[lbo-talk] White Supremacy (was Tim Wise)

[michael yates]

Marv says that legal barriers to racial equality have been pretty much eliminated. I am not sure about this. The history of higher court rulings giving meaning to US civil rights laws over the past thirty of so years, is one of increasing inability of minority plaintiffs to get justice. And the civil rights laws, even at their best, typically require individuals to file suit, with all the expense and knowledge this requires. There is nothing comparable to what is in the National Labor Relations Act, where you have the NLRB which is legally bound to take your complaint or that of a union, basically free of charge, and which has a duty to support the collective rights of workers [and despite all of the problems with the NLRB, sometimes does]. More and more the courts have ruled that you must show that an employer had an intent to discriminate, which is very difficult to establish.