LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Group favoritism exists

OPINION:

In “Biden’s equity politics juggernaut threatens America” (Web, Feb. 5) Richard Levine rightly and effectively skewers the racial equity doctrine, but he’s wrong on one point. Mr. Levine writes that “equity is applied to factions; equality is applied to individuals.” I wish this were true, but in fact equality under the law has been applied to factions.

The 15th Amendment holds that neither the federal government nor the states may deprive “citizens” of the right to vote. The 14th Amendment holds that no “No person shall be denied the equal protection of the laws.” These amendments confer rights on individuals. There’s nothing in the 15th Amendment that gives a citizen the right to have their vote aggregated with the votes of other members of their class or faction to assure the exercise of political power or influence, but that’s what the Voting Rights Act does. This bundling of individual rights to favor one group over another is clearly unconstitutional, but it is accepted without murmur.

The group approach to voting is particularly egregious because a group is favored not to assure equality but to confer power on a political party. When 90 percent of Blacks voted Republican 100 years ago, it was the Republicans who would have wanted them to have group power. Now it’s the Democrats. Discrimination, if it exists, is against Democrats, not against members of a racial or ethnic group.

The same group approach distorts the 14th Amendment. The Supreme Court permits states or the federal government to favor one group over another in service to “diversity.” This may or may not be fair to disfavored people weighed as members of a group, but it deprives “persons” of the equal protection of the law.

Now that the Supreme Court has five pretty solid votes and one squishy one, it is time to revisit the scope of the 14th and 15th amendments. And maybe the court could stick a fork in “racial equity” at the same time it gives “equality” its rightful place in the Constitution.

JIM DUEHOLM

Washington