Last week, Heather Mac Donald, who is one of the best people in mainstream media, wrote this: “Trump Takes His Biggest Step Yet Toward Restoring Meritocracy.”

He had just signed this executive order, which bans a pernicious legal doctrine called “disparate impact.”

This terrible, anti-white practice goes all the way back to 1971, since before a lot of you were born. Here’s how it started.

In the 1950s, before anti-discrimination laws, the North Carolina-based Duke Power Company hired blacks only for low-level jobs.

For better jobs, it weeded out less promising whites by requiring a high school diploma and good scores on the Wonderlic IQ test and a mechanical aptitude test.

After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned race discrimination, Duke Power opened all job categories to blacks.

Its diploma and test requirements kept out more blacks than whites. Thirty-four percent of whites had a high school diploma but only 12 percent of blacks did.

The tests weeded out 42 percent of white applicants, but 94 percent of blacks. Nobody could argue that these requirements were set up to keep out blacks. Duke Power had used them to pick the best white candidates, and when the law changed, anyone could apply.

However, since blacks had a harder time meeting the grade, the requirements were said to have a “disparate impact” on them. Yes, they hit blacks harder. The ’64 Civil Rights act had banned intentional race discrimination, but the Supreme Court — just five years later in a case called Griggs v Duke Power — said that racially neutral standards with a desperate impact can also be racist and just as illegal as deliberate, outright race discrimination—even if there was no intent to discriminate at all.

Obviously, there have to be hiring standards. If you want to be a lifeguard, you have to know how to swim. That has a disparate impact on blacks because fewer blacks than whites can swim.

Credit Image: © Donat Sorokin/TASS via ZUMA Press

So, the court permitted disparate impact for standards that are a business necessity: something someone absolutely must know how to do to do the job. The court said a high-school education and good test scores weren’t a business necessity for Duke Power.

What is a “business necessity?” That question has kept lawyers fat for more than half a century. But it’s illegal to hire only the best. You might want your management trainees to have IQs of at least 125. That would have a drastic disparate impact on blacks because they are only one thirtieth as likely as whites to score that high.

The fact is, brains matter for any job. Smart waiters and warehouse clerks generally do a better job than dim ones, but IQ tests have a disparate impact, and good luck explaining to a judge why you want smart people in your warehouse.

It’s remarkable that as far back as 1971, the Warren Burger court — eight white men and one black — decided without dissent to enshrine something as crazy as disparate impact.

People think this anti-white foolishness — CRT, DEI, white privilege, systemic racism — is more recent. Those dead white males did it to us first. There’s even a roadside marker celebrating their prohibition of “discriminatory practices.”

Women can claim disparate impact. Alabama required prison guards be at least 5-feet 2-inches tall and weigh at least 120 pounds. That kept out more women than men, and a court ruled that size wasn’t a “business necessity” for prison guards. I think a guard should have an imposing presence, but I guess the court thought you could be a dwarf and be a prison guard.

Abercrombie & Fitch had to pay $40 million to non-whites because it wanted clerks in its stores to have the “Abercrombie look:” attractive, classic hair styles, no tats or facial hair, no head coverings, and a slim body that showed off Abercrombie clothes to good effect.

It wasn’t a whites-only policy and there were some non-white clerks, but “the look” had a disparate impact. Now, of course, we have court-ordered “diversity” — and your clothes cost more to cover that $40 million.

“Disparate impact” can be used to overturn zoning that bans apartment buildings. If your town doesn’t want apartments because they attract low-lifes, too bad. Low-lifes are more likely to be BIPOCs, so the Feds can force you to zone for apartments.

California came close to requiring judges to give non-whites lighter criminal sentences. In 2023, Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer introduced AB 852, which said: “Whenever the court has discretion” in criminal sentencing, it “shall consider the disparate impact on historically disenfranchised and system-impacted populations.”

Laws against murder and robbery have a disparate impact on blacks and Hispanics, alright, so judges would have to ease up on sentences. Believe it or not, this awful bill passed, 58-13, in the California lower house, but died in the senate.

The same thinking was behind this headline from three years ago: “Washington schools adopt race-based discipline, white students to get harsher punishment.”

The Clover Park district — 72 percent non-white — was punishing non-whites more often than it punished whites.

“Culturally responsive discipline” was the solution. In other words, slam the white kids harder.

Fortunately, Mr. Trump just signed another executive order: “Reinstating Commonsense School Discipline Policies,” which requires race-blind punishment based on bad behavior and nothing else.

Reinstating common sense. It’s about time.

Everything I have been talking about, and plenty more, comes from ignoring not just common sense but hard science. People of different races don’t have the same average abilities. This graph reflects one of the oldest, best-established findings in psychological testing.

The red bars are black distributions in IQ, and the blue bars are whites. The black average is 85 and the white average is 100. Everything to the right of 100 means above-average. Look at how whites dominate in that space. And these are distributions. The actual number of high-IQ blacks will be a fraction of that because there are more whites than blacks.

Talking about this is taboo. There has never been a “disparate impact” court case in which the defendants explained, “Your honor, there is a disparate impact because groups aren’t the same. There’s no racism here. We are scrupulously fair in applying our standards to all candidates.” No one dares say that.

This pernicious race/IQ taboo has got to be smashed. The executive order banning disparate impact thinking is an important step. But please, Mr. Trump, appoint a blue-ribbon panel to study the facts about race differences, and present the findings with as much fanfare and press coverage as possible.

Credit Image: © Molly Riley/White House/Planet Pix via ZUMA Press Wire

It would create a huge stink, but huge stinks are your specialty. The country must tear off its blinders and grapple with a problem that has been tormenting us for decades.

https://www.amren.com/videos/2025/05/how-did-we-get-these-vicious-laws