A Diverse Opinion

There is an op-ed in this morning’s Kansas City Star opposing Ward Connerly’s grassroots-based Missouri Civil Rights Initiative.

Many so-called “civil rights” advocates despise Ward Connerly because the African-American head of the American Civil Rights Institute brings a great deal of legitimacy to his cause to abolish affirmative action programs throughout the country. I’ve written before about why I oppose affirmative action programs, but I’d like to address one statement in today’s editorial in particular.

Diversity matters, and affirmative action helps promote diversity in education, contracting, businesses and jobs, making America more competitive.

Surely the author must be more open-minded than to believe that we can judge an individual’s "diversity" solely on the basis of his/her skin color. Just because someone is “black,” this doesn’t imply a qualitative difference from someone who is "white." This assumption alone ensures that affirmative action programs do more to segregate people along racial lines than they do in promoting racial harmony.

Civil rights protections are of the utmost importance to a free society. But affirmative action should be anathema to civil rights advocates and the history of their movement. Civil rights legislation aims to ensure that no person is discriminated against on the basis of their sex, race, religion, etc. Affirmative action ensures that they most certainly are.

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On the lighter side, I’d like to make one correction to Dave’s last post.

In that post, Dave stated that:

“As for being informed, active, and intelligent, when I was 16 I was none of the three, and I now work at a think tank!”

We apologize for this error. Dave’s statement incorrectly implied that Dave is now somehow “informed, active, and intelligent,” which we assure you is incorrect. We sincerely apologize for any confusion this may have caused to our readers.