The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties

by Christopher Caldwell

The American anti-racist regime developed in such a way as to exclude the most obvious race-blind solution to prejudice: neutral civil service, college admission, and hiring exams. In Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971), the Supreme Court justices asked whether a power plant in North Carolina could give aptitude tests to its employees. Title VII (Section 703) of the Civil Rights Act had said they could. But Chief Justice Warren Burger and a unanimous Court decided they could not, if such tests disadvantaged blacks in any way: “Good intent or absence of discriminatory intent does not redeem employment procedures or testing mechanisms that operated as ‘built-in headwinds’ for minority groups,” Burger wrote.