Ending the affirmative action regime

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.

As I understand, EO 11246 was the first brick in the wall of the vast edifice of racial discrimination that materialized under the rubric of affirmative action, though the term itself originated in earlier years. Hugh Davis Graham traces the complicated history and flowering of the regime under President Nixon in Civil Rights and the Presidency: Race and Gender in American Politics 1960-1972 (1992, abridged edition of Graham’s The Civil Rights Era, which is not out of print). Herman Belz’s history Equality Transformed: A Quarter-Century of Affirmative Action (1991) is also invaluable.

Like The Monster That Devoured Cleveland in the horror movie that Maynard G. Krebs loved to cite, the affirmative action regime fathered the DEI monster. It is Son of the Monster That Devoured Cleveland.

President Trump has now grasped the nettle and repealed EO 11246 and its progeny. On Monday he promulgated an executive order “ending DEI programs and preferencing.” Today the White House announces:

PROTECTING CIVIL RIGHTS AND EXPANDING INDIVIDUAL OPPORTUNITY: Today, President Donald J. Trump signed an historic Executive Order that protects the civil rights of all Americans and expands individual opportunity by terminating radical DEI preferencing in federal contracting and directing federal agencies to relentlessly combat private sector discrimination. It enforces long-standing federal statutes and faithfully advances the Constitution’s promise of colorblind equality before the law. This comprehensive order is the most important federal civil rights measure in decades:

It terminates “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) discrimination in the federal workforce, and in federal contracting and spending.

Federal hiring, promotions, and performance reviews will reward individual initiative, skills, performance, and hard work and not, under any circumstances, DEI-related factors, goals, policies, mandates, or requirements.

The order requires OMB to streamline the federal contracting process to enhance speed and efficiency, reduce costs, and require Federal contractors and subcontractors to comply with our civil rights laws.

It revokes Executive Order 11246 contracting criteria mandating affirmative action

It bars the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs from pushing contractors to balance their workforce based on race, sex, gender identity, sexual preference, or religion.

It requires simple and unmistakable affirmation that contractors will not engage in illegal discrimination, including illegal DEI.

It directs all departments and agencies to take strong action to end private sector DEI discrimination, including civil compliance investigations.

It mandates the Attorney General and the Secretary of Education issue joint guidance regarding the measures and practices required to comply with the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard….

Hallelujah.

The text of the executive order is accessible in the X post below:

NRO’s James Lynch reports (links omitted):

The Trump administration took a sledgehammer to progressive diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives Tuesday night with executive orders designed to root racialist ideology out of the federal government and American institutions at large.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order overturning President Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 executive order creating race-based hiring requirements for federal contractors. Paired with that is a memo from the office of personnel management placing all DEI employees on leave and shutting down DEI programs and offices.

The affirmative action regime fundamentally conflicts with the principle of equality. What is done by executive order can be undone, but (to borrow the words of Calvin Coolidge) that would require us to go “backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people.”

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