Race issues have dogged our nation since its inception. Undeniably there has been racial injustice, not limited to blacks, but to other racial and ethnic groups as well. During the fervor of the 1960s civil rights movement, and the legislation, court decisions, and the huge spending programs that followed, even the most pessimistic person would have guessed that race problems would have been solved by the close of the century. Although there has been considerable progress, thorny problems remain.
I think we can safely say that America's civil rights struggle is over and won. At one time, black, Hispanic, and Asian Americans did not enjoy constitutional guarantees enjoyed by other Americans. Now we all do. There are no legal restrictions on where we may live, work, and eat. Once there were. In all public accommodations we must be treated like any other American. That means if we live in a particular neighborhood, we cannot be prevented from attending the public school or library in that neighborhood. We no longer have to search for a “colored” drinking fountain or restroom. If our children meet the academic standards, they can enroll at the same college that a white person attends. If our young men go to war for our nation, they are no longer restricted to serving in separate units, being cooks, chauffeurs, and quartermasters. Now they can be generals, aviators, and members of the special forces. Being sixty-two years of age, I can remember a time when none of this was true. Saying that the civil rights struggle is over and won is not the same as saying that all vestiges of discrimination are gone. It is to say codified and rampant discrimination is a thing of the past.
Because the civil rights struggle is over and won does not mean that there are not major problems that confront blacks as a group. Heading the list is the fraudulent education received by most black youngsters, rampant crime in many black neighborhoods, family breakdown (more properly described as families not forming in the first place), and unprecedented illegitimacy.
Most of the social pathology that characterizes a large percentage of the black community is entirely new in our history. At a time when there was far greater racial discrimination, and far fewer prospects for upward mobility, blacks who graduated from high school had a higher achievement level, black neighborhoods were safer, there was greater family stability, and illegitimacy was a tiny fraction of what it is today. If, as so many “experts” claim, discrimination and a legacy of slavery explain what we see today, a natural question is to ask, How come those conditions were not worse at a time when racial discrimination was rampant and codified?
I argue that whatever racial discrimination exists today has little or nothing to do with the most devastating problems that confront many blacks such as fraudulent education, rampant crime, family breakdown, and illegitimacy. These are not civil rights problems, and they won't be solved by civil rights strategy. The reason is that if discrimination cannot explain the problems blacks face, antidiscrimination measures are not likely to have a beneficial effect.
Some of these issues are discussed in the columns that follow. Also, there are columns about the increasingly contentious issue of sex equality. In an effort to promote sex equality, many people make the foolish argument that women are equal to men. Based on this argument, there have been calls to allow women to serve in combat units in the military and to serve as firefighters and police. Then when women have been allowed to serve in activities where physical strength and aggressiveness are important, there have been calls for different (lower) performance standards for women as opposed to their male counterparts. One result is a lowering of overall performance standards for both men and women. After all, is it not discriminatory to require that male cadets at a military academy run with heavy weapons, do full chin-ups, and rope climbs and not have identical requirements for women. The typical “solution” is to reduce standards for both men and women.
In the military, double standards not only threaten morale but can be mission- and life-threatening, as suggested by the finding at Parris Island that 45 percent of female marines couldn't throw a hand grenade far enough to avoid blowing themselves up or the case of U.S. Navy Lieutenant Kara Hultgreen, who was given preferential treatment in training and was eventually killed attempting to land her F-14 on an aircraft carrier.
I believe people argue that men and women are in fact equal because they errantly believe that in order to have equality before the law people must be in fact equal. Nothing is further from the truth. Equality before the law does not require that people be equal in fact. Being a human being is the only requirement.