Biden’s Racial Preferences Gone Wild

I n April, the Biden administration powerfully signaled that it will not be constrained by the Constitution or federal law as it implements its “whole-of-government” executive order to embed “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) in all aspects of federal-government policies and American lives.

In 2021 the administration amplified its initial executive order with a second order on DEI in the federal workforce, a government-wide strategic plan, and a Gender Equity Plan that paints a dystopian picture for American women and, like the administration’s other DEI plans, focuses on people of color and members of the LGBTQI+ community. The American Rescue Plan (ARP) and the infrastructure bill included billions to advance equitable outcomes for restaurant owners, farmers, small businesses, homeowners, and construction companies that are denied, depending on the program, to straight white males, other whites, and Asian Americans.

More than once, the Supreme Court has observed that “distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people” (e.g., Rice v. Cayetano [2000] and Hirabayashi v. United States [1943]). As Chief Justice John Roberts has noted, using racial discrimination to undo racial discrimination doesn’t work; rather, “the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race” (Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 [2007]). In Shaw v. Hunt (1996), the Court put it directly: “Racial classifications are antithetical to the Fourteenth Amendment.”

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in federally funded programs, and Title VII does the same in private employment. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 has been construed generally to prohibit the federal government from varying individual property and contract rights based on race or color. In Bostock v. Clayton County, the Supreme Court recently extended these protections to gender identification.

Consistent with precedent and federal law, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the ARP’s restaurant grants violate the 14th Amendment, and the farm program has been enjoined by numerous federal courts. More than a dozen lawsuits are pending against Biden’s DEI programs.

The New York Times reported in February that the administration is worried about these lawsuits and is drafting orders to help communities of color without defining them as such. For example, the Justice40 Initiative directs at least 40 percent of climate-change spending to “disadvantaged communities” and the administration’s effort to address inequity in home appraisals refers to neighborhoods, though its press release acknowledges its goal is to prevent appraisals from being a “proxy for racial demographics.”

These clumsy attempts at obfuscation may buy some time, but they are unlikely to change the result. The purpose of an administration that declares DEI a whole-of-government effort on its second day, repeatedly castigates “white privilege,” acknowledges its racial- and sexual-orientation goals, and heaps praise on the 1619 Project, Ibram X. Kendi, and the Abolitionist Teacher Network, which advocates “disrupt[ing] whiteness,” cannot be doubted.

Last month the administration floored the accelerator, issuing fact sheets, orders, and websites to deliver what it refers to as economic justice, educational equity, environmental justice, civil rights, health equity, criminal justice, housing justice, and global equality. The administration also announced that 140 agencies, including all cabinet-level agencies, are developing Equity Action Plans for “addressing — and achieving — equity in their mission delivery,” and published links to at least 25 of these plans.

The administration makes no meaningful effort to disguise its purpose.

Covid-19 tests and vaccines are prioritized by race, with $785 million in ARP funding allocated to support communities of color, rural areas, low-income populations, and tribal communities. Of that sum, $35 million was directed to “improve diversity in the public health workforce,” i.e., to hire racial minorities and LGBTQI+ individuals without regard to whether they were the most qualified.

The administration also allocated $260 million to eliminate administrative barriers it claims disproportionately prevent workers of color from completing benefit applications. This logic is similar to the assertion that blacks can’t get ID cards for voting.

At least an additional $100 billion has been allocated over the next five years for investment in small disadvantaged businesses (SDBs), including minority-owned businesses. The administration has ordered 11 percent of federal contracting dollars to be awarded to SDBs, up from the statutory goal of 5 percent, and intends to increase the allocation to 15 percent by 2025. In FY 2020 just 1.7 percent of federal contracts went to black-owned SDBs, and 1.8 percent to Hispanic-owned SDBs.

The administration also intends to increase grants to “disadvantaged minorities” for medical research, infrastructure, student aid, and public housing. Because many of the proposed grantees don’t comply with federal requirements, the administration will “selectively” waive compliance, “ensuring that application reviews are equitable by using evidence-informed decision-making processes.”

To require DEI in education, the administration issued executive orders to promote “equitable access to and participation in college-readiness, advanced placement courses, and internship opportunities” for black, Hispanic, and Native American students.

The latest equity plans call for more of the same:

• The Department of Defense will increase procurement from minority institutions, invest in minority K–12 STEM education, traditionally black universities, and a “development framework to ensure ethical (to include equitable) AI,” focus on how “extremist or dissident ideologies violate the fundamental principles of the Department,” and moderate its standards to support transgender individuals.
• The Department of Homeland Security will expand humanitarian protection for immigrants to avoid causing fear or other obstacles, address “barriers” to underserved communities, “expand federal contracting opportunities for companies that are owned by members of underserved communities, including women, people of color, individuals with disabilities, and individuals with arrest and conviction records,” and advance a “victim-centered” approach.
• The Department of Justice will embed equity considerations into financial-assistance programs, cultural grants, and contracting.
• The U.S. Agency for International Development will integrate equity into its agency policies, advance civil rights, reduce application requirements for organizations serving historically marginal groups, and designate an Inclusive Development Advisor at each mission.
• The National Science Foundation will collect data on race and gender for students and research directors, invest in civil rights, and increase the participation of minority-serving institutions.
• The Department of Education will collect demographic data from all schools, revise its criteria for financial assistance to benefit minority-serving institutions, invest in civil rights, historically black colleges, and minority-owned small businesses, focus its grants on “underserved students,” ensure government funds are expended equitably, and publish a rule to prohibit “discrimination” against transgender students in sports.

There are constitutional, lawful, ethical, race-blind ways of helping the disadvantaged. Enforcing anti-discrimination laws, protecting minority communities by funding police and prosecuting offenders, encouraging child-rearing within families, and supporting charter schools that meet the needs of diverse parents and students are important steps. So is refocusing K–12 education on reading, writing, and arithmetic, instead of anti-racism and social justice. Outreach programs, tutoring, and after-school programs also can make a difference. College admissions can take into account bona fide testing differences in the correlation of test scores to performance, but not race-based preferences.

Quotas and handouts revictimize disadvantaged minorities. Give someone a fish and he will eat for the day; teach someone how to fish and his family will eat for a lifetime. But collecting data that categorize every American by race, gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation, and then allocating rewards by those metrics, is what social engineers and racists do, not people who genuinely seek unity.