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SCOTUS Nominee Neil Gorsuch
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Amarante




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Mar 20 2017, 4:09 pm
Just what we need - another misogynistic conservative who wants women barefoot and pregnant and certainly not equal in the workplace.

From New York Magazine

So far concerns about what having Judge Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court would mean for women have centered on the presumption that he is anti-abortion. (He has never commented on the issue specifically, but he did rule that Hobby Lobby shouldn’t have to cover its employees’ birth control, and he wanted to rehear a decision blocking Utah’s attempt to defund Planned Parenthood.)

Now some of his former students have raised concerns about Gorsuch’s views on discrimination against female workers. Jennifer Sisk, who graduated from the University of Colorado Law School last year, says that during a Legal Ethics and Professionalism class last spring, Gorsuch told his students that companies should ask women about their pregnancy plans during job interviews, and claimed that many women plan to manipulate their employers by taking maternity leave, then quitting to stay home with their children.

Sisk sent a two-page letter describing the incident to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. It was posted on Sunday night by the National Employment Lawyers Association and the National Women’s Law Center.

In the letter, Sisk says that, on April 19, the class discussed a reading that described a hypothetical law student trying to find a job at a law firm to pay off her student loans, who also wanted to start a family with her husband. This sparked a discussion of work-life balance and student debt, but Gorsuch stepped in to redirect the conversation:

Instead, he asked the class to raise their hands if they knew of a female who had used a company to get maternity benefits and then left right after having a baby. Judge Gorsuch specifically targeted females and maternity leave. This question was not about parents or men shifting priorities after having children. It was solely focused on women using their companies.
Sisk says that when only a few people raised their hands, Gorsuch said, “C’mon, guys.” He told them that “all our hands should be raised because ‘many’ women use their companies for maternity benefits and then leave the company after the baby is born.” She says he “implied that women intentionally manipulate companies and plan to disadvantage their companies, starting from the first interview.”

When one student said employers can’t ask prospective hires about their pregnancy plans, Gorsuch said that was incorrect. Sisk continues:

Instead Judge Gorsuch told the class that not only could a future employer ask female interviewees about their pregnancy and family plans, companies must ask females about their family and pregnancy plans to protect the company. Judge Gorsuch tied this back to his original comment that companies need to ask these questions in order to protect themselves against female employees.

Throughout this class Judge Gorsuch continued to make it very clear that the question of commitment to work over family was one that only women had to answer for.
Guidelines published by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission do not ban asking questions about family plans, but an applicant’s answers are not supposed to figure into hiring decisions, according to NPR.

Sisk says officials at the school told her they thought Gorsuch’s interpretation was incorrect. She took her concerns to the deans and they told her they would speak to Gorsuch at the end of the term. She does not know if they followed through.

The National Women’s Law Center posted several documents supporting Sisk’s claim, including her post to a Facebook group for female lawyers and part of an email exchange with the dean. There’s also an anonymous statement from another student who took the class. They wrote:

One of the topics he discussed was strongly gendered. Judge Gorsuch told our class that female lawyers get divorced at twice the rate of male lawyers. He also said that many female lawyers became pregnant, and questioned whether they should do so on their law firms’ dime. He asked the female students in my class what they would do if they became pregnant and about the impact of their pregnancies on their law firms. He also asked how they would take care of their children after those children are born.
Both students said it seemed Gorsuch was expressing his personal views rather than playing devil’s advocate to spark classroom discussion, though they were happy with him as a professor overall.

Sisk told NPR that she sent the letter “so that the proper questions could be asked during his confirmation hearings.” In a Facebook post just after President Trump announced that he’d selected Gorsuch from his list of 21 candidates to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia, Sisk said Gorsuch has “a sharp judicial mind” but she still finds his views troubling.

“He does not support FMLA, women as equal citizens, and values corporations above people,” she wrote. “He’s still better than the rest of the choices.”
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ectomorph




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Mar 20 2017, 4:35 pm
Another student claims its not true.
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SixOfWands




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Mar 20 2017, 4:55 pm
ectomorph wrote:
Another student claims its not true.


Not entirely. He claimed that the topics were discussed, but not in the manner described by Sisk:

Quote:
Although Judge Gorsuch did discuss some of the topics mentioned in the letter,
he did not do so in the manner described. The judge frequently asked us to consider the
various challenges we would face as new attorneys. Among those challenges were
balancing our desire to perform public service with our need to pay off student loan
debt, and the tension between building a career in a time-intensive profession and
starting a family and raising children—especially for women.


http://www.politico.com/f/?id=.....d0000

Also note that Sisk complained about this immediately, not when Gorsuch was nominated. Additionally, Gorsuch's supporters claims that "This particular conversation comes up every year in his course, and he hasn't previously been accused of adopting any particular views."

IOW, it happened. The intent of it is the only question.
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DrMom




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Mar 20 2017, 6:32 pm
He seems like an intelligent, thoughtful person.

Most people on the Left thought so too, until DJT nominated him for the Supreme Court. Then the Magic Outrage Machine transformed him into a horrible person. Amazing.
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SixOfWands




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Mar 20 2017, 6:51 pm
DrMom wrote:
He seems like an intelligent, thoughtful person.

Most people on the Left thought so too, until DJT nominated him for the Supreme Court. Then the Magic Outrage Machine transformed him into a horrible person. Amazing.


Cry me a river.

On March 11, 2016 (five days before President Obama nominated Judge Garland), Senator Orrin Hatch said: "The President told me several times he's going to name a moderate, but I don't believe him ... [Obama] could easily name Merrick Garland, who is a fine man. He probably won’t do that because this appointment is about the election. So I’m pretty sure he’ll name someone the [liberal Democratic base] wants." He also said of him, on his nominee to the DC Circuit, "“Merrick B. Garland is highly qualified to sit on the D.C. circuit. His intelligence and his scholarship cannot be questioned… His legal experience is equally impressive… Accordingly, I believe Mr. Garland is a fine nominee. I know him personally, I know of his integrity, I know of his legal ability, I know of his honesty, I know of his acumen, and he belongs on the court. I believe he is not only a fine nominee, but is as good as Republicans can expect from this administration. In fact, I would place him at the top of the list.”

March 16, Obama nominates Garland. Suddenly, he's poison. One day, they're condemning Obama for not nominating someone like him; 5 days later, the Republicans refused to even consider him.

“If Hillary Clinton becomes president, I am going to do everything I can do to make sure four years from now, we still got an opening on the Supreme Court,” North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr said in an audio recording of his meeting with GOP volunteers on Saturday. CNN obtained a copy of the audio.

GOP Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Ted Cruz of Texas suggested that they would have blocked any Clinton nominees to the Supreme Court had she been elected. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said that he “[couldn't] imagine” voting for any Clinton nominee though he stopped short of vowing to block a pick from a Democratic president.

So I'm not all that impressed by conservatives who think that we shouldn't be looking at the guy more closely.
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PinkFridge




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Mar 20 2017, 6:55 pm
SixofWands, my impression from listening to RW radio was that if Clinton won, they might well have approved Garland as the best they would be likely to get for the next 4/8 years.
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SixOfWands




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Mar 20 2017, 7:07 pm
PinkFridge wrote:
SixofWands, my impression from listening to RW radio was that if Clinton won, they might well have approved Garland as the best they would be likely to get for the next 4/8 years.


Oh, you mean that the Republicans thought the next president should appoint a Justice to the empty seat ... so long as that next president was a Republican. If not, then quick, take Merrick Garland.

Garland was nominated in March. The election wasn't until November, and the inauguration in January. Yet he wasn't even considered.

So I'm just not impressed by this whole "gosh, he's qualified, how dare you not rubber stamp him."

BTW, ever wonder how much the fact that Garland would have been the 4th Jew on the Supremes affected the Republican position?
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PinkFridge




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Mar 20 2017, 8:23 pm
SixOfWands wrote:
Oh, you mean that the Republicans thought the next president should appoint a Justice to the empty seat ... so long as that next president was a Republican. If not, then quick, take Merrick Garland.

Garland was nominated in March. The election wasn't until November, and the inauguration in January. Yet he wasn't even considered.

So I'm just not impressed by this whole "gosh, he's qualified, how dare you not rubber stamp him."

BTW, ever wonder how much the fact that Garland would have been the 4th Jew on the Supremes affected the Republican position?


I think that had he been the first conservative Jew instead of the fourth liberal Jew, it might have impacted them. I know that it gave me pause. Which is probably unfair because people spoke very well of Garland in his job, even while preferring someone else for SCOTUS.
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tigerwife




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Mar 20 2017, 9:40 pm
I'm not going to offer my uninformed opinion on politics, but just had to LOL- women taking jobs so that they can take advantage of maternity benefits? The US has one of the least beneficial maternity policies compared to developed countries. (OT but that sounds so grammatically incorrect that I'd actually appreciate someone rephrasing that for me).

I have heard of women doing this in certain European countries who give 9+ months of paid leave.
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Jeanette




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Mar 20 2017, 9:59 pm
SixOfWands wrote:
Cry me a river.

On March 11, 2016 (five days before President Obama nominated Judge Garland), Senator Orrin Hatch said: "The President told me several times he's going to name a moderate, but I don't believe him ... [Obama] could easily name Merrick Garland, who is a fine man. He probably won’t do that because this appointment is about the election. So I’m pretty sure he’ll name someone the [liberal Democratic base] wants." He also said of him, on his nominee to the DC Circuit, "“Merrick B. Garland is highly qualified to sit on the D.C. circuit. His intelligence and his scholarship cannot be questioned… His legal experience is equally impressive… Accordingly, I believe Mr. Garland is a fine nominee. I know him personally, I know of his integrity, I know of his legal ability, I know of his honesty, I know of his acumen, and he belongs on the court. I believe he is not only a fine nominee, but is as good as Republicans can expect from this administration. In fact, I would place him at the top of the list.”

March 16, Obama nominates Garland. Suddenly, he's poison. One day, they're condemning Obama for not nominating someone like him; 5 days later, the Republicans refused to even consider him.

“If Hillary Clinton becomes president, I am going to do everything I can do to make sure four years from now, we still got an opening on the Supreme Court,” North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr said in an audio recording of his meeting with GOP volunteers on Saturday. CNN obtained a copy of the audio.

GOP Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Ted Cruz of Texas suggested that they would have blocked any Clinton nominees to the Supreme Court had she been elected. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said that he “[couldn't] imagine” voting for any Clinton nominee though he stopped short of vowing to block a pick from a Democratic president.

So I'm not all that impressed by conservatives who think that we shouldn't be looking at the guy more closely.


Unfortunatetly the Trump Resistance is a day late and a dollar short. If there had been strong pushback from constituents against leaving the seat vacant we would not be in the sorry mess we're in today.
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sushilover




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Mar 21 2017, 10:08 am
tigerwife wrote:
I'm not going to offer my uninformed opinion on politics, but just had to LOL- women taking jobs so that they can take advantage of maternity benefits? The US has one of the least beneficial maternity policies compared to developed countries. (OT but that sounds so grammatically incorrect that I'd actually appreciate someone rephrasing that for me).

I have heard of women doing this in certain European countries who give 9+ months of paid leave.


Even though U.S doesn't force companies (or taxpayers) to provide paid maternity leave, there are still many businesses that do.

If you owned a business that provides paid maternity leave, would you want to have the right to make sure that you are not being scammed by a prospective employee? Gorsuch seems to be claiming that this is a common occurrence. I have no idea if that is true. Without data, there is no way to back up or dispute his claim. But knowing that it is a possibility, why should employers be denied that right?
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33055




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Mar 21 2017, 10:14 am
sushilover wrote:
Even though U.S doesn't force companies (or taxpayers) to provide paid maternity leave, there are still many businesses that do.

If you owned a business that provides paid maternity leave, would you want to have the right to make sure that you are not being scammed by a prospective employee? Gorsuch seems to be claiming that this is a common occurrence. I have no idea if that is true. Without data, there is no way to back up or dispute his claim. But knowing that it is a possibility, why should employers be denied that right?


I've heard of this from ladies. I have no idea if this is prevalent, but perhaps a loan which is forgiven overtime would prevent this. Wall St uses this to keep this for employee retention. (It also spreads out the taxable event for sign in bonuses. )
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Amarante




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Mar 21 2017, 10:27 am
Wanted to interject that while the US doesn't guarantee paid maternity leave, there are rights regarding unpaid maternity leave and businesses with a certain number of employees have to keep a job open when a woman takes off time for maternity leave.

I have seen Trump on video decrying maternity absence - (assuming unpaid) as an "inconvenience" to the employer.

I have also seen several threads on this forum in which women were advised not to tell employers they were pregnant or were planning to become pregnant shortly so while it might not be paid, many employers might be reluctant to hire a woman, train her for a critical position, have her go on leave and have to hold her position open for her. That's the reason courts determined that asking a woman about pregnancy or her children was not permissible since it was likely to result in discrimination.

I am in favor of maternity leave FWIW but I am not blind to the potential burden it places on an employer.
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sushilover




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Mar 21 2017, 10:40 am
Amarante wrote:
That's the reason courts determined that asking a woman about pregnancy or her children was not permissible since it was likely to result in discrimination.

I am in favor of maternity leave FWIW but I am not blind to the potential burden it places on an employer.


According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, asking if a woman is pregnant is not illegal, denying them the job based on their pregnancy is.
But practically speaking, it is foolish to ask this question, as it is liable to open you up to lawsuits.
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sushilover




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Mar 21 2017, 10:46 am
Amarante wrote:


I am in favor of maternity leave FWIW but I am not blind to the potential burden it places on an employer.


I hear your point, but why would you call anyone who disagrees with you " a misogynist ... who doesn't want women equal in the workforce"? Asking questions about the legality of forcing employees to hire pregnant women does not mean one hates women!
It's seems like a nasty thing to do- calling someone a woman hater just because they disagree with you on policy.
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SixOfWands




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Mar 21 2017, 10:54 am
sushilover wrote:
Even though U.S doesn't force companies (or taxpayers) to provide paid maternity leave, there are still many businesses that do.

If you owned a business that provides paid maternity leave, would you want to have the right to make sure that you are not being scammed by a prospective employee? Gorsuch seems to be claiming that this is a common occurrence. I have no idea if that is true. Without data, there is no way to back up or dispute his claim. But knowing that it is a possibility, why should employers be denied that right?


So, for example, would you be in favor of businesses being entitled to discriminate against frum women in their hiring practices? Frum women have a higher birth rate than most groups. They're likely to take more advantage of maternity leave (paid or unpaid), which is detrimental to business.

And what would you have prospective employers ask, anyways? "So, Ms. Schwartz, are you z3xually active? Oh, you are. I see. Do you intend to have children? Not right away, Great! Well, if we hire you, we're going to need to make sure that's the case, for at least 2 years. You'll need to prove to us that you're using 2 reliable methods of birth control, and sign an affidavit. We don't want to take any chances!"
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SixOfWands




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Mar 21 2017, 10:56 am
sushilover wrote:
According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, asking if a woman is pregnant is not illegal, denying them the job based on their pregnancy is.
But practically speaking, it is foolish to ask this question, as it is liable to open you up to lawsuits.


Practically speaking, unless you're spectacularly and uniquely qualified, its unlikely that anyone who said she was pregnant would be hired. There's always a reason, always an equally qualified candidate. Welcome to the real world.
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sushilover




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Mar 21 2017, 11:26 am
SixOfWands wrote:
So, for example, would you be in favor of businesses being entitled to discriminate against frum women in their hiring practices? Frum women have a higher birth rate than most groups. They're likely to take more advantage of maternity leave (paid or unpaid), which is detrimental to business.

And what would you have prospective employers ask, anyways? "So, Ms. Schwartz, are you z3xually active? Oh, you are. I see. Do you intend to have children? Not right away, Great! Well, if we hire you, we're going to need to make sure that's the case, for at least 2 years. You'll need to prove to us that you're using 2 reliable methods of birth control, and sign an affidavit. We don't want to take any chances!"


Ok, now you're asking my opinion on the civil rights act of 1964. For that I'll have to quote Thomas Sowell:
Champions of the Official Version of History ignore already existing trends in black employment, well under way long before the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, from which we are taught all blessings flowed. Writes Sowell: “In the period from 1954 to 1964, for example, the number of blacks in professional, technical, and similar high-level positions more than doubled. In other kinds of occupations, the advance of blacks was even greater during the 1940s — when there was little or no civil rights policy — than during the 1950s when the civil rights revolution was in its heyday.

“The rise in the number of blacks in professional and technical occupations in the two years from 1964 to 1966 (after the Civil Rights Act) was in fact less than in the one year from 1961 to 1962 (before the Civil Rights Act). If one takes into account the growing black population by looking at percentages instead of absolute numbers, it becomes even clearer that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 represented no acceleration in trends that had been going on for many years. The percentage of employed blacks who were managers and administrators was the same in 1967 as in 1964 — and 1960. Nor did the institution of ‘goals and timetables’ at the end of 1971 mark any acceleration in the long trend of rising black representation in these occupations. True, there was an appreciable increase in the percentage of blacks in professional and technical fields from 1971 to 1972, but almost entirely offset by a reduction in the percentage of blacks who were managers and administrators.”

Sowell further notes that Asians and Hispanics show similar long-term upward trends that had begun years before the passage of the 1964 Act, and which were not accelerated either by the Act itself or by the “affirmative action” programs that (inevitably) followed. Mexican-Americans’ incomes rose in relation to those of whites between 1959 and 1969, but not at a greater rate than between 1949 and 1959. Chinese and Japanese-American households had matched their white counterparts in income by 1959 (in spite of the fact that Japanese-Americans had been interned in concentration camps by a Democratic president less than two decades before, and countless Americans blamed Japan for the loss of their sons).


About the questions being asked about someone's zexual life, I think we can trust people enough to turn down a job that has such terrible conditions. And if someone specifically wants that particular job, even knowing how #%&**y her employers are, what right do we have to stop her?

For example, I once switched from a job which offered paid maternity leave to a job which offered me far more pay and chance of growth but no paid disability at all. I made my decision and happily took the second job. If the government had forced my employer to pay maternity leave and other entitlements, would I have been offered the same salary? I'm sure not!
Besides for that, it's not the government's job to tell employers who they can hire and for what reason.


TLDR: the civil rights act and affirmative action programs did not help and were serious government overreach into the private sector .
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SixOfWands




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Mar 21 2017, 12:27 pm
sushilover wrote:
Ok, now you're asking my opinion on the civil rights act of 1964. For that I'll have to quote Thomas Sowell:
Champions of the Official Version of History ignore already existing trends in black employment, well under way long before the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, from which we are taught all blessings flowed. Writes Sowell: “In the period from 1954 to 1964, for example, the number of blacks in professional, technical, and similar high-level positions more than doubled. In other kinds of occupations, the advance of blacks was even greater during the 1940s — when there was little or no civil rights policy — than during the 1950s when the civil rights revolution was in its heyday.

“The rise in the number of blacks in professional and technical occupations in the two years from 1964 to 1966 (after the Civil Rights Act) was in fact less than in the one year from 1961 to 1962 (before the Civil Rights Act). If one takes into account the growing black population by looking at percentages instead of absolute numbers, it becomes even clearer that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 represented no acceleration in trends that had been going on for many years. The percentage of employed blacks who were managers and administrators was the same in 1967 as in 1964 — and 1960. Nor did the institution of ‘goals and timetables’ at the end of 1971 mark any acceleration in the long trend of rising black representation in these occupations. True, there was an appreciable increase in the percentage of blacks in professional and technical fields from 1971 to 1972, but almost entirely offset by a reduction in the percentage of blacks who were managers and administrators.”

Sowell further notes that Asians and Hispanics show similar long-term upward trends that had begun years before the passage of the 1964 Act, and which were not accelerated either by the Act itself or by the “affirmative action” programs that (inevitably) followed. Mexican-Americans’ incomes rose in relation to those of whites between 1959 and 1969, but not at a greater rate than between 1949 and 1959. Chinese and Japanese-American households had matched their white counterparts in income by 1959 (in spite of the fact that Japanese-Americans had been interned in concentration camps by a Democratic president less than two decades before, and countless Americans blamed Japan for the loss of their sons).


About the questions being asked about someone's zexual life, I think we can trust people enough to turn down a job that has such terrible conditions. And if someone specifically wants that particular job, even knowing how #%&**y her employers are, what right do we have to stop her?

For example, I once switched from a job which offered paid maternity leave to a job which offered me far more pay and chance of growth but no paid disability at all. I made my decision and happily took the second job. If the government had forced my employer to pay maternity leave and other entitlements, would I have been offered the same salary? I'm sure not!
Besides for that, it's not the government's job to tell employers who they can hire and for what reason.


TLDR: the civil rights act and affirmative action programs did not help and were serious government overreach into the private sector .


You sound like the administration saying that feeding kids at school doesn't work because test scores (allegedly) didn't increase. But in any case, the numbers you cite are old. On the 50 year anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, examination showed that while we still have a long way to go, we've come far. Eg:



The Civil Rights Act didn't tell anyone WHO to hire. It dictated reasons that people couldn't decline to hire, or couldn't fire. You don't have to hire a woman, or an African American, or an Asian. But you can't reject someone BECAUSE of that.

The Civil Rights Act prohibited state and municipal governments from denying access to public facilities on grounds of race, color, religion or national origin. It outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion or national origin in hotels, motels, restaurants, theaters, and all other public accommodations engaged in interstate commerce (it exempted "private clubs.") No more segregated restrooms (can you imagine traveling with your child, and being barred from public restrooms because of the color of your skin) or water fountains. No more moving to the back of the bus. No more segregated hotels.

The Civil Rights Act changes America. For the better.
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sushilover




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Mar 21 2017, 12:40 pm
SixOfWands wrote:
You sound like the administration saying that feeding kids at school doesn't work because test scores (allegedly) didn't increase. But in any case, the numbers you cite are old. On the 50 year anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, examination showed that while we still have a long way to go, we've come far. Eg:




The Civil Rights Act prohibited state and municipal governments from denying access to public facilities on grounds of race, color, religion or national origin. It outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion or national origin in hotels, motels, restaurants, theaters, and all other public accommodations engaged in interstate commerce (it exempted "private clubs.") No more segregated restrooms (can you imagine traveling with your child, and being barred from public restrooms because of the color of your skin) or water fountains. No more moving to the back of the bus. No more segregated hotels.


I don't have time to give a full answer because I'm running out to my lunch break.
But if the civil rights act had simply stopped the government from enacting these vile laws, that would have been awesome.
Again, note that it was the government forcing businesses to exempt certain races and nationalities. The government has no right to do that obviously!
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