Not the Headlines -- New Jersey Civil Rights

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The listening tube presents not the headlines.

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I'm Bob Woodley from the Listening Tube. As you may know, President Trump has taken measures to move the responsibility of education back to the states and minimize the role of the Federal Department of Education, putting Linda McMahon in charge of essentially dismantling the department. Something I'm highly in favor of. And grateful that I graduated from high school right before the Department of Education was put into action. I'm not even sure if many of my classmates realize how lucky we were to graduate when we did, considering how much our schools have failed our nation since the Department of Education was created to empower the teachers' union and their efforts to use our schools as indoctrination centers instead of institutions of learning. As a result, student scores in reading, math, and science are abysmal, and colleges and universities are having to provide remedial courses for students who aren't even prepared to attend college, yet somehow were allowed to graduate from high school. The federal government has made a mess of our schools, and it's time the feds get their hands out of the works. As a reaction to the federal withdrawal, the state of New Jersey thought that an appropriate response would be to create a new office under the authority of the state attorney general, called the Education and Public Accommodations Enforcement Section in the Division on Civil Rights. New Jersey's AG, Jennifer Davenport, says it will target, quote, discrimination in K-12 schools, universities, and other settings covered under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination. The federal government closed a dozen civil rights offices across the country recently, two of which served New Jersey. Apparently, New Jersey has so much discrimination that they needed two offices. That sounds like it might not be a federal problem. Maybe New Jersey has had so much discrimination that they needed it to be monitored by the federal government, and the closing of federal offices created a need that the state should have been taken care of in the first place. In any case, the New Jersey Attorney General blamed the federal government for the need to create the new state agency. Press releases claim that the need arises from the Trump administration's removal of guidelines for a disparate impact provision that uses demographics to tell if a school is violating the civil rights of groups of students or employees. When I look at that provision, one phrase stands out to me. Civil rights of groups of students or employees.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

Bob didn't believe it.

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Why? Because the Constitution does not grant civil rights to groups. The Constitution established inalienable rights to individuals, not groups. Especially if you form those groups on the basis of race, which is exactly what it did. When you group us together based on our race, there is a name for that racism.

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Who's the racist here?

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We should all be able to agree that racism is bad. Isn't that what all of our civil rights leaders from the 1960s and onward have been preaching? And racism. Not much about bigotry or prejudice, but there's a lot of opposition to racism from all races. Now you might be thinking, but Bob, what does race have to do with civil rights? And that's a keen observation on your part. The answer is nothing. Everybody has the same civil rights, regardless of your race. But that's not how sixty civil rights and educational groups feel about it. They signed on to a letter that explicitly condemned the federal hands-off policy by claiming it may appear neutral but unfairly and disproportionately harm or disadvantage black and Native American students, as well as Latino and Asian American and Pacific Islander students, while ignoring alternatives that better serve all students. No mention of European students or Middle Eastern students or Jewish students who have had their civil rights violated on hundreds of occasions since the Hamas attacks on Israel. The letter signed by organizations such as Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law, Alliance for Children's Rights, and the National Center for Youth Law, which is a far-left-wing organization that claims to call out racism, but is actually supporting a call to maintain the racism status quo. What this demonstrates is that there are forces that wish to keep racism as part of the system while claiming the system is racist. And it is. The Trump administration is ridding our government of these racist policies. The response from opponents is to change the conversation to one of civil rights. The answer that New Jersey came up with literally calls itself the Education and Public Accommodations Enforcement Section in the Division on Civil Rights. As if there are different civil rights for different groups of people. There aren't. Only the individual may possess civil rights, and those rights apply to all people regardless of race and many other factors. This New Jersey reaction isn't a matter of civil rights, as they would want you to believe, but a defense of racism disguised as a matter of civil rights. We all have the same rights. Rules and policies and laws that give favor to one group over another are often racist and violate the civil rights of certain groups, and no group is immune from being singled out. But keeping track of which racial groups are doing what or not doing what is the very definition of racism. I'm not claiming that racism, bigotry, and prejudice don't exist. But removing racist policies from our system of government is a positive thing. The problem is that for some people, removing racist policies is an act of racism. But they can't call it that, so they call it civil rights. Perhaps what no one is pointing out is that of the twelve federal offices that were closed, two of them served New Jersey. It took that for the New Jersey Attorney General to realize that there must be a serious discrimination problem in New Jersey.

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SPEAKER_00 8:03

All this talk about New Jersey just reminded me about something that happened to my little sister when we were kids. I think she was in fourth or fifth grade, and she asked our dad if he knew New Jersey's official nickname. It was part of her homework for school. You may know that New Jersey's nickname is the Garden State, and my dad knew that too. But he told my sister Janine that it was the Garbage State. Well, I think you might know where this one's going. The next day at school, my little sister proudly proclaimed to her class that the nickname of New Jersey was the Garbage State. She was not very happy when she came home that day. But it turns out my dad might have been right. Creating a new agency to look for ways to protect specific racial groups is a waste. These racist policies won't hold up to judicial review nor constitutional muster. It's just the latest attempt of New Jersey to advance racism by calling it civil rights, while stomping on the civil rights of those not included on their list of eligible groups.com. Thank you for putting your ear to the listening tube. I'm your host, Bob Woodley, for Thou ad Infinitum.