America’s Chess Match With Social Justice Reforms

By Norman Franklin

Norman Franklin

Chess is a game of strategy and counterstrategy. I never invested the time needed to learn the game.

I understand the dynamic genius of long-term strategy while also responding to the opponent’s counterstrategy. I never invested the time needed to learn the role of each chess piece and its positioning on the board.

The maneuvering of corporate America, academia, and state legislatures to circumvent reparative measures implemented to achieve social parity has displayed the strategic genius of a Chess Grandmaster.

In the 1960s, civil rights laws, Affirmative Action, and later Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) were enacted to remedy centuries of systemic injustice. Opposition was immediate.

Over the decades, the legal and political systems successfully gutted, overturned, and blocked measures to right systemic inequality. Checkmate.

Pres. Trump issued Executive Order 13950 that prohibited DEI related training in federal agencies and contractors participating in federal programs. The order was challenged in court and rescinded by Pres. Biden.

The maneuver weaponized DEI as a polarizing measure. State legislatures are introducing bills that prohibit DEI initiatives on college campuses; in some states it is illegal.

It’s peculiar. It would seem that a country, a governing system that proports freedom and justice for all, would recognize that its history, its inauspicious beginning has constructed an unbalanced society. Instead, erasure of history is pursued.

The 1960s laid bare the need for special reparative measures to set right the errant course of social justice in America. The immediate opposition to initiatives resulting from the 1964 Civil Rights Act persisted for decades.

Opponents adroitly used the legal system for counterstrategies. When segregationist policies undergirded systemic injustices, the African American, the marginalized and oppressed, lacked access to the courts, and the resources to successfully challenge the system.

Students for Fair Admissions v Harvard was a landmark decision that effectively dismantled Affirmative Action. It culminated decades of legal challenges persistent since 1970. The marginalized tolerated race-based discrimination in all segments of society for 346 years, but 59 years of reparative policies quickly stirred the ire of the status quo, the politicians, academia, and corporate America. The measures are unfair, unjust and violate the 14th Amendment.

State legislators, and conservative politicians framed DEI as divisive initiatives promoting “reverse racism.” We are a society that champions personal responsibility in overcoming barriers to success. The challenged, the marginalized should “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.” They should not look for government intervention.

The reparative measures were designed to assist a threadbare generation emerging out of Jim Crow, segregated America. Most had very few resources. Dr. ML King posits, “It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.”

This should have resonated at the outset of backlash against reparative measures. Counterstrategies prevailed. Segregation, and Jim Crow policies were defacto affirmative action, preferential access based on color. The marginalized lacked the resources to successfully challenge these policies in the courts. Checkmate