Christopher Rufo: A New Civil Rights Agenda

The Right needs to champion colorblind equality and reform existing civil rights law to make it a reality. The agenda: overturn Griggs v. Duke Power Co.; rescind LBJ’s executive order on affirmative action; abolish the disparate impact provisions from the 1991 Civil Rights Act;…

— Christopher F. Rufo ?? (@realchrisrufo) January 15, 2024

To attack MLK is short-sighted. We measure our great statesmen by their accomplishments, within the tragic conditions of history and human nature. Whether it’s the Founders or Dr. King, a certain degree of idealization is necessary for creating a coherent national narrative.

— Christopher F. Rufo ?? (@realchrisrufo) January 15, 2024

The correct reaction to the Left’s noxious ideology is not to say “we need racialism for the Right.” It’s to say, we recognize the realities of race, but aspire to a higher standard—the full expression of natural rights—that subordinates racial faction to the best of our nation.

— Christopher F. Rufo ?? (@realchrisrufo) January 15, 2024

Christopher Rufo is back countersignaling Charlie Kirk on race.

Last summer, he wrote that article called “No To The Politics of Whiteness” in which he scolded Kirk for warming up to White identity politics. Today, he is upset with Kirk for rejecting “civil rights icon” Martin Luther King, Jr. He makes basically the same argument which is that real colorblind equality has never been tried and that the civil rights revolution could have played out differently.

City Journal:

“This year’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was marked by contentious debate about the state of civil rights law in America.

On the left, as always, the failure to achieve equal outcomes along racial lines requires greater state intervention. On the right, a different critique has gained traction, most notably in Christopher Caldwell’s Age of Entitlement and Richard Hanania’s The Origins of Woke, books arguing that American civil rights law has metastasized into a “second Constitution” that has led inexorably to left-wing racialism as the nation’s new orthodoxy.

Happily, another avenue is open to us: reform. The ideological capture of the Civil Rights Act is neither fixed nor inevitable. 

The goal of these reforms is finally to realize a regime of full colorblind equality. The principle, first promised by the Declaration and supported today by a large majority of Americans, would mean that the state would treat all Americans equally, regardless of ancestry, and leave as much discretion as possible to individuals to determine their own futures, without the government imposing or requiring racial favoritism of any kind. Rather than pit ourselves against one another, we should aspire to a higher standard that subordinates racial faction to a broader national identity. …”

In Rufo’s worldview, we need an idealized version of MLK to maintain a coherent national narrative. White identity politics is immoral and counterproductive. “Antiracism” could have played out differently for Whites. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 can be reformed into a “night watchman state.” Also, the stubborn persistence of racial gaps in spite of trillions of dollars and decades of coercive measures by the federal government doesn’t need to be explained by destigmatizing hereditarianism.

As Charlie Kirk has realized, the common thread is a stubborn refusal to acknowledge reality and consequences. Actually, the real MLK was not a conservative, a champion of colorblindness or free market capitalism. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not end racial discrimination. It simply replaced one racial caste system with another. It led to the consolidation and centralization of power in an unaccountable civil rights bureaucracy which had unanticipated downstream cultural consequences. “Antiracism” mutated into the more virulent woke strain because of the persistence of racial gaps. Racial division existed before, during and long after MLK and the Civil Rights Movement. Also, the canonization of MLK as an American hero delegitimized the Founders and all of American history before the Civil Rights Movement, which is why everything from the Washington Redskins to Aunt Jemima have been cleansed in recent years.

The Supreme Court has already struck down affirmative action. It could expand on that precedent to eliminate disparate impact. Even if Christopher Rufo accomplished all of his proposed reforms, there is no reason to believe that racial division would go away. There is no reason to believe that non-White identity politics will diminish. The existence of racial gaps is perceived as proof that the country is irredeemable and tainted by “systemic racism” and “white supremacy.” The inevitable widening of such gaps which would occur under a “night watchman” civil rights state would simply boil the pot and intensify racial division. Decades of burning incense at the altar of MLK has done nothing to stop it.

Conservative liberals like Rufo want to make “antiracism” work, civil rights work, MLK work as a source of national unity. They believe colorblindness can work. Again, they flee from reality and history as it has played out into the fantasy world of a Mirror Universe that no one lives in.