Democrats Abandoned Equal Opportunity for the Political Payoff of Discrimination

May 2025

This post finalizes my autopsy of the Democrats’ defeat in the 2024 election. It explains the historical origin of the white working class’s alienation from the Democratic Party.  

It’s a story of how the Party betrayed White Americans’ trust; specifically, the broken promise that race relations would be governed by the principles embodied in the Civil rights Act of 1964.

The civil rights movement, as orchestrated by Martin Luther King (MLK), transformed the mentality of white folks. At the end of WWII, only 45% of Whites agreed that Blacks should have “as good a chance as white people to get any kind of job.” By 1964, 86% agreed.

The White majority had conceded that MLK's principle of Equal Opportunity was morally superior to preferential treatment on the basis of race (at least with respect to employment and education). This principle was codified in the 1964 Civil Rights Act: Title VII prohibits employers from discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Title VI bans discrimination in programs and activities that receive Federal funds, like education.

MLK and LBJ at signing of Civil Rights Act

However, White America assumed that the Act's prohibition on discrimination was universal, and would protect Whites as well as minorities.

Unfortunately, the insidious rise of Affirmative Action (AA) betrayed that assumption.

From 1965 to1973, AA policy was laid out in a series of Presidential orders that required government contractors to implement and document procedures to ensure that workers are hired and promoted “without regard to their race, religion, sex, or national origin." So, the government’s practice of AA fully complied with the letter and spirit of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment.

But by 1969, in the name of “Affirmative Action,” elite universities were flouting the law by implementing race conscious schemes to boost minority enrollment.

The first lawsuit brought by a White victim of such a scheme was adjudicated in the Superior Court of Washington in 1973. The Court ruled that the “clear and willful discrimination” inflicted on the plaintiff was an unconstitutional violation of the 14th Amendment. However, that decision had no practical effect on college policies because, upon appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the case as moot.

The 1973 ruling delivered a warning to advocates of AA, that judges are inclined to see AA's excesses for what they are – reverse discrimination. So, the next time Affirmative Action was threatened by judicial scrutiny, they were ready for political battle.

That “next time” was 1977 when SCOTUS took up the landmark case of Bakke v. University of California (UC). The supporters of racial preferences vigorously lobbied the justices. The mechanism for lobbying in the judicial arena is the amicus brief, and supporters flooded the court with 42 briefs, outnumbering the opposition 4 to 1. Among the supporters were the ACLU, the Carter administration, and the NAACP.

The rhetoric nudged the justices to render a splintered decision, bestowing half a loaf to each side. Declared unconstitutional was the racial quota system that robbed Bakke of admission to the UC medical school.

On the flip side, the court awarded AA advocates a qualified license to discriminate, as follows:

If there is a compelling state interest, schools may consider race as one factor among others in a holistic evaluation of applicants for admission, even if more qualified Whites are rejected.

So, from 1978 up until the Supreme Court's about-face in 2023, reverse discrimination in college admissions was not only legal, but it was energized by the advent of DEI.

Despite denialism by AA and DEI crusaders, reverse-discrimination is an indisputable fact:

First, reverse discrimination is mathematically inevitable because the colleges that actually practice race conscious admissions are very selective. ‘Selectivity’ means that the pool of applicants is several times greater than the available seats. So, partiality that increases the chances of admission for Blacks must (mathematically) diminish the chances for Whites.

Second, the justices in the Bakke case explicitly recognized that considering race as a plus-factor in admissions would disadvantage white applicants. At issue in Bakke was not the reality of reverse discrimination, but whether it is justified by a higher good, such as diversity.

In 2023 SCOTUS did a U-turn. In the case SFFA v. Harvard, it ruled that race-conscious admissions were unconstitutional. The recognition of reverse discrimination was one reason. Harvard had denied that its admissions policy disadvantaged Whites (and Asians). But because the evidence to the contrary was so overwhelming the court dismissed their denial. Harvard tried to bamboozle the justices and lost.

Affirmative Action (AA) in the workplace.

Fortunately, Title VII’s blanket ban on discrimination in hiring and promotion has been upheld and reaffirmed by the courts. Unfortunately, defiance of the law is not abnormal. Captivated by DEI, employers selectively engage in race-conscious hiring, albeit covertly. According to a survey of hiring managers, reverse discrimination transpires at 52% of firms with DEI programs.

Furthermore, the percentage of white adults agreeing that they personally have been victimized by discrimination in hiring or promotion is 19% and 13%, respectively. Since anecdotes are widely shared, its no surprise that 55% of White Americans believe that reverse discrimination is real and systemic. In other words, 55% believe that the promise of equal opportunity has been broken.

With 40 years of experience as a college teacher, I can recount four cases of blatant reverse discrimination. This one is the most revealing:

A colleague from the History department leaned into my office and exclaimed “What do we do? The guy’s white!”

He was referring to a white man in the hallway who had just arrived for his scheduled interview with the History Department. At stake was a tenure track appointment. The colleague confided that, in the interests of diversity, the only applicants invited for an interview were those who checked the box ‘African American.’  The white guy in the hallway checked that box. My response was “all of us are descendants of an African mother, so you can’t deny he’s an African American just because he’s white.”

In case you missed the point: members of the history department conspired to exclude whites from consideration for the job, which is patently illegal.

The example is telling.  This job seeker was aware that academia’s compulsion for diversity was so pervasive that his only chance for any consideration was to identify as African American.

Conclusion.

Above, I recounted the betrayal of white Americans, who had been assured by the Civil Rights act of 1964 that America would be governed by the social contract envisioned by MLK—equal opportunity. That promise was betrayed by the most consistent purveyors of AA and DEI, namely, Democrats.

Early on, the Government’s AA edicts had bipartisan support. But that began to wither when President Ronald Regan cut funding for AA enforcement on the grounds that racial goals and quotas promoted reverse discrimination.

Since then, Republicans have consistently voiced opposition to race-based admission and hiring policies. In 1995 Republican Senator Bob Dole sponsored the Equal Opportunity Act that would have prohibited racial favoritism. But in the same year, Democratic President Bill Clinton reaffirmed his administration’s commitment to AA.

Ever since, Democrats have solidified their reputation as AA and DEI crusaders, and therefore, as apologists for racial preferences. Their tacit acceptance of reverse discrimination has encouraged white flight to the Republican camp, first noticed in 1981 as “Reagan Democrats.” In 2024 the defection was more apparent: Trump won the vote of white working class men 66% to 32%. For all whites the margin was 57% to 42%.