This post originally appeared at https://www.bootsandsabers.com/2023/07/18/a-long-stride-on-the-path-of-racial-equality/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-long-stride-on-the-path-of-racial-equality

My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. Here’s a part:

In the majority opinion of the court, Chief Justice John Roberts definitively stated that, “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”

It does not get any clearer than that. Discrimination in favor of one race consequently discriminates to the detriment of another race. Equality can only exist when we actually treat people equally.

For this reason, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, Wisconsin’s most important private organization in defense of the Constitution, launched the “Equality for All Agenda,” in which they are calling for the repeal of all race-based laws and programs. WILL’s accompanying report highlights several examples of how various Wisconsin governments discriminate on the basis of race.

[…]

The list goes on. The fact is that racial discrimination permeates our governments at every level. From the state of Wisconsin to our local government school districts, people of favored races are granted preferential treatment, opportunities, and money while people of disfavored races are excluded from these opportunities. This kind of racial discrimination was intolerable in 1860. It was intolerable in 1960. It is intolerable in 2023.

As Justice Thomas so eloquently put it in his concurring opinion, “the solution announced in the second founding (his reference is to the transformative 14th Amendment written after the Civil War) is incorporated in our Constitution: that we are all equal, and should be treated equally before the law without regard to our race. Only that promise can allow us to look past our differing skin colors and identities and see each other for what we truly are: individuals with unique thoughts, perspectives, and goals, but with equal dignity and equal rights under the law.”

Our nation has had a long road to racial equality. We have a long way yet to go. The Supreme Court’s ruling is a long stride in the right direction. Now it is up to all of us to see that the principles announced in our Declaration of Independence, written into the Constitution in the 14th Amendment, and affirmed in Students v. Harvard, are upheld by our government, our businesses, and ourselves.