equality for women: we reaffirm our support for the Equal Rights Amendment, recommit to enforcing Title IX, and will urge passage of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. We will pursue a unified foreign and domestic policy that promotes civil rights and human rights, for women and minorities, at home and abroad. We will pass the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act. We will restore and support the White House Initiative on Asian-American and Pacific Islanders, including enforcement on disaggregation of Census data. We will make the Census more culturally sensitive, including outreach, language assistance, and increased confidentiality protections to ensure accurate counting of the growing Latino and Asian American, and Pacific Islander populations, and continue working on efforts to be more inclusive. We will sign the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and restore the original intent of the Americans with Disabilities Act. That is the America we believe in.

It is not enough to look back in wonder at how far we have come; those who came before us did not strike a blow against injustice only so that we would allow injustice to fester in our time. That means removing the barriers of prejudice and misunderstanding that still exist in America. We support the full inclusion of all families, including same-sex couples, in the life of our nation, and support equal responsibility, benefits, and protections. We will enact a comprehensive bipartisan employment non-discrimination act. We oppose the Defense of Marriage Act and all attempts to use this issue to divide us.

But it is no good to be able to ride the bus when you can’t afford the bus fare. We will work to provide real opportunities for all Americans suffering from disadvantage; we will pioneer new policies and remedies against poverty and violence that address real human needs and we will close the achievement gap in education and provide every child a world-class education. We support affirmative action, including in federal contracting and higher education, to make sure that those locked out of the doors of opportunity will be able to walk through those doors in the future. As the late Ann Richards said, “We offer a vision where opportunity knows no race, no gender, no color, a glimpse of what can happen in government if we simply open the doors let the people in.”

I may have more to say about these two statements presently (have to leave now), but meanwhile if you follow the links to the original documents you’ll see that these two otherwise conflicting visions of equality do have one striking thing in common: they both begin on p. 51 of their respective documents.

ADDENDUM

The Republican position, as you can see, is both clear and firmly grounded in the “without regard” principle: distributing benefits or burdens based on race is wrong.

The only reference it contains that might not be completely clear (at least to non-DISCRIMINATIONS readers) is its opposition to “race-based governments within the United States,” which refers to race exclusive government programs in Hawaii that the Democrats support. (I have discussed various aspects of these programs here, here, here, and here.)

The Democratic statement, if you haven’t guessed by now, is the one with an ambiguous, amorphous, unprincipled core surrounded by flights of obfuscatory rhetoric.

It begins with a nod to the appealing notion that the “circumstances of birth,” presumably including the color of our skin and our ethnic identity (if we have one), should impose no constraints on our opportunities. Fine. Next, another nod in the right direction:

Democrats will fight to end discrimination based on race, sex, ethnicity, national origin, language, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, and disability in every corner of our country, because that’s the America we believe in.

We all have to do our part to lift up this country, and that means changing hearts and changing minds, and making sure that every American is treated equally under the law....

Would that they did, but they don’t.

• When they say they will “staff the civil rights division with civil rights lawyers, not ideologues,” they mean they will staff it with attorneys devoted to defending racial preference programs wherever they exist.

• When they say “We are committed to banning racial, ethnic, and religious profiling...,” they mean only by law enforcement or airport security personnel. They have no intention of stopping racial profiling by admissions officers, employers, or government contracting offices. Quite the contrary.

• When they say “We oppose the Defense of Marriage Act and all attempts to use this issue to divide us,” what they mean is that they favor forcing states to recognize same-sex marriages contracted in other states, that honoring the decisions of majorities in various states, expressed in their laws and constitutions, to define marriage as between one man and one woman is “to divide us.”

• When they say “it is no good to be able to ride the bus when you can’t afford the bus fare,” I assume they mean that all rights, to be real, must be subsidized by government.

• When they say “we will close the achievement gap in education and provide every child a world-class education,” they are either promising pie in the sky or just whistlin Dixie, or both.

• When they say “We support affirmative action, including in federal contracting and higher education, to make sure that those locked out of the doors of opportunity will be able to walk through those doors in the future,” they mean they support the status quo of all race preference policies currently in place. Not only do they present no evidence or examples of anyone who is currently “locked out of the doors of opportunity” on the basis of their race, they in fact turn a cold shoulder to those whom that description does in fact fit — applicants for jobs, college admissions, government contracts, etc., who would have been successful if their race, sex, or ethnicity were on the list of those receiving preferential treatment. That’s why they oppose all state efforts to prohibit preferential treatment based on race, ethnicity, gender.
  

There is nothing new, post-partisan, or post-racial about the Democrats’ racial agenda. It is the same old sour wine in the same old bottle. At least Clinton promised, however fraudulently, to “mend” affirmative action. There is no such promise here.