Chris Rufo writes plan to overhaul civil rights laws that paved way for DEI

Conservative activist Chris Rufo, who rose to fame calling out Critical Race Theory and DEI in American institutions, argued that the best way to stop those ideologies is by reforming civil rights law itself.

Rufo outlined a "New Civil Rights Agenda" for conservatives, arguing in City Journal that a reckoning is due for the Civil Rights Act. 

The Civil Rights Act, passed in 1964, was intended at the time to prevent discrimination. Rufo addressed how multiple books recently argued that this legislation "metastasized into a ‘second Constitution’" that, instead of ending racial discrimination, enshrined left-wing politics into American life. 

"This critique has merit," Rufo wrote. "The Civil Rights Act of 1964 appealed to the noble principle of equality, but over time the legal structure that it helped establish has metamorphized into an intrusive ‘diversity and inclusion’ bureaucracy that discriminates against supposed ‘oppressor’ groups — namely [W]hites and Asians — and imposes left-wing ideology."

Rufo argued that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 "appealed to the noble principle of equality, but over time the legal structure that it helped establish has metamorphized into an intrusive 'diversity and inclusion' bureaucracy that discriminates against supposed 'oppressor' groups — namely [W]hites and Asians—and imposes left-wing ideology." (Rufo photo by Thomas Simonetti for The Washington Post via Getty Images. Civil rights march photo by (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images). Modern student protest photo by Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images))

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While Rufo argued that the Civil Rights Act, in its time, "was a response to state-sanctioned racial injustice in the United States," he offered a plan on how to "reform" what civil rights laws have since become to establish a more meritocratic standard of "colorblind equality."

"First, reformers should outlaw affirmative action and racial preferences of any kind. Both policies are euphemisms for racial discrimination," he wrote. "The next president should rescind Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 Executive Order 11246, which established ‘affirmative action’ and marked the initial deviation from the standard of colorblind equality."

He argued that Congress should "strengthen this principle by amending the language of the Civil Rights Act to make indisputably clear that the law will not permit state-sanctioned discrimination toward any racial group, whether in the minority or the majority."

His second suggestion: "Reformers must eliminate the ‘disparate impact’ provisions in the Civil Rights Act of 1991 and overturn Griggs v. Duke Power Co., both of which have entrenched the doctrine that disparate group outcomes are de facto evidence of racial discrimination."

Manhattan Institute's Chris Rufo took partial credit for having "squeezed" far-left Claudine Gay out of Harvard’s presidency. ("Word On Fire" and Harvard University)

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"A system of equal rights necessarily means unequal outcomes, as different groups have different preferences, talents, and capacities," he wrote. "Under a just system, the criterion for assessing biased treatment would not be disparate outcomes but specific, concrete discrimination, driven by animus." 

He added that changing this standard "would have an immediate effect, reducing the number of frivolous lawsuits and changing the incentives that have driven institutions toward racialist ideology as a defensive strategy."

Rufo also called upon legislators to specifically "abolish the DEI bureaucracies in all American institutions," saying that they "openly discriminate against disfavored racial groups, impose ideological orthodoxies on American citizens, and restrict freedoms of speech and association."

He suggested that one of the core issues with these bureaucracies is that they justify their existence by either finding or fabricating racial controversies, and suggested the best way to help prevent this is to reduce their size, as they are "no longer necessary" in modern society.

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"The goal of these reforms is finally to realize a regime of full colorblind equality," Rufo wrote. "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."

"Americans do not have to accept the bigotries of the past or the present. In a vast and diverse country, colorblind equality is the only way forward," he said.

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This followed an earlier article he wrote for IM–1776 on how to retake academia and elite institutions, itself published shortly after he took partial credit for having "squeezed" Claudine Gay out of Harvard’s presidency.