"Discrimination"

 

Photo: “Clover,” the cat who was invited for dinner.

 

On Saturday I expect to send you my tribute to our nation’s 250^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Thought of the Day

“Discrimination”

May 6, 2026

 

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race

is to stop discriminating on the basis of race”

                                                                      John G. Roberts, Jr., Chief Justice, U.S. Supreme Court

                                                                      Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No.1

                                                                       June 28, 2007

 

The 6-3 Supreme Court decision on April 29 in Louisiana v. Callais prompted Reuters reporter John Kruzel to write: “In a 6-3 ​ruling on Wednesday, powered by its conservative justices, the court gutted what scholars said was the last remaining pillar of the landmark law (The Voting Rights Act of 1965) enacted after the ‘Bloody Sunday’ march in Selma, Alabama with the aim of ‌preventing racial discrimination in voting.” 

 

Similar allegations were made by reporters for Politico, the Washington Post and the New York Times. While I am not a lawyer, I believe these reporters could not be more wrong. The Voting Rights Act (VRA) was implemented to ensure that no obstacles could be imposed to restrict the right of anyone qualified to vote. The Court ruling said that districts could not be drawn on the basis of race. The VRA does not ensure proportional representation by race. The decision said simply that race-based congressional districts are unconstitutional, something one would have thought would have been agreeable to anyone who disapproves of discrimination. The decision upheld the XV Amendment that prohibits racial discrimination in voting.

 

The Constitution mandates that a census take place every ten years for the purpose of apportioning congressional representation. The next one will take place in 2030. Per the 2020 Census, Texas gained two seats, and one each were gained by Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon. California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia each lost a seat. Reapportionment requires re-districting. But the problem relates to racial gerrymandering, which is prohibited under the Voting Rights Act. Political (read partisan) gerrymandering is apparently legal and does take place. It gives the majority party an advantage. The practice dates back to the early 19^th Century.

 

Discrimination is ubiquitous. In the pursuit of racial, gender, and religious diversity, colleges, universities and employers have justified discrimination over meritocracy by claiming that for too long women and minorities had been denied education and job opportunities. There is no question that was once true. But the Civil Rights Act of 1964 changed the law. Having grown up in a small, homogenous New England town and then having spent my working career in New York City, I appreciate the value diversity brings to one’s life. But today’s Progressives are battling a war that was won sixty-years ago. Roles have switched. Today, discriminating against meritocracy and excellence is unfair and just plain wrong.

 

It is in our public schools, especially those in inner cities, where discrimination has also festered. Like most people, I believe everyone should be given an equal opportunity to succeed, even while recognizing that some children have an edge – the wealthy have more choices in terms of where to live and where to educate their children. Life is never completely fair, which is why government can and should ensure that all children have access to the best public-school education possible. That should include options: charter schools, Catholic schools and private schools. Competition, including among schools, is fundamental to the success of our capitalist/democratic society. It provides better quality, better pricing, and better outcomes. 

 

Yet the people who call for more diversity in colleges and the workplace are the same ones who deny lower-and middle-income parents’ choice when it comes to education. This is especially true in ‘Blue’ states and large inner cities where the political influence of two major teachers’ unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), exceeds that of parents and their school-age children. One consequence has been declining scores in reading and math. According to Education Week, 40% of fourth-graders and 33% of eighth-graders perform below the “basic” level in reading. Only a third of fourth and eighth-graders perform as “proficient” or “advanced” in math. The biggest declines in both reading and math have been for those in the lowest decile. According to the National Literacy Institute, 70% of low-income fourth-graders read below the “basic” level. Those most discriminated against are minorities.

 

Democracy, unrestrained, offers the opportunity to rise (and fall) economically and socially. Discrimination works to maintain the status quo – the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor. A unique quality of the American experience has been the ability for people, born in poverty, to rise due to aspiration, intelligence, focus and diligence. We all have individual tastes and preferences, but state-sanctioned discrimination, whether in the voting booth, colleges, businesses, or in denying school choice is destructive to individual freedom.

"May"

 The photo: flowers outside our entrance at Essex Meadows, welcoming us to spring and to the month.

 

Amidst all the turmoil in the world, it is nice to take a moment to reflect on the month of May, and on our great good luck to be living in this nation at this time.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“May”

May 1, 2026

 

“There is May in books forever;

May will part from Spencer never;

May’s in Milton, May’s in Prior,

May’s in Chaucer, Thomson, Dyer,

May’s in all the Italian books: – 
She has old and modern nooks...”

                                                                                                                “May and the Poets,” c.1812

                                                                                                                Leigh Hunt (1784-1859)

 

May is named for the Roman goddess Maia, daughter of Atlas and mother of Hermes; thus the right month to celebrate Mothers’ Day, as we will on May 10. Maia was the nurturer of plants and was associated with fertility and springtime. Students, cooped up in dorms and classrooms during the long winter, would, on the first of May, chant: “Hooray! Hooray! Outdoor sporting starts today!” It is a month when newly-blossomed flowers offer thanks for April’s showers. It is the month for graduations – a granddaughter’s from high school this year, along with a granddaughter and grandson from college. It is the month in which my parents were married eighty-eight years ago, and one in which a brother and granddaughter were born. 

 

While the summer solstice arrives on June 21, whiffs of summer appear in May. It is when Connecticut’s state flower, mountain laurel, bursts into bloom, and when lilacs and rhododendrons provide fragrance to a newly-wakened Earth. It is when trees become fully clothed, in their summer-green finery.

 

May Day, the first of May, commemorates the fight for labor rights. Its origin stems from the May 4, 1886 Chicago Haymarket Affair, when a confrontation between striking workers, primarily from the McCormick Harvester Machine Company, and the police turned violent. It was a date usurped by the Soviet Union to display socialist solidarity, industrial achievements and military strength. As an aside, the distress signal “Mayday! Mayday!” has nothing to do with the month. Instead, it originates from the French phrase m’aider! m’aider!, meaning help me.   

 

May is a month celebrated by poets, like Leigh Hunt, in the epigraph above, and a month noted in history: On May 10, 1869 the Golden Spike was driven into a rail tie at Council Bluffs, Utah, completing the first transcontinental railroad. Sixty-two years later, on May 1, 1931, construction on the Empire State – then the world’s tallest building – was completed. After causing the deaths of almost 40 million people over five and a half years, Victory in Europe arrived on May 8, 1945. Nine years later, on May 6, 1954, medical student Roger Bannister, became the first man to run a mile in under four minutes. And on May 25, 1961 President John F. Kennedy announced the goal of landing a man on the moon. Five years later, on May 30, 1966, the unmanned Surveyor 1 landed on the moon. (It would be another three years and two months – July 20, 1969 – before Neil Armstrong and Aldrin actually walked on the moon.)

 

.............................................................................

 

And, as this essay was begun on a cold March day, I know that one of the best things about May is that it is not March.

"Hatred - Unifier, Divider and Destroyer"

 In an essay on hatred, it is perhaps unfair to lions to attach this photo. Nevertheless, I have done so. Lions may get angry, but I doubt that they hate. However, the expression on the lion’s face reminded me of extremists in Washington – politicians, news commentators and pod-casters. 

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Hatred – Unifier, Divider and Destroyer” 

April 26, 2026

 

“Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life;

love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illumines it.”

                                                                                                                Martin Luther King (1929-1968)

                                                                                                                Strength to Love, 1963

 

Hatred has become pervasive. It has been around for decades but sprouted anew during the Obama Administration when ‘identity politics’ divided people into ‘oppressors’ and ‘oppressed.’  It accelerated with the hyperbole of President Trump’s postings on Truth Social. It has been fertilized by members of Congress like Chuck Schumer, Chris Murphy, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Marjory Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, encouraged by podcasters like Nikole Hannah-Jones and Nick Fuentes, and abetted by those from main-stream news like Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow.  

 

It is true that hatred can be unifying. Hatred for Hitler’s Nazis and Tojo’s Japanese military helped solidify Americans in their defense of democracy. In his 1962 travelogue, Travels with Charlie: In Search of America, John Steinbeck wrote: “‘I didn’t think that at all, sir, but I bet I’m going to. Why, I remember when people took everything out on Mr. Roosevelt. Andy Larson got red in the face about Roosevelt one time when his hens got the croup. Yes, sir,’ he said with growing enthusiasm, ‘those Russians got quite a load to carry. Man has a fight with his wife, he belts the Russians.’ Maybe everybody needs Russians. I’ll bet even in Russia they need Russians. Maybe they call it Americans.’” 

 

Steinbeck wrote this during the Cold War. Five years earlier, the Soviets had launched Sputnik1, marking the start of the Space Age. Dislike and distrust of the USSR served as a unifier, as something on which to place blame, something to hate. Most of us knew no Russians. Like Andy Larson, we didn’t hate individual Russians; we hated the Soviet system that denied the dignity that stems from personal freedom and the potential for reward that comes with free-market capitalism. The Soviets had put down the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, stomped out the Prague spring in 1968 and beat back Polish “Solidarity” in 1980. In the United States, even with vocal political differences, that hatred of the repressive Soviet system served as a social glue that bound our nation – and the democratic, freedom-loving West – against the totalitarianism of Communism. 

 

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, we lost that common enemy, but hatred did not disappear. Hatred provides a ready-made, intense sense of self and purpose. It has engulfed our politics, and it has become personal. It is most obvious today in “Trump Hatred Syndrome.” Certainly, Mr. Trump is an easy man to hate. He is vulgar, boastful and inconsiderate. Nevertheless, if a policy emanates from Mr. Trump, Democrats are against it, regardless of its value to the American people. His opponents stoop lower than him. Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist, in an interview on CNN regarding Iran, spoke honestly about the dilemma he faces: “The problem is I really don’t want to see Bibi Netanyahu or Donald Trump politically strengthened by this war, because they are two awful human beings.” His brethren in the media industry are not that candid. Hatred is responsible for the rise in anti-Semitism, which has swept across Western Europe and the United States. Especially obnoxious is when anti-Zionism becomes an euphemism for anti-Semitism. 

 

While extremists, I am sure, represent a minority of the American people, this spread of hatred forces us to pick sides. Democrats claim to be on the side of the good guys – aiding the oppressed, the down-trodden, the poor, those unable to help themselves. But there is hypocrisy in their virtue-signaling. They have more money and spend more on elections – $4.5 billion in 2024 versus $3.5 billion by Republicans, according to Axios. They live in the nation’s wealthiest states – Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, California and Connecticut. In contrast and ironically, Republicans, “oppressors” according to Democrat pooh-bahs, live in the nation’s poorest states, states that lean Republican – Mississippi, West Virginia, Louisiana, Arkansas and Tennessee. In the minds of those on the far-left, I am Simon Legree to their Little Eva.

 

Today, there are over 160 million registered voters in the United States. Yet fitting them neatly into two main parties is more difficult than the task given Sisyphus. It is one reason why the percentage of voters registered as either Democrat or Republican have declined over the past forty years, while those registered as Independents have increased. Nevertheless, extremists in both parties have seized control; so that the interests of the American people are subordinate to the interests of Party leaders. What would our first President think of the gerrymandering efforts in Virginia, North Caroline, Illinois and Florida? Or consider where I live – New England, home to 15.4 million people and about 11 million registered voters. Thirty-five percent are registered as Democrats; twenty-one percent as Republicans, and forty-four percent as Independents. Yet, of the twenty-one House seats, Democrats occupy them all. Of the twelve U.S. Senate seats, Democrats have eleven. Are our Representatives truly representative?

 

This spread of hatred threatens to destroy our country. In his Farewell Address (September 17, 1796), George Washington warned against political parties, that while they “...now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

 

With the notable exception of the Supreme Court, and despite Washington’s admonition, unprincipled men and women have found their way to Washington, as well as to many state capitals and large cities. Nevertheless, I believe that most public servants are still devoted to their jobs and work for the public good. Moderates comprise the majority of the military and even, I would guess, most federal employees. Many are in Congress. But the number of extremists is expanding. What is needed are civility and respect toward all people, tolerance for differing opinions, and humility regarding our own. 

 

An anonymous quote has pertinence: “We may fight against what is wrong (or what we believe to be wrong), but if we allow ourselves to hate that is to ensure our spiritual defeat and our likeness to what we hate.” It reminds me of counsel once offered me by my father: “Never argue with a fool, for a passer-by would be unable to tell who is the fool.” His words apply equally to one who spits out hatred. An eye for an eye does not solve problems.