Cato Finito

Rakesh Bhandari bhandari at phoenix.Princeton.EDU
Thu Aug 13 10:42:34 PDT 1998



>
> Discrimination imposed by government has caused a multitude of problems.
> Anti-discrimination laws create the same problems. While we do not
> advocate private
> discrimination, we do not support any laws which attempt to limit or ban
> it.

The UChicago libertarian law professor Richard A. Epstein argues that affirmative action and anti-discrimination laws lead to both the unfair over-hiring and -promotion of blacks *and* their exclusion from productive employment (in order to avoid Title VII lawsuits on discriminatory promotion decisions or on failure to live up to affirmative action), firms do not locate where a substantial presence of minorities would pressure them into hiring blacks in the first place, suggesting that the abolition of Title VII would create an employment boom in the inner city--well at least Epstein's pure assertions convinced Thomas Sowell).

So the same laws help blacks at the expense of whites and whites at the expense of blacks.

At the same time, there is a very interesting analysis of how dispiriting it is for minority workers to pursue very costly discrimination complaints in the courts where their identities as victims and playthings of forces beyond their control are often only confirmed. The book is Civil Rights Socity by Kristen Bumiller: The Social Construction of Victims. The monumental waste of money used in trying to get Brown v Board enforced via court action is documented in Stuart Scheingold The Politics of Rights (only extra legal social movements had any real success). And we should not forget that the legal creation of majority minority districts, as an extension of Title VII, may only ensconse racial identities while actually creating opportunity for more Republican victories. Indeed it was Reagan and Bush who were most interested in extending title vii into race-sensitive redistricting.

best, rakesh



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