Trump's Executive Order Banning Affirmative Action and DEI Preferences

This is radical stuff, at least relative to the status quo in the government for decades:

01/21/25
EXECUTIVE ORDER
ENDING ILLEGAL DISCRIMINATION AND
RESTORING MERIT-BASED OPPORTUNITY
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:

Section 1. Purpose. Longstanding Federal civil-rights laws protect individual Americans from discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. These civil-rights protections serve as a bedrock supporting equality of opportunity for all Americans. As President, I have a solemn duty to ensure that these laws are enforced for the benefit of all Americans.

Yet today, roughly 60 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, critical and influential institutions of American society, including the Federal Government, major corporations, financial institutions, the medical industry, large commercial airlines, law enforcement agencies, and institutions of higher education have adopted and actively use dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences under the guise of so-called "diversity, equity, and inclusion" (DEI) or "diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility" (DEIA) that can violate the civil-rights laws of this Nation.

Illegal DEI and DEIA policies not only violate the text and spirit of our longstanding Federal civil-rights laws, they also undermine our national unity, as they deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system. Hardworking Americans who deserve a shot at the American Dream should not be stigmatized, demeaned, or shut out of opportunities because of their race or sex.

These illegal DEI and DEIA policies also threaten the safety of American men, women, and children across the Nation by diminishing the importance of individual merit, aptitude, hard work, and determination when selecting people for jobs and services in key sectors of American society, including all levels of government, and the medical, aviation, and law-enforcement communities. Yet in case after tragic case, the American people have witnessed first-hand the disastrous consequences of illegal, pernicious discrimination that has prioritized how people were born instead of what they were capable of doing.

The Federal Government is charged with enforcing our civil-rights laws. The purpose of this order is to ensure that it does so by ending illegal preferences and discrimination.

Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of the United States to protect the civil rights of all Americans and to promote individual initiative, excellence, and hard work. I therefore order all executive departments and agencies (agencies) to terminate all discriminatory and illegal preferences, mandates, policies, programs, activities, guidance, regulations, enforcement actions, consent orders, and requirements. I further order all agencies to enforce our longstanding civil-rights laws and to combat illegal private-sector DEI preferences, mandates, policies, programs, and activities.

Sec. 3. Terminating Illegal Discrimination in the Federal Government. (a) The following executive actions are hereby revoked:
(i) Executive Order 12898 of February 11, 1994 (Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations);
(ii) Executive Order 13583 of August 18, 2011 (Establishing a Coordinated Government-wide Initiative to Promote Diversity and Inclusion in the Federal Workforce);
(iii) Executive Order 13672 of July 21, 2014 (Further Amendments to Executive Order 11478, Equal Employment Opportunity in the Federal Government, and Executive Order 11246, Equal Employment Opportunity); and
(iv) The Presidential Memorandum of October 5, 2016 (Promoting Diversity and Inclusion in the National Security Workforce).
(b) The Federal contracting process shall be streamlined to enhance speed and efficiency, reduce costs, and require Federal contractors and subcontractors to comply with our civil-rights laws. Accordingly:
(i) Executive Order 11246 of September 24, 1965 (Equal Employment Opportunity), is hereby revoked. For 90 days from the date of this order, Federal contractors may continue to comply with the regulatory scheme in effect on January 20, 2025.
(ii) The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs within the Department of Labor shall immediately cease:
(A) Promoting "diversity";
(B) Holding Federal contractors and subcontractors responsible for taking "affirmative action"; and
(C) Allowing or encouraging Federal contractors and subcontractors to engage in workforce balancing based on race, color, sex, sexual preference, religion, or national origin.
(iii) In accordance with Executive Order 13279 of December 12, 2002 (Equal Protection of the Laws for Faith-Based and Community Organizations), the employment, procurement, and contracting practices of Federal contractors and subcontractors shall not consider race, color, sex, sexual preference, religion, or national origin in ways that violate the Nation's civil rights laws.
(iv) The head of each agency shall include in every contract or grant award:
(A) A term requiring the contractual counterparty or grant recipient to agree that its compliance in all respects with all applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws is material to the government's payment decisions for purposes of section 3729(b)(4) of title 31, United States Code; and
(B) A term requiring such counterparty or recipient to certify that it does not operate any programs promoting DEI that violate any applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws.
(c) The Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), with the assistance of the Attorney General as requested, shall:
(i) Review and revise, as appropriate, all Government-wide processes, directives, and guidance;
(ii) Excise references to DEI and DEIA principles, under whatever name they may appear, from Federal acquisition, contracting, grants, and financial assistance procedures to streamline those procedures, improve speed and efficiency, lower costs, and comply with civil-rights laws; and
(iii) Terminate all "diversity," "equity," "equitable decision-making," "equitable deployment of financial and technical assistance," "advancing equity," and like mandates, requirements, programs, or activities, as appropriate.

Sec. 4. Encouraging the Private Sector to End Illegal DEI Discrimination and Preferences. (a) The heads of all agencies, with the assistance of the Attorney General, shall take all appropriate action with respect to the operations of their agencies to advance in the private sector the policy of individual initiative, excellence, and hard work identified in section 2 of this order.
(b) To further inform and advise me so that my Administration may formulate appropriate and effective civil-rights policy, the Attorney General, within 120 days of this order, in consultation with the heads of relevant agencies and in coordination with the Director of OMB, shall submit a report to the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy containing recommendations for enforcing Federal civil-rights laws and taking other appropriate measures to encourage the private sector to end illegal discrimination and preferences, including DEI. The report shall contain a proposed strategic enforcement plan identifying:
(i) Key sectors of concern within each agency's jurisdiction;
(ii) The most egregious and discriminatory DEI practitioners in each sector of concern;
(iii) A plan of specific steps or measures to deter DEI programs or principles (whether specifically denominated "DEI" or otherwise) that constitute illegal discrimination or preferences. As a part of this plan, each agency shall identify up to nine potential civil compliance investigations of publicly traded corporations, large non-profit corporations or associations, foundations with assets of 500 million dollars or more, State and local bar and medical associations, and institutions of higher education with endowments over 1 billion dollars;
(iv) Other strategies to encourage the private sector to end illegal DEI discrimination and preferences and comply with all Federal civil-rights laws;
(v) Litigation that would be potentially appropriate for Federal lawsuits, intervention, or statements of interest; and
(vi) Potential regulatory action and sub-regulatory guidance.

Sec. 5. Other Actions. Within 120 days of this order, the Attorney General and the Secretary of Education shall jointly issue guidance to all State and local educational agencies that receive Federal funds, as well as all institutions of higher education that receive Federal grants or participate in the Federal student loan assistance program under Title IV of the Higher Education Act, 20 U.S.C. 1070 et seq., regarding the measures and practices required to comply with Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 600 U.S. 181 (2023).

Sec. 6. Severability. If any provision of this order, or the application of any provision to any person or circumstance, is held to be invalid, the remainder of this order and the application of its provisions to any other persons or circumstances shall not be affected thereby.

Sec. 7. Scope. (a) This order does not apply to lawful Federal or private-sector employment and contracting preferences for veterans of the U.S. armed forces or persons protected by the Randolph-Sheppard Act, 20 U.S.C. 107 et seq.
(b) This order does not prevent State or local governments, Federal contractors, or Federally-funded State and local educational agencies or institutions of higher education from engaging in First Amendment-protected speech.
(c) This order does not prohibit persons teaching at a Federally funded institution of higher education as part of a larger course of academic instruction from advocating for, endorsing, or promoting the unlawful employment or contracting practices prohibited by this order.

Sec. 8. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:
(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department, agency, or the head thereof; or
(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.
(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.
(c) This order is not intended to and does not create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

THE WHITE HOUSE,
January 21, 2025.

Comments

[Mr. Bumble]

You mean ending discrimination by ending discrimination is radical?

[tylertusta]

Ah, but you forgot the rules:

It's discrimination if you or I do it.

It's noble statesmanship when they do it.

[Martinned2]

Well, it's certainly discrimination if that South African Nazi salute guy does it.

[tylertusta]

Exactly my point, thank you.

[Joe_dallas]

I was criticized for pointing out yesterday that the WP has long ago ceased being a trustworthy news source.

Martinned2 falls for the typical msm lies

https://www.google.com/search?q=musk+nazi+salute&oq=musk+nazi+salute&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIGCAEQRRg80gEIODI4OGowajeoAgiwAgE&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

[Mr. Bumble]

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2025/01/no-media-honeymoon-for-trump-the-hoax-machine-is-up-and-running.php

[Joe_dallas]

Concur -
Most leftists fail to see how dishonest the msm has become.

[VinniUSMC]

Uh-oh, Nazis everywhere! But not Martin, no way. He just hates Jews, that's not Nazi at all.

https://x.com/Nic131313S/status/1881695262995087370

[Malika]

Well, intent is kind a big factor in Western ideas about morality and law.

[tylertusta]

It sure is. We just recognize that your party thinks that intent gives them a license to break the law when they feel like it.

[Malika]

First of all, "my party?" I'm not a Democrat. I live in Maryland and worked and voted for Hogan several times. Now, he's not a fan of Trump, but "your party" doesn't make fealty to one guy a litmus test now, does it?

Secondly, intent actually does transform what would otherwise be illegal acts into legal ones quite often.

[tylertusta]

Now, he's not a fan of Trump, but "your party" doesn't make fealty to one guy a litmus test now, does it?

Given our previous interactions, I assumed you were officially a Democrat instead of just unofficially being one. My mistake.

Secondly, intent actually does transform what would otherwise be illegal acts into legal ones quite often.

You may not be aware of this, but we're talking about different things. You're talking about mens rea, while I'm talking about is intentionally breaking the law for a greater good.

In other words, your political allies knowingly break discrimination laws because they want "justice" for wrongs elsewhere. They feel like that intent is a noble purpose that excuses them from the same constraints that the rest of us have to follow.

[Malika]

Ah, so you do make fealty to Trump a litmus test. So I thought.

"You may not be aware of this, but we're talking about different things."

Ah, you can maybe see why I was mistaken given this is what I responded to:

"Ah, but you forgot the rules:

It's discrimination if you or I do it.

It's noble statesmanship when they do it."

From that it's not obvious you were talking about people who, knowing what they were doing was a decidedly wrong action under current law, went ahead and did the action.

[tylertusta]

From that it's not obvious you were talking about people who, knowing what they were doing was a decidedly wrong action under current law, went ahead and did the action.

We're talking in a comment section about intentional discrimination as part of DEI practices.

And you thought I was talking about mens rea?

I don't know how you possibly got lost, but I'm sure I've given you a sufficient roadmap to go home.

[Malika]

Uh, that isn't only mens rea. A lot of people thought original and past caselaw allowed the practices we're talking about.

So, it's not just about who does the discrimination, is it?

[Stephen Lathrop]

tylertusta — Your MAGA-style Humpty-Dumpty with the word, "discrimination," remains a Humpty-Dumpty no matter how often you repeat it. You refuse to be forthright. You understand advocates of DEI regard it as a policy of amelioration against discrimination, but prefer never to say that.

That shows your intention is to try to define your way (Humpty-Dumpty style) to a petty rhetorical victory, but without engaging the substance of the argument. No doubt some on the other side of the argument engage in that same practice. The more people who do that, the less useful any attempt to discuss DEI becomes.

Folks who favor productive discussion can be excused if they conclude opponents like you and the others are reaching for a bad-faith mechanism to sabotage this one.

[tylertusta]

Stephen, I view DEI as a offering a license to discriminate. I see the laughably named "antiracists" using it punitively against an entire gender and against various races because of perceived slights of perpetrated by others often hundreds of years in the past. I see them as establishing a neo-marxist racial and racist ordering of society, one that is antithetical to the concept of a free society that punishes people based on race and gender, creating division in the budding antiracist hierarchy of grievances.

Dressing up DEI as being somehow helpful is the greatest lie told by DEI's proponents. It's no different in rhetoric than the racist justifications told by the South prior to the end of segregation.

Does that help you understand my loathing of DEI and the racist, sexist discrimination that creates?

If my opposition garners me a begrudging victory from you, then I'll take it.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Dressing up DEI as being somehow helpful is the greatest lie told by DEI's proponents. It's no different in rhetoric than the racist justifications told by the South prior to the end of segregation.

Does that help you understand my loathing of DEI and the racist, sexist discrimination that creates?

No. It confuses me, and convinces me you have confused yourself.

If I may, please tell me when and where you were born? Where did you grow up?

I was born in 1946, and lived in the South until I turned seventeen, and then departed for college in the North.

That means I grew up amidst a full-strength Jim Crow milieu—a regime of apartheid enforced de jure, and by extra-legal terror. A regime in which a black media figure appearing influentially in any but media for a segregated audience was unheard of—or in the few instances where it did happen, virulently attacked—attacked politically, attacked with ideologically-driven hatred, attacked senselessly, and attacked with deadly violence.

All that was routine, expected, a source of public unease if expected attacks were omitted. To grow up in the midst of that was worse than confusing. It was profoundly demoralizing, because of a near total absence in my community of alternatives. On the one hand, to accept what happened routinely was terrifying, but on the other hand customs practiced nearly universally suggested some hidden but irrefutable logic must lie behind them.

Your advocacy forces my memory back to that era of terrible, violent, confusion.

Today, as a result of efforts at racial amelioration unprecedented world-wide, it has become commonplace for black people equipped with educations to develop inherent talents, to hold their own in public, with skills that put to shame all their detractors. There are so many of those talented black people now, I cannot keep track of them. That is as it should be. For that I celebrate. The children of those now-educated and talented blacks will do better still.

But because of my personal history, I remain equipped to at least notice that the black elite which I today reckon among this nation's greatest assets, remains but part of the whole. It is yet but a small fraction of a still-undeveloped resource this nation deserves to enjoy fully.

To accomplish so much, we have as you suggest suffered divisions as a nation. I admit, the ultimate goal still seems surprisingly far distant. I had not expected to get there by now, but I had expected to be much closer.

That experience taught me a lesson I could have noticed sooner had I checked the history of contested cultural transitions elsewhere. It does not take decades; it takes generations.

You, and people like you, have power to prolong that upcoming interval of continued national unease. You and your long-suffering contrarian ilk can do nothing to prevent it. Reaction to what Trump is attempting to do now will demonstrate that. Whatever seems successful—if anything does—will prove merely postponement. If you want fraught racial disputes over with, you would be wiser to support and accelerate what you now oppose.

[Ed Grinberg]

What a joke. I "intend" to advance Person A by holding back / discriminating against Person B. How moral!

[Malika]

Do you think people who contributed to HBCUs, but not other institutions that served poor whites, back in 1890 were being immoral?

[Joe_dallas]

change the subject - its confirmation that your argument is weak

[Malika]

That's not changing the subject, it's pointing to a historical example of people using racial preferences in an attempt to advance persons A.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

You'll have to forgive him. High school was easy for most of us.

[Bob from Ohio]

"poor whites" were not being discriminated against by black colleges existing

Some "poor whites" went to college even in 1890, it was a matter of money only which stopped them. Blacks weren't allowed in the South where most HBCUs were located.

[Malika]

But a person who decided to just give money to a HBCU then, which ONLY admitted people of one color, wasn't he racist in your view?

[Bob from Ohio]

Of course not. Its a very dumb analogy.

Most HBCU's had no rules against whites anyways.

[With Trump in, "now Lord you can let your servant go in peace"]

NO,not as you imply.
So the FOunders utterly rejected any dismissal of a viewpoint because it was labeled religious. So if I say abortion is taking a human life or homosexual marriage is a perversion and you say "that is a religous view and thus not allowed' That theFounders utterly rejected.

And the effect has been marvelous.
I keep track of the exploding number of professedly secular (not infrequently atheist ) opponents of abortion I'd say about 85-90% of following fitthat bill. NOt all butmost

CHOICES4LIFE.ORG <======= Pro-life children of rape, protesting the lack of help given by feminists

SECULAR PRO-lIFE

University Faculty for Life
A multidisciplinary association of scholars speaking out for human life

POST-ROE Generation

PRO-LIFE ALLIANCE OF GAYS AND LESBIANS +
HUMAN RIGHTS START WHEN HUMAN LIFE BEGINS

THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF
PRO-LIFE OBSTETRICIANS AND GYNECOLOGISTS
BOARD CERTIFIED. PROFESSIONAL.
MEDICAL EXPERTS IN THE PRO-LIFE MOVEMENT SINCE 1973

Democrats for Life

PRogressive Anti-abortion Uprising

Feminsts for Life

SPUC: Society for the Protection of Unborn Children

 Care Net (http://care-neturban.org)
 CEC for Life (pro-life arm of the Charismatic Episcopal Church at http://www.cecforlife.org)
 Focus on the Family (www.family.org)
 Citizens Link (http://www.citizenlink.com)
 Human Life International (www.hli.org)
 LEARN (Life Education and Resource Network at http://www.LearnInc.org)
 Vitae Caring Foundation (www.vitaecaringfoundation.org)
 National Black Prolife Coalition (www.blackprolifecoalition.org)
 Heartbeat International (https://www.heartbeatinternational.org)

[Sisu]

Perhaps next Pres Trump will "EO" the feral government to acknowledge and demonstrate in all practice, operations and communications that there are no homogeneous racial/ethnic groupings, e.g., "black", "hispanic", "chinese", "indian", etc. ... or "white". And, the federal government shall employ only competent, able and properly motivated citizens who have demonstrated their self-esteem as and continued desire to be Americans. ... As well, that feral government policies and programs based on requirements, rules and regulations, and preferential programs and goals shall be eliminated and prohibited, e.g., "10% of award for 'minority and / or women owned businesses'" (blatant discrimination and "confidence scams").

Instruct the SEC Acting Commissioner Mark Uyeda (and when appointed Paul Atkins) to eliminate all rules, regulations, requirements and disclosures related to "diversity" in selection of public company board members and corporate workforce. ... [And, encourage the accounting profession to again self-regulated professional standards prior to the '80s.]

Issue a separate 'EO' officially recognizing English as the sole national language of government and domestic commerce. And, include instruction to terminate all DOL and other agency's reporting and communication requirements to publish public and private sector communications and work product in other than English.

And, issue an 'EO' eliminating the feral Dept of Education; while simultaneously advocating that the several states require all high school graduates be fluent (conversational and written) in at least one other language, as well as have a working knowledge of the languages of mathematics, science and engineering.

...

Give Prof. Thomas Sowell the Presidential Medal of Freedom to celebrate his life's work and the distance he traveled to willingly share: "Equal treatment doesn't guarantee equal outcomes".

[With Trump in, "now Lord you can let your servant go in peace"]

This is all started to undo racist categories that owed their origin SOLELY to government. Plessy V Ferguson

Plessy was whiter than Joe Biden but legallu Black because one of his 8 great grandparents was Black ( and yes, not pure Black becase that one had 8 grandparents and who knows what they were 🙂

[VinniUSMC]

If you imagine the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles saying "Ending discrimination is totally radical, dude!" Then, yes, it is radical.

To David's point though, as related to the current status quo, hiring based on ability instead of skin color and genitalia is, unfortunately, very radical. Let's make it the new norm.

[Malika]

" hiring based on ability"

Says guy who scored too low on the ASVAB to get into the smart person's branch.

[tylertusta]

Considering that us crayon-eaters regularly clean your clock up and down these comment sections, that doesn't reflect all that well upon you.

[Malika]

OMG, that, from a guy arguing "merit," lol. "Since I win so much in our arguments..." is the one of the most mockable internet lines!

[tylertusta]

OMG, that, from a guy arguing "merit," lol. "Since I win so much in our arguments..." is the one of the most mockable internet lines!

I'm not arguing "merit."

You aren't even arguing against Vinny anymore (I bet you didn't even see that!)

You wanna edit your post, or are you going to double-down on proving you're dumber than a couple of Marines?

[Malika]

You're not arguing merit? Given our previous interactions in this thread, I assumed you were arguing merit. My mistake.

[tylertusta]

Doubling down on the stupid I see.

Care to link me to exactly those interactions of mine that you say that I was arguing merit?

[Malika]

Do you not get I'm quoting you?

[tylertusta]

Oh, I know you're haphazardly quoting me.

I'm daring you to back it up with a link.

Do it.

[VinniUSMC]

I've yet to see proof that Malika is smarter than anyone, even sarcjeff or Molly.

[tylertusta]

It's truly a sight to behold where someone thinks they're smarter than Marines solely because we're Marines... except they're actually the ones that are dumber than a box of rocks.

[VinniUSMC]

I chose the Marine Corps, even with my 92 on the ASVAB. 130 gt (bet you don't even know what that is) and 115 was my lowest line score, passed the DLAB, and enlisted as a Cryptologic Linguist (only to be fucked by the big green weenie). Go fuck yourself, Queen Leftist. I'll gladly be a crayon-eater, instead of a piece of shit like you.

[Malika]

Cool story, bro!

[Bob from Ohio]

"smart person's branch"

Which branch is that?

and what is the basis to think one branch is dumber?

[A Japanese Student]

The problem with that argument is that "discrimination" can apply to the outcome as well as the opportunity.

Let's say a school adopted a racially neutral school admission test, the result of which statistically favors people of certain races. Is this discriminatory? If race was truly irrelevant, why do racial differences show up? (and the DEI supporter's argument is that, once you know it consistently produces racially biased results, the test is de facto racially biased, thus discriminatory.)

[SKofNJ]

Please explain how a "racially neutral" test be discriminatory? Whatever the results are, it can't be because a test that is "racially neutral" is discriminatory. Merit is not and has never been equally distributed among all groups of people, no matter how you might define those groups.

[Malika]

Have you heard of, say, grandfather clauses, poll taxes, etc.?

Heck, here's an immediately obvious and easy way to make a facially racially neutral test discriminatory: make a test that anyone in the state has to pass to be eligible for X and then make the cite for the test as far away from where most Y people live as possible. This is not rocket science.

[Bruce Hayden]

Which are of course already illegal. De jure before Trump’s EO. Now both de facto and de jure.

[Absaroka]

In fairness: consider auditions for a singer. If you have the candidates sing from behind a curtain, or not, and you get a different racial mix with each method, then your test isn't race-blind even if you say it is.

For another example of what is probably a good practice, strip name/pictures/sex/etc off resumes or job applications. That will make at least the first part of the process blind to those factors.

Or to put it another way, people are always going to argue what is or isn't racially neutral. When practicable, there isn't any harm from making it impossible.

[Brett Bellmore]

"If you have the candidates sing from behind a curtain, or not, and you get a different racial mix with each method, then your test isn't race-blind even if you say it is."

Well, ONE of the methods isn't race-blind, anyway. The one that denies the judge any race information is unavoidably race blind.

[Absaroka]

Precisely.

[Bubba Jones]

The whole point is that the outcomes demonstration that these tests are not in fact "racially neutral."

[Brett Bellmore]

No, the whole point is that you've decided that the only thing you'll call "racially neutral" is meeting your quota, even if doing that require actual racial discrimination.

[Joe_dallas]

racial differences show up in large part due to cultural issues

[A Japanese Student]

Best reply so far. Correlation does not equal causation; however, as a policy matter it might make sense to have that as a rebuttable presumption - that disparate impact not explainable by non-racial reasons are discriminatory. (Whether this rule is constitutional is another question.)

... having typed that, something came up to my mind: wait, isn't this just McDonell Douglas?

[Brett Bellmore]

The problems with establishing disparate impact as presumptive discrimination are that,

1. Disparate impact is going to be widespread even entirely absent discrimination. Just the usual income figures means that my local grocery exhibits disparate impact on account of charging everybody the same price for ground chuck!

and,

2. Usually the only way to make sure you don't end up with disparate impact is to actually racially discriminate, institute quotas.

So you get institutions creating covert racial quotas to avoid being accused of discrimination, because the accusation carries a presumption of guilt, and the costs of rebutting it can be considerable.

[Joe_dallas]

Addressing "racial" causes while failing to acknowledge the cultural issues, ie creating a false reasoning leads to false solutions. Blaming race is lazy and one of the reasons the CRT and DEI were designed to create division instead of actual improvements.

[Lee Stillman]

This. It's the culture, Stupid. If Johnnie grows up in a neighborhood and wider culture that says that hard work, education, respect for authority, and having a ring before having babies is "acting white", then the chances of him making something of himself are going to be greatly diminished. He might have all the natural talent in the world, but his environment has shackled him to a lifetime of reduced expectations.

[Ed Grinberg]

Riiiight...
You're talking about this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact
And no, this is not "discrimination." Some people are taller; some are shorter. Some are stronger; some are weaker. Some are faster; some are slower. Some are smarter; some are dumber. Getting the government involved to "rectify" that is ... absurd. Read this short story:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron
(Justice Scalia cited it in his dissent in PGA Tour v. Martin.)

[Malika]

This is why so many conservatives are sure that showing that more journalists, professors, etc., are Democrats proves discrimination!

[Bruce Hayden]

Nope. Though disparate impact that egregious is strongly suggestive of discrimination.

[Savagely Average]

A disproportionate number of the world’s piano and violin virtuosos are Asian.

Are pianos and violins biased against non-Asian musicians?

If not, why do racial differences show up?

[Brett Bellmore]

Me and my wife paying for piano lessons, I assume. (Our half-Asian son is quite good with the piano, and is currently composing music for a friend's computer game.) It's basically impossible to become a virtuoso with any instrument unless you begin music training at an early age.

[Savagely Average]

Right. They’re better because parents like you start them young and don’t let them quit.

Contra DEI doctrine, “racist policies” do not explain all or most racial disparities although they may explain some.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Savagely Average — Um, the world's population is disproportionately Asian. Could be that is a contributing factor you left out.

[Joe_dallas]

Short answer is NO!

[Noscitur a sociis]

Disproportionate to what?

[Savagely Average]

“The world’s population is disproportionately Asian.”

First, ‘the world’s population is disproportionately Asian’ relative to what? The populations of other inhabited planets? I think you mean ‘mostly Asian’.

Second, I mean “East Asian.” China, Japan, Korea, Philippines, etc. That’s like 20%. A lot but not a majority.

Third, eh, maybe I’m being imprecise. I said ‘the world’ but I was thinking mainly of the US (typical American). Asians are a small sliver of our population but a big chunk of orchestra musicians and if you just look at strings it’s like a third. That’s not due to systematic anti-white racism in American conservatories.

[Savagely Average]

The main reason for standardized test score gaps between blacks and whites/Asians is differences in reading skills, not racist tests.

Any written test, even a math test, is in large part a test of reading abilities and blacks score lower in reading proficiency. There are different possible reasons why this might be (single parent households; moms have to work so they don’t have time to read to kids; etc.) but that’s the main reason for the gap.

Now, you can still argue the factors contributing to the reading skills gap are down to systemic racism or what have you. But that’s different from the tests themselves being racist.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Savagely Average — You could have an unbiased test, and still use it in a context which delivers results that look like bias. Consider use of the SAT at elite colleges.

SAT test developers struggle mightily (they say) to avoid ethnic or racial bias. Take them at their word, and presume they succeed.

Now consider an applicant pool somewhat enriched in Asian-culture applicants for whom English has been a second language—a language at which some of them excel, but not all of them. For that reason elite college A uses a cutoff score on the verbal SAT as a hard screen—which makes sense for an institution at which most instruction will take place using English.

Look what happens. SAT questions screened against bias, and composed with an eye to native English speakers, tend to scatter mathematical and verbal scores along approximations of bell curves on either side of a median. Thus, a sample of admitted native English speakers with verbal scores nicely at or above college A's verbal cutoff score, will be expected to split math scores approximately evenly above and below that verbal cutoff score. Some will be better at math than at English; an approximately equal portion will be worse at math than at English.

But that pattern is not alike for non-native English speakers. To learn math without needing English fluency has been easier for them than to learn most other curricula without English fluency. So notwithstanding that some of them excel almost everyone in their command of English, students with that educational history scatter their math scores with a statistical bias above their verbal score results.

That puts the admissions office at elite college A in a pickle it might not even notice. If it admits all students with an eye to SAT total scores, applies its hard cutoff on the verbal score, and then compares the statistical results, admits among non-native English speakers end up with higher total scores on average. The ones below the verbal score hard screen were not admitted. The ones at or above the verbal screen score averaged math scores still higher than the verbal screen score. That higher-math-score bias did not happen among native English speakers, because the test questions were normed to prevent it.

Result, an admitted class in which it appears as if non-native English speakers (who are also really proficient in English) are more meritorious than the others. Which indeed they may be, because the admissions process put them through a more rigorous screen than it put other applicants through—but not because of any inherently racial or ethnic characteristics on either side. And not because of any intent to discriminate in favor of the native English speakers.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Apologies if I’m over-interpolating, but it seems like you’re trying to suggest a benign explanation for the anti-Asian discrimination that the Supreme Court said was unlawful.

Is that so? If not, what point were you trying to make?

[Stephen Lathrop]

Noscitur — It was probably nearly 10 years ago when I first noticed the points I set down in the comment above. So of course I did not have the Harvard case in mind then. I was thinking instead more generally, about the notion of meritocracy, and the puzzle why racial or ethnic groups have persisted in being judged characteristically meritorious or inferior. Of course the Harvard case when it came along provided an example.

You may have noticed I have advocated persistently in favor of meritocracy as applied voluntarily within civil society, and just as persistently argued against its use as a principle of law and government. Some commenters on this blog, especially Nieporent, have denied that meritocracy even figures in legal cases I referenced. Other commenters thought it did, and commented to defend it.

Whatever was going on with all that even a year ago must now take a back seat to MAGA-sponsored eruptions of explicit meritocratic demands in just the last two days. As usual, President Trump led the way, without any outward sign he even knows there is no basis in law for what he seems to think he has decreed as enforceable policy.

We are about to hear a great deal more in that vein. To the extent those demands are for meritocracy enforced as law—which I predict a lot of—I point out that Congress has passed no such laws. I think it has been wise not to do it.

I expect upcoming debates on the subject to prove both ill-advised and tiresome. What Congress may choose to do on the subject I cannot predict, any better than I can account for why the Senate is willing to entertain cabinet candidates so grossly unqualified. Every moment spent considering some current candidates either insults constituents, or imperils them.

It is not unreasonable to suppose appointment of Pete Hegseth to the post of Defense Secretary could turn out the most dangerous thing ever done in American politics. Note that we can reach that conclusion without need to consider meritocracy as law.

Nor could any legal requirement for meritocracy in the Cabinet insure a safe exercise of Senatorial prerogative. Hegseth's record in civil society is all that needs consideration. We should all pray the Senate will come to its senses, consider that record, and judge Hegseth profoundly unmeritorious. That's how I think it should work.

[Social Justice is neither]

So you're arguing for the equality of outcome. Got it.

[Satchmo_Lives]

It is cool you are here Japanese Student. However, it seems you oftentimes throw a mild explosive device into a room and then leave without engaging further.

If race was truly irrelevant, why do racial differences show up?

You assume the only difference between racial categories is the level of melanin or eye shape. Asians outpace every other racial demographic in the U.S. regarding educational aptitude in the US. Is that because Asians have different shaped eyelid structure? Therefore, education and standardized tests are discriminatory against circular-shaped eyes?

Leaving aside any controversial testing regarding intelligence levels across races, doesn't culture have a little something to do with it? Asians, be it from China, India, Pakistan, or Japan have a well-deserved reputation of putting great emphasis on education and success. They even have a name, although a pejorative, Tiger mother or helicopter parents.

I simply can't buy into the notion that cultures who push education and success should be disincentivized at the expense of those who do not emphasize success because it is discriminatory to reward hard work.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Satchmo_Lives — How do you know sample biases among Asian test takers do not account for appearance of superior merit, which may not apply at all across members of Asian cultures taken as a whole?

Maybe the Asian-American test takers on which you base your conclusions are actually a tiny subset of especially-privileged Asians, with exceptional cultural advantages which outstrip even those of most elite Americans. How would you know?

[A Japanese Student]

Yes, that part I do agree with. To clarify: I'm not supporting equal outcome as a guaranteed right. My position is explained in two replies - that there is a good policy argument for non-racial affirmative actions that target people from all disadvantaged backgrounds; and disparate impact not explainable by race-neutral reasons should remain as a recognizable discrimination.

And remember: time zone is a thing...

[Roger S]

Racial differences show up everywhere, no matter what the policy.

[With Trump in, "now Lord you can let your servant go in peace"]

But statistically that is what can't be done anyway.

In 2015, there were 11 million interracial marriages in the United States, which was about 10% of all married people
so what race is their child ? Can't go by color. Even with your idea of race (and I think we would generally be in overall agreement) what if I don't identify as you want me to? So you set up electoral districts to put Blacks together...does anyone except a racist think that 2 Blacks are similar becaus they are both Black ?So ostensibily caring about race in that case is itself RACIST

[Commenter_XY]

This is why I woke up with a smile; DEI died in the Federal government today. 🙂

MAGA-mesis continues apace.

Please recall POTUS Trump did promise during the campaign to root out and eliminate DEI in our government. He has delivered on what he said he would do.

The lawsuits that are coming will be prodigious.

My first question: Is there an APA challenge?
My second question: Are we going to see serial 'nationwide injunctions'?

[Brett Bellmore]

Today is not the end of DEI. It's maybe the beginning of the end.

DEI is deeply entrenched, and a lot of bureaucrats consider it a higher moral priority than minor things like obeying the law. They're going to try to keep DEI going regardless of any executive order.

On the bright side, this will cause a lot of people desperately in need of firing to self-identify.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"a lot of bureaucrats consider it a higher moral priority than minor things like obeying the law."

And providing the services they're actually being paid to provide.

[David Nieporent]

and a lot of bureaucrats consider it a higher moral priority than minor things like obeying the law.

Lucky Brett hates mindreading!

[SimonP]

As one may have predicted, MAGA fascists don't care to distinguish between declaring victory and actually accomplishing any of their putative goals.

The order reaches only so far as "illegal" practices, which on its face minimizes its impact, though I expect that the private sector won't mind dropping its virtue-signaling DEI efforts with this as a cover, as Zuck was all too eager to do.

What the long-term effect this anti-DEI campaign will have on income inequality, intergenerational poverty, and the like, remains to be seen. But who cares! White people will rejoice! At least until they see themselves losing all of their jobs to East/South Asians and H1B hires.

[VinniUSMC]

But who cares! White people will rejoice!

Fuck off Simple Simon. You, and this racist Leftist tripe, can go down the drain into the sewers where you belong.

[Rossami]

Since repeatedly doubling down on progressive policies are what got us into the current state of income inequality, intergenerational poverty and the like, I'm okay with watching for the effects of this anti-DEI campaign.

Your racism and bigotry is noted.

[Malika]

Bigotry?

[Riva]

Yeah, uh huh, MAGA fascists. Because ending discrimination is a classic hallmark of fascism, as everyone knows.

[Commenter_XY]

SimonP, it is only Day 3. 🙂

When America right-sizes the DC-based federal bureaucracy downward by a 1MM DC bureaucritters, victory can be declared.

But if MAGA-mesis comes up short by 100K DC bureaucritters or so, no problem, it is a decent start. A President Vance can continue the downward headcount.

[Malika]

Do you really think there's going to be a "right sizing," or do you not consider DOD, DHS, etc., government employees to not be "bureaucrats?"

[Noscitur a sociis]

Unfortunately, I think Commenter_XY has made it pretty clear that these comments are purely vibe-based emoting, and that he has no clue about how any of this works or even what he actually wants to see.

[Commenter_XY]

Au contraire, Nas. I have a track record. Not too shabby, either. Just ask Professor Post. We will see whether I am right or not wrt right-sizing. You have this delusion that these DC-based bureaucrats are somehow 'essential'. They are not essential and, further, they are not wanted. Attrition will take care of a lot, no need to replace what is not essential.

Start stockpiling some cash now for the time when Northern VA real estate (Loudoun county and westward) drops in price in about 2 years. 😉

[Absaroka]

I think your estimate of a 1M headcount reduction in the DC area may be optimistic, given that there are only 390K.

[Noscitur a sociis]

You most certainly do have a track record: I’ve spent weeks giving you the presumption of good faith, and trying to have serious discussions with you about this, as have plenty of other posters. You’ve refused to do more than low effort shitposting.

I’m very receptive to the argument that we should,d reduce the size of the federal government (although I don’t think that simply firing a bunch of mid level career employees is the best way to do that, nor is there any particular reason to think Trump is likely to go down that road). But you’ve made it clear that 1. You have no idea what federal employees do; 2. You have no idea what an appropriate number would be to do the things you think the government should do; and now 3. You don’t even know to an order of magnitude how many federal employees there actually are. (You see a bit sketchy on what “bureaucrat” means as well.)

[Bruce Hayden]

Well, there aren’t really 100k DC bureaucrats anymore because so many of them are “working” remotely from somewhere else, and still pocketing the cost-of-living differential.

[Noscitur a sociis]

When America right-sizes the DC-based federal bureaucracy downward by a 1MM DC bureaucritter

Uh, how many people do you think work for the government in DC?

[Commenter_XY]

Far too many.

[Noscitur a sociis]

And I rest my case.

[Bob from Ohio]

"accomplishing any of their putative goals"

It has some teeth in fact:

"Executive Order 11246 of September 24, 1965 (Equal Employment Opportunity), is hereby revoked." I believe that is the basis for federal affirmative action. It puts a lot of compliance requirements on contractors.

[With Trump in, "now Lord you can let your servant go in peace"]

In 2015, there were 11 million interracial marriages in the United States, which was about 10% of all married people

You live with OPie and Andy Griffith in Mayberrry

[Brett Bellmore]

Sounds good! I look forward to the Justice Department actually prosecuting civil rights cases where the victim are white, too. A lot of these DEI programs are grossly illegal.

[Commenter_XY]

Oh, speaking of DOJ. MAGA-mesis is happening there too. Senior level non-essential DC-based DOJ bureaucrats are being reassigned prior to Pam Bondi taking over, and cleaning house.

Maybe those non-essential DOJ bureaucrats will be reassigned to Fort Greeley to count heads of lettuce.

[Charles Epperson]

Good choice of place to reassign to.

[Swede425]

Ice Station Zebra needs a shit ton of diversity.

[Michael Ejercito]

The Supreme Court case that upheld hate crimes laws arose from a case where the victim was White.

[Martinned2]

Yes, white people have it tough in the United States...

[Mr. Bumble]

Not as tough as young white girls in the UK and EU.

[Malika]

What's this about?

[Bruce Hayden]

“Asian” (I.e. Muslim, mostly Pakistani) rape gangs in theUK, and similar problems in W Europe (e.g. France, Netherlands) with other Muslim groups. If you haven’t heard about them, and especially the crisis in England right now, you need better, more diverse, sources of news.

[Don Nico]

They have it tough in the UK also. Also in Russia, etc.

[With Trump in, "now Lord you can let your servant go in peace"]

Again pure racism on your part

In 2015, there were 11 million interracial marriages in the United States, which was about 10% of all married people

[David Nieporent]

and to promote individual initiative, excellence, and hard work.

Uh oh; nobody had better tell the president about this; he'd have to fire himself and almost all his appointees.

[Mr. Bumble]

Hardly seems to be the case and the president you're describing is back in his garage in Delafuckingnowhere making car noises as he sits in his Corvette.

[tylertusta]

He probably woke up today thinking he was still Vice President under Obama.

[Swede425]

I KNOW YOU ARE BUT WHAT AM I?!

[VinniUSMC]

Luckily for Dave, this order doesn't extend outside of the federal government.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

That is so funny, after four years of Biden not being able to even read a teleprompter before 10 am or after 3 pm, and what was that abou 40% of his time was spent on vacation?

You idiots don't even know your own team.

[Malika]

You know, Trump famously played a ton of golf when he was President and often misspeaks. Talk about not knowing your own team!

[Mr. Bumble]

Trump is a piker when it comes to golf. The all time champ is Woodrow Wilson with an estimated 1200 rounds as president followed by Ike with more than 800 rounds.

[Malika]

Lol, no one should support Woodrow Wilson, I agree!

[Bruce Hayden]

Interestingly, the best Presidential golfer was supposedly Gerald Ford. He was a pro level athlete in college, and he could also outski most of his Secret Service detail.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

Trump didn't spend 40% of his working days on vacation, and his working days aren't 10-3 with a two hour lunch.

[With Trump in, "now Lord you can let your servant go in peace"]

This is Biden at the Beach. He couldn't play golf to save his assss
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMFviwDNhq0

[David Nieporent]

As always, MAGA are incapable of understanding that principled people who are not liberals also oppose Trump. Also, wait until you find out how much time Trump spends golfing! And that he doesn't read between 10 am and 3 pm either!

[windycityattorney]

He apparently doesn't even want to read his daily briefings... so he needs his staff to summarize them into easily digestible little picture graphs.

Which might be fine for any avg ol' day in the world... but I imagine there are some days where its pretty important for the President to respond to some international incident and may need to know the basic facts in order to articulate a response. But if that involves reading... oh no! Who needs facts when you can just wing it?

[Bruce Hayden]

Are we talking Joe Biden here?

[Commenter_XY]

No, his PDB came with crayons and cookies.

[Roger S]

So those principled Trump-haters do not like him because he plays golf?

[Malika]

Preferences (which are not the only way to promote diversity) had to go and in most cases should not have been made, but yes, it's high irony to see the nepotism and good ol' boy network folks castigating them.

[Bubba Jones]

One fear which I have not seen addressed, is that this will target support for people with disabilities. This does not specifically ban such initiatives, but those are often housed under "inclusion".

[Charles Epperson]

There is plenty of legislative options and so they so not need to have a DEIA program for it. And if more is needed get Congress to act.

And DEIA programs are expressly mentioned

[Bubba Jones]

But when you fire all the DEI people, you may lose the A as well.

[Bruce Hayden]

Theoretically no. Much of DEI is illegal under our various Civil Rights Acts, plus the 14A. But the ADA requires Reasonable Accommodations for disabilities.

[Bubba Jones]

Theoretically, no. But in the rush to dump the DEI bath water, I suspect you're going to gut the ADA baby in the process.

[Rossami]

Disability discrimination is addressed in the ADA, not through any of the executive orders or agencies addressed above. The only disability-related reference is the Randolph-Sheppard Act which is called out above as not affected by this EO.

[justintime]

That is my read as well, EEO practices and ADA hires (and the tax incentives for employers) are not affected.

[arcsector]

Looks like EEO is out too, so that's a fallback gone.

[David Nieporent]

One fear which I have not seen addressed, is that this will target support for people with disabilities. This does not specifically ban such initiatives, but those are often housed under "inclusion".

This doesn't merely target DEI; it specifically calls out DEIA, where the "A" stands for accessibility.

[Brett Bellmore]

That's so your DEI office can't escape application by appending an "A", that's all.

[justintime]

In another order suspending new hires for 90 days, he exempted "schedule A" hires which is the special hiring authority for those with disabilities. This allows those with disabilities to continue to be non-competitively hired into the civil service during the hiring freeze.

[A Japanese Student]

I do believe that, as a policy matter (and not legal interpretation of 14A or CRA), there is a good argument for some sort of affirmative action. There are two separate purposes affirmative action could serve - it could potentially remedy past discrimination, and it would promote diversity.

I don't find racial affirmative action necessary for remedying past discrimination. I'd even say that they are discriminatory against the minorities. People should be treated not as a component of a statistical number, but as an individual. There are much better ways of empowering those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Promoting racial diversity, however, is an entirely different goal. Having a sizable population of a particular group makes it difficult for them to be ignored, especially in educational settings. I'm just not sure if this alone can justify affirmative action (as policy matter, not legally.)

(In disability context, there's another rationale for affirmative action in employment - it would ensure that workplaces offer reasonable accommodation. I do believe this is a good policy.)

[JoeFromtheBronx]

I'm open to many ways to address past discrimination though many of those against this route often do not want to do the hard work involved. And some of the routes (such as 10% plans or whatever) tend to be race sensitive in practice.

I'm also generally open to this talk of treating people as individuals but policy regularly classifies in something outside of an individual-by-individual basis. I don't think it discriminatory to factor in various criteria when making policy choices here.

[Bruce Hayden]

But forcing racial diversity, say, in the workforce, by necessity, very often discriminates on the basis of race. E Pluribus Unum. What is better, one American people, or a racial spoils system? We essentially have the latter, with the slots allocated to a racial minority in, say, elite colleges and universities, going to the children of community leaders, on the basis of politics (and in particular, based on their community’s support of the Dem party), and not merit. Affirmative Action (justified as DEI) divides, not unifies.

[Bubba Jones]

Removing inherent bias would require the privileged managers to recognize they have bias, and to overcome that bias in a meaningful way.

Quotas come into play because they are easier for all involved. I don't have to understand why our hiring process is problematic, I'll just bypass it for certain subsets.

[Bruce Hayden]

And more illegal.

[Aubrey LaVentana]

" as a policy matter (and not legal interpretation of 14A or CRA), there is a good argument for some sort of affirmative action."

Twenty-five years later, SCOTUS said 'it's been tried and, no, it's doing harm.'

[Bruce Hayden]

The problem with remedying past discrimination is that much of the discrimination that is supposed to be remedied has been illegal for sixty years now, under the CRAs. How long are we going to enforce racial discrimination, to remedy past racial discrimination? In higher Ed, this question was asked, and answered by Justice O’Connor, with 25 years. That time expired, and the Supreme Court said that that was enough. We now are on the 2nd generation at least, who never lived under legal racial discrimination, benefitting from the supposedly temporary measures to counter it.

[Brett Bellmore]

A basic problem here is that you can, demonstrably, persuade people that racial discrimination is a moral wrong. The general public has arrived at that position, even if some of our governing elites haven't yet.

And you can persuade people that racial discrimination is morally right, at least if it's against OTHER people, as Jim Crow demonstrated.

What has yet to be demonstrated is that you can persuade the majority that racial discrimination against themselves is morally right.

Advocates of racial preferences, for whatever excuse, risk a partial victory: Persuading the majority that racial discrimination isn't wrong, while failing to persuade them that it ought to be against themselves.

That's not a place we want to return to, is it?

[grb]

Really? I can only take myself as an example. Like you, I'm in my middle-sixties and have had a long career in a technical profession. Because of my ex-wife changing jobs & cities so often, I found myself job searching frequently.

And I've never once experienced "oppression" because I'm White or male. Never came close. Not even within shouting distance. So I'm not worried some woman, Black or Hispanic might have gotten help establishing a career. First, I got where I am on merit and will continue to do so. Second, the fact someone else got assistance doesn't throw me in a fit of anguished seething jealousy. Third, I'm not a snowflake butthurt whiny victimhood-addict like the entirety of today's Right. Has any group ever taken dead-end zero-sum thinking so far? In the fevered brain of righties, some "Other" is always stealing from them - with that Other preferably having darker skin or (gasp) an extra X chromosome.

And this follows a long-established pattern. The Right fights vaccination with sleazy lies & propaganda trash, then piously declares the ensuing public distrust is a "problem". They run a fact-free campaign against American elections for years, then moan about the deterioration of people's faith in the vote. You see this again & again: The child kills his parents and then demands mercy because he's an orphan. You say, Brett, that the majority can't be persuaded they aren't being victimized. You ignore your side has spent decades frantically pleading with them to embrace victimhood. It's the Right-winger's way.

Bonus Point : Trump just fired Admiral Linda Fagan as the new commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard. His pretend at "substance" was Admiral Fagan hadn't solved all problems (like the fentanyl crisis). Which do you was more determined by Fagan's sex : Her position or firing? I'm pretty damn sure it was the latter. You'll probably claim opposite. Probably Fagan's nomination "cheated" you in some way. "Stole from you" in some bizarrely indeterminate way. After all, you're a Right-winger. You're a professional victim.

[Joe_dallas]

GRB - "Third, I'm not a snowflake butthurt whiny victimhood-addict like the entirety of today's Right. "

You have got it entirely backwards. It was the CRT and DEI proponents that endorsed and promoted the victimhood addiction.

Its the conservatives that pointed out the CRT and DEI were going to lower standards, quality of work, merit based advancement and create divisions.

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, I never, so far as I know, experienced discrimination myself, but why would I?

1. My test scores were high enough that I could have gotten into any school I wanted even if they DID have a thumb on the scale against me.

2. I finished my education in the early 80's, (Setting aside various job related trainings, of course.) well before academia and certainly STEM really got into affirmative action mode.

3. I've only had two employers in my entire professional lifetime. That by itself lowers the odds of experiencing discrimination drastically.

4. I work in a narrow technical field, everybody who does what I do could meet in a Holiday Inn and probably leave room for Shriner's convention. I didn't so much job hunt as put my resume out and get headhunted. For all I know, I might have gotten more job offers if I'd been a minority, but how would I know that?

5. The products I work on are safety critical, which is about the last place where any employer not named Boeing is going to ignore merit.

But I do follow the news, and it seems unambiguously proven that a lot of institutions really have been engaged in racial discrimination in favor of blacks, and against Asians. Which concerns me because my son is half Asian.

[Roger S]

There is plenty of discrimination against Whites and males. Have you looked at Biden administration appointments? Los Angeles fire officials? The discrimination is everywhere.

There are also problems with elections and vaccinations. Be thankful that we now have a President who recognizes competency and merit.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Bonus Point : Trump just fired Admiral Linda Fagan as the new commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard. His pretend at "substance" was Admiral Fagan hadn't solved all problems (like the fentanyl crisis). Which do you was more determined by Fagan's sex : Her position or firing? I'm pretty damn sure it was the latter.

I think politics (i.e. her association with Biden) was the driving factor here, and would imagine we’ll see the other (male) service chiefs reassigned in similar fashion within the next week or two. Feel free to call me out if we don’t.

[Michael Ejercito]

In the fevered brain of righties, some "Other" is always stealing from them - with that Other preferably having darker skin or (gasp) an extra X chromosome.
Is racial discrimination wrong, or not?

[Michael Ejercito]

Is non-discrimination teally that controversial.

[Martinned2]

Ask the guy that brought a Nazi salute, twice.

[Mr. Bumble]

You mean these guys?
Too bad I can't post pictures and have to depend on you to follow the link:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2025/01/no-media-honeymoon-for-trump-the-hoax-machine-is-up-and-running.php

[Malika]

Trying to use static pictures to rebut a disputed motion is pretty dumb.

[VinniUSMC]

It's (D)ifferent! -Malika the Mush-brained

[Malika]

Motion pictures are different from static ones, yes.

No wonder you did so bad on that test!

[VinniUSMC]

Let me guess, you scored like, 150? Right?

Moron.

[Life of Brian]

Proof positive that empty vessels make the most noise.

My heart goes out to you.

[David Nieporent]

But that's obviously false, since Musk has no heart.

[VinniUSMC]

Ooohh, burn! Good one Dave! Did you spend all morning coming up with that?

[Bruce Hayden]

Same people who blamed Pete Hegseth for having a Nazi tattoo, in his Roman Cross (the same Nazi Symbol that Jimmy Carter had on the program at his funeral).

[Malika]

Cite?

[Mr. Bumble]

https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/01/20/this-anti-hegseth-lie-isnt-even-skin-deep/

[Aubrey LaVentana]

that's no answer to "Is non-discrimination {r}eally that controversial."

[ThePublius]

Oh, get lost Martinneed2. You're shamelessly using the latest anti-Trump, anti-conservative hoax. It's utter B.S., and you shame yourself.

[Michael Ejercito]

Martinneed2 has a reputation of being a twit!

[Stupid Government Tricks]

Government-mandated slavery for centuries.
Government-mandated segregation for a century.
Government-mandated integration for 60 years.
And the same faction now want government-mandated segregation again.

Yes, of course discrimination is necessary.

[Malika]

The same faction? As I've often said, your handle is two words too long.

[Bruce Hayden]

The same faction being the Democrats and their fellow travelers. Slavery, Jim Crow, KKK, and now 60 years of Affirmative Action.

[Malika]

"Government-mandated slavery for centuries."

The Democratic Party was not around for even a century of slavery.

You're not a very careful thinker, are you? Interesting for a "merit" champion.

[Mr. Bumble]

Where did he mention the Democrat Party?

[Malika]

"Mr. Bumble 14 seconds ago
Flag Comment
Mute User
Where did he mention the Democrat Party?"

WTF?

"Bruce Hayden 18 minutes ago
Flag Comment
Mute User
The same faction being the Democrats "

[VinniUSMC]

Weird how "the Democrats and their fellow travelers" is different than "the Democrat Party". Too complex for Malika the definitely-smarter-than-a-Marine.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

No wonder you're wrong so often. You're jumbling two comments.

[Bruce Hayden]

Very true. The Democrats were most of the slave owners throughout most of the first 2/3 of the 19th Century. They then fought the Civil War to retain slavery, lost, and had their slaves taken away from them, by the victors of that war, Republicans. They then spent the next century in a rearguard action, retaining their power over Blacks through Jim Crow and using the KKK.

[VinniUSMC]

Two words too long? Ah, it should "Tricks" because SGT fools Malika into showing off its lack of gray matter.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

She confused two comments just following that. She's even less ept than I am.

[Martinned2]

Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.

What was created by EO can be destroyed by EO, if you want to sort something out properly get Congress to adopt some legislation.

[Mr. Bumble]

Congress passed the legislation and LBJ undid it with an EO.

[Mr. Bumble]

"With the adoption of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, equal treatment without regard to race became the law of the land — for about 30 seconds. As he shepherded the bill through the Senate, then Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey declared on the Senate floor: “I will eat my hat if this leads to racial quotas.”

Humphrey served as vice president at the time President Johnson began the great undoing with Executive Order 11246 in 1965. EO 11246 mandated “affirmative action” in federal contracting. Humphrey rolled with the development of the affirmative action regime through his death in 1978 without keeping his promise."
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2025/01/ending-the-affirmative-action-regime.php

[Don Nico]

Will this order apply to prime contractor's of the USG with respect to those employed under the prime contract?

[justintime]

Yes, primes will be responsible for ensuring all subs comply with the EO since the EO directs it to be written into new contracts, and I suspect, will need to re-read, administratively amended into existing contracts.

[Sarcastr0]

Contractors have nondiscrimination requirements from statute as well as administrative action.

[Don Nico]

Those statutes predate the DEI administrative activities and overhead elements at prime contractors.

[Dan Schiavetta]

This is rich, coming from someone who himself never got anywhere on merit.

[Mr. Bumble]

Says failed lawyer and porn movie critic.

[Krayt]

That's a better life path than successful lawyer and failed porn critic!

[John F. Carr]

I hereby award Dan Schiavetta the Joe Bob Briggs memorial award for excellence in sex reporting.

(Don't worry. Briggs is still alive.)

[Dan Schiavetta]

Thank you!

[John F. Carr]

One of the now-terminated DEI policies was a factor in Judge O'Connor's rejection of the Boeing plea deal. The Department of Justice's probation plan included an illegal discriminatory preference. A lot of policies go unchallenged because nobody has standing to challenge them. In the Boeing case the judge had discretion and nobody was required to prove "case or controversy" standing.

[John F. Carr]

"A term requiring the contractual counterparty or grant recipient to agree that its compliance in all respects with all applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws is material to the government's payment decisions for purposes of section 3729(b)(4) of title 31, United States Code"

I feel like this might get challenged. The cited paragraph provides the legal definition of "material" for the False Claims Act. When it comes time to litigate the actual behavior of the government controls. I know somebody who lost a False Claims Act case for failure to sufficiently allege that the legal violation influenced government payments.

[Ed Grinberg]

This is what I voted for.

[Malika]

Guy who often links to VDARE voted for this? Shocked!

[DeAnnP]

This is all just leading up to their real goal....

“Every effort must be made not to recruit women into engineering, but rather to recruit and demand more of men who become engineers. Ditto for med school and the law and every trade,” Yenor said.

“If every Nobel Prize winner is a man, that’s not a failure. It’s kind of a cause for celebration,” he added.

https://www.wfla.com/news/florida/desantis-appointee-to-university-board-says-women-should-become-mothers-not-pursue-higher-ed/

[Bruce Hayden]

Women make perfectly good engineers. Daughter got her PhD in Mechanical Engineering, and over half her class of PhD candidates in the school were women. She started as a design engineer for variable frequency laser spectroscopy (which was her dissertation topic), and is now a senior test engineer for an optical sensor package for a DOD satellite, 5 years after graduation. And had her first baby this year. She’s finding that having an infant is actually easier than what most of her non-engineering friends have faced, in this situation, because she has a much looser schedule.

[Absaroka]

If the R's try that, I think they will find it to be viewed as an unacceptable overreach by 98% of parents of daughters, inter alia. The D's are paying a price at the moment for going along with their fringe. Human nature being what it is, the R's may learn the same lesson.

[Gasman]

There are certainly more than 2% of religious right/fundamentalist/evangelical parents who earnestly want their daughters to be stay at home moms.
Who do you think voted for Trump; the evangelicals overwhelmingly. 80% is the number mentioned here: https://apnews.com/article/white-evangelical-voters-support-donald-trump-president-dbfd2b4fe5b2ea27968876f19ee20c84

[Dan Schiavetta]

It's odd how Presidents who got where they were on merit and hard work (Carter, Clinton, Obama) were in favor of AA while Presidents who were born with silver spoons in their mouths (GW Bush, Trump) were anti.

[ThePublius]

"merit and hard work" - Obama? Ha, ha. He got where he did by being black.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Editor of Harvard Law Review. Taught Con Law at the most prestigious law school in his home state. There is just no end of "he got there by being black" to negate his accomplishments. Do you think those are easy things to do? Can you imagine Trump doing them?

[Bruce Hayden]

With no law review articles to his name. He was voted into the HLR, with no evidence so far that it was by merit. We still have never seen any of his college transcripts, or who paid for his college, and never been given any reason to believe he got into HLS on anything approaching merit. We do know that he got his Senate seat through the illegal opening of sealed divorce cases. That took a lot more political power than most back bench junior state legislators usually have.

[Bob from Ohio]

Obama's grandma, who actually raised him, was a bank vice president.

Carter's dad was a prosperous merchant and farmer.

[Dan Schiavetta]

No, she was in charge of the local bank branch.

Carter's dad was not "prosperous".

Compare these with the Bush and Trump families. And, of course, their ability to talk knowledgeably about policy.

[Bob from Ohio]

"Madelyn Dunham started working at the Bank of Hawaii in 1960 and was promoted to be one of the bank's first female vice presidents in 1970" wikipedia

"Plains was a boomtown of 600 people at the time of Carter's birth. His father was a successful local businessman who ran a general store and was an investor in farmland." also wikipedia

Carter's and Obama's policies totally sucked, who cares if they could BS well.

[Raccroc]

Side question: Whatever happened to Affirmative Action?

Growing up, Affirmative Action was the big buzzword in Gov., with colleges, with big businesses, etc.. Sometime during the 90's it seemed to begin fading out of the collective argument and by the mid-aughts I don't remember hearing the term hardly at all.

Then DEI showed up as some sort of A.A. 2.0.

Are these the same people (or perhaps their Millennial prodigy)? Is this just another case of the "cause people" successfully moving the needle and then continuing to move the line until they overplay their hand and everyone baulks?

[Brett Bellmore]

Something like that.

"Affirmative action" came with an official sell by date, thanks to O'Connor. And annoyingly required establishing that you'd been guilty of discrimination in the past to justify it.

So they came up with "diversity" as an excuse for racial preferences which would never run out, no matter how far in the past Jim Crow was. "DEI" is just a grab bag of excuses for discrimination.

[Social Justice is neither]

Affirmative Action also came with the idea that you compared candidates against each other with a slight nudge to the less represented but equal candidate. Diversity was more a comparison to society at large.

Then AA became 99% and 51% are "equal" and diversity became "less white" regardless.

[TextFirst]

Wow, a government that will defend the nation from invaders, won't discriminate on the basis of race, and will punish criminals. This is 9/11 times Pearl Harbor for libs.

[Kleppe]

I'm delighted to see that the worst among us absolutely hate this. Bravo!

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Oh shit, this stuff might occasionally have negative effects on us white guys! Time to pretend we actually care about equal rights.

[LawTalkingGuy]

One of the most interesting challenges for historians is periodization. When does one “period” end and another begin? Also what do we call a period? What does the name mean? We all know about big ones like The Enlightenment and Renaissance.

In America we like to go by Presidencies like “Jacksonian America,” wars like “the WWII-era”
or quips like the “The Gilded Age.” But we also use specific policy pushes to describe eras: like Reconstruction Era or The Civil Rights Era.

Often historians or the popular imagination will give hard cutoffs to these kinds of eras based on the achievement of or end of certain policies: Reconstruction “ended” in 1877 with the withdrawal of federal troops from the South. The Civil Rights Era “ended” in 1968 when Nixon was elected and the last major pieces of civil rights legislation were passed (like thenFair Housing Act). But the reality is more complicated.

In thinking about the Reconstruction era it’s often better to think of it as ending just before the turn of the century. Throughout the 1880s-1890s efforts were made by black politicians and activists and their allies in the south to keep the reconstruction settlement, and actively participate in politics and society without federal military support. Jim Crow didn’t happen immediately after 1877. Rather than experiencing an abrupt end, Reconstruction experienced a 15 year decline with possible “end points” for the era being the failure of the Lodge Bill or the refusal of the federal government to intervene in the Wilmington coup.

So too with the Civil Rights Era. It didn’t really “end” in 1968 because the next decades were filled with major amendments and litigation and activism to enforce the vision of those laws. Arguably that era lasted well into the 90s or beyond.

So when historians are looking at our time 100 years from now, what will Trump’s second term be seen as? In the long view of history, this could be the event the signals the end of the Civil Rights Era, provocatively called the Second Reconstruction by some, and moves us into something else. Or it could be the last gasp of a reactionary movement whose downfall is inevitable. Or is it going to be a period in an ebb and flow that has existed since the end of the civil war? Rather than a permanent victory he may have simply signaled that the Third Reconstruction is coming in a few decades.

[Kleppe]

"it could be the last gasp of a reactionary movement whose downfall is inevitable"

lol, lmao even. This is some powerful coping.

[LawTalkingGuy]

“lol, lmao even. This is some powerful coping.”

I just noted one potential path. Just like losing armies reaching a high water mark or having a last big push movements and ideologies have seemingly reached unassailable dominance but then were later revealed to be blips in a longer trend. I’m sure if you lived in 560 you would have thought Justinian had established new and enduring dominance for the Byzantines.

[tylertusta]

I think that regardless of whether you like him or you loathe him, Trump was an inflection point in American politics. He accelerated the previously slow political realignment of American voters and the shift in policy preferences was quite radical.

Succeed or fail, I could see this new Era could be known as the "Post-Neo Progressive Era" or "Post 2nd Progressive Era."

Unless our next war is coming soon, that is. For all we know we're living in the antebellum interwar period for WW3.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yes, the pressure for a change within the Republican party has been building for several decades, Trump was just the first person with enough personal fame and wealth to beat their way past the entrenched old guard.

[Commenter_XY]

T, One thing I would add. POTUS Trump is a disruptor with a capital (D), and the people voting for him both times did so, in part, because they knew he would disrupt things.

Judging by the caterwauling and firestorm, I'd say POTUS Trump gets a grade of A+ on the disruption of status quo.

He is just getting started. He needs Ratcliff, Gabbard and Bondi in place before addressing the IC.

[John F. Carr]

After the full scale Russian invasion of Ukraine I learned a new German word: Zeitenwende. A historical turning point. February 24, 2022 was one of them. The fall of the Berlin Wall was the previous one. Somewhere between V-E day and the rise of the Wall was the one before that.

[Commenter_XY]

LTG, I would say we are in a period (era) post WW1 (last 110 years); I personally think WW1 is the last inflection point, as I understand the question you raise in your post.

This will sound like a cop out, but it is not. We won't know the answer to the question for some time (what will they say, 100 years hence). It will not be immediately apparent at the time (now). Does that make sense? You only know when you look in the rear-view mirror. I am encouraged by POTUS Trump's desire to be a peacemaker; we have had constant war for a century. We have wasted a lot of lives, a lot of potential in pointless wars for questionable objectives. I hope that is the inflection point result (far less war, and death).

Having said all of that, no other POTUS has had the disruptive impact that POTUS Trump does. Nobody else is even close, heh. He is a good candidate for an American inflection point as any.

[Bruce Hayden]

Or maybe marks the beginning of a second Civil Rights era. DEI is despised by a significant fraction, likely a majority, across all racial and ethnic groups. And is one of the big drivers for the working class fleeing the Dem party.

[David Nieporent]

DEI is despised by a significant fraction, likely a majority, across all racial and ethnic groups.

"DEI" is an amorphous concept that people can project whatever they'd like — or in this case, dislike — onto.

And is one of the big drivers for the working class fleeing the Dem party.

[Citation needed.] And why would people of "all racial and ethnic groups" be driven away by it?

[Absaroka]

"And why would people of "all racial and ethnic groups" be driven away by it?"

FWIW, my wife, who I'm pretty sure is a woman :-), absolutely despises affirmative action for women. A fair number of her female friends - I'd guess a sizeable majority - feel the same. They don't want to be discriminated against, but they don't want the table tilted the other way either.

My sense is they feel like with a level field they can hold their own, and perceive tilting the field in their favor as an insult.

[ReaderY]

I take a view which must now seem a footnote in legal history, that of former Justice White, which was the opinion of the court for a few years in the late 1970s and early 1980s when he was the swing vote.

The Equal Protection Clause applies only to the States, not the Federal Government. And while the Due Process Clause has an equal protection component, that component is by no means co-extensive with the Equal Protection Clause itself, or else the Equal Protection Clause would be mere surplusage.

One difference, I think, is that the Federal Government has more authority to enact limited affirmative action than the States. The moral views of Professor Bernstein just weren’t enacted into our Constitution.

I agree there have been some very unwise zealots who have implemented DEI in some very unproductive ways and who deserve to be reigned in. But I don’t think the concept itself, as a whole, is either unconstitutional or inherently immoral.

[Michael Ejercito]

I believethat each branch of the government can exclude persons from employment within their respective branches for any reason whatsoever, regardless of what Congress says.

[David Nieporent]

That's certainly an interesting theory. What is the basis for this belief?

[Bruce Hayden]

Hate to say this, but I agree with David for once. The Legislative and Judicial branches can effectively do that. But most federal employees work for the Executive branch, and most of them are subject to federal discrimination laws, regulations, EOs, etc. Only those few directly or indirectly appointed by the President are exempt.

[Michael Ejercito]

Employees of a branch of government exercise some measure of the authority of that branch, authority directly vested by the Constitution of the United States. For Congress to require another branch to employ a particular person would be to effectively vest a branch's constitutional authority in another person.

Congress can not make the President hire you or I. Any law that purports to do that would be unconstitutional.

Any remedy to unethical exclusions from presidential employment by the President must lie strictly within the political sphere (refusing to enact bills the President wants passed, refusing to confirm nominees, etc.)

[commienot]

You're sort of correct.

Enforcing the Equal Protection clause of The Fourteenth Amendment against the leftists' attempted deconstruction of American society into a sick, perverted, preferential hierarchy of radical identity politics for the purpose of distributing the coerced benefits of the corrupt federal spoils system is refreshing and patriotic stuff, at least relative to the anti-equality, anti-American status quo that's been infesting the government and its dependent institutions for decades.

[шинка]

Everyone missed a very important thing that this order will trigger: A lawsuit with the federal workers unions.

There is risk that if the unions use this as their battle to fight Trump with, it may blow up spectacularly in their faces. The constitution says nothing (except for congress/SCOTUS) that can get in the way of the executive branch from running the government. If the unions sue and this goes to the SCOTUS they may have to decided whether an employee union has more power than the president of the US. Constitutionally, they don't. If they fight this case, they could destroy themselves.

What happens the day after the SCOTUS rules that the president can do what he wants regardless of what the unions think they can do. Does everyone remember PATCO? Yeah, Google that from the 1980s and the FAA strike. Expect it to happen again.

From Wikipedia:

Paul Volcker called the strike a "watershed" moment in the fight against inflation:

One of the major factors in turning the tide on the inflationary situation was the controllers' strike, because here, for the first time, it wasn't really a fight about wages; it was a fight about working conditions. It was directly a wage problem, but the controllers were government employees, and the government didn't back down. And he stood there and said, "If you're going to go on strike, you're going to lose your job, and we'll make out without you." That had a profound effect on the aggressiveness of labor at that time, in the midst of this inflationary problem and other economic problems. I am told that the administration pretty much took off the shelf plans that had been developed in the Carter administration, but whether the Carter administration ever would [have] done it is the open question. That was something of a watershed.[23]

[Bruce Hayden]

My guess is that the fight will start with working remotely. In high priced DC, most of the employees of a number of the departments based there work remotely, often living outside, but collecting the premium for working in a high priced area. Several huge buildings in DC are effectively almost empty, with only single digits of the workforce ever there. The incoming Trump team promised to bring federal workers back to their desks, and the federal employee unions melted down. The outgoing Biden Administration then quickly signed deals with them to prevent this. It’s now in many of their contracts that they can continue to work remotely, claiming the cost of living premiums for their official workplace, even when they don’t live there anymore. Meanwhile, corporate America is moving away sharply from full time remote work, finding that employees working thus are not as productive. Moreover, in many positions, federal workers are substantially overpaid, in comparison to similar positions in the private sector, thanks to esp past Dem Administrations dependent on federal workers in general, and federal employee unions in particular, for their political power.

Which is to say that I expect the first big fight between the new Trump Administration and the federal employee unions to be in response to their upcoming orders that federal employees return to work, at their assigned work location. We are, again talking work conditions, but on the flip side, the Administration has sound economic reasons for its decision (arguably, the Air Traffic Controllers faced a miserable, extremely high stress, work environment).

[шинка]

This will be the hill they die on.

Trump is all about posturing and hard negotiation. If the unions want to fight him on this, he makes it constitutional and they are at risk of becoming irrelevant overnight. If you are running the union, what is your risk/reward in fighting this? Most would back away and roll over, and for good reason: you live another day albeit as someone's bitch.

Excellent negotiation. Watch for more.