Do we discriminate? Of course--it's tradition!
When the University of Arkansas band played "Dixie," that was tradition. It was wrong to play "Dixie," and wrong for me to stand and cheer when the whole crowd roared.
I have served on numerous boards and commissions, and every one of them discriminated. That was wrong. Those boards and commissions mostly consisted of old white men. That was wrong, and it was and is discrimination.
Worldwide, those traditions are under fire, but the United States is not leading the way. California has a new law that seeks to address discrimination against women on corporate boards registered in the state, but on the whole, Americans seem content to continue discrimination in multiple ways.
Let's look at some examples.
If you are a left-handed woman of color living in Arkansas' 4th Congressional District, you are loaded down with discrimination. It starts with being a woman of any color.
Equal representation under the law is a founding principal of our country, and omitting women from having an equal say on a board or commission is discrimination; it doesn't matter if we have been doing it since 1836.
The Arkansas Legislature is on record as opposing the Equal Rights Amendment, and it seems its members are content to maintain a token-woman approach to equality: Throw a bone to the ERA folks and say, "We have a woman on our board!"
A 10-person board with one female member means she has 10 percent input. Equal representation? Who are we kidding?
The governor appoints around 350 boards and commissions, and I don't have a clue how many, if any, have equal numbers of women and men. Gov. Hutchinson could make an executive decision to not replace any man who finishes a term with another man until the board or commission is made up least 50 percent women.
If you think our governor is going to do that, you are living in a parallel universe. I once had a guy say to me, "There aren't that many qualified women."
State Rep. Deborah Ferguson introduced HB 1676 in 2019, which would require equal representation on some but not all boards and commissions appointed by the governor and encourage constitutional officers to give equal opportunities to men and women when making appointments. It was withdrawn by the author after failing to achieve sufficient support from the referred-to committee.
We think the American concept of one person, one vote is an example to the world of how to govern, but we aren't keeping up with western democracies. There are a number of countries that have a majority of women cabinet ministers, and several have laws and regulations that mandate equal representation.
If you are a man on an all-male board or one with a token woman, you could resign in protest of the obvious discrimination. If several hundred men simultaneously resigned, it would send a strong message. Whose is going to be first?
Let's move on to gerrymandering. If you want to see a masterpiece of how boundaries of electoral constituency can be manipulated to favor one party or class, go to the Internet and print out two maps: The counties in the congressional districts, and a second map with the counties' percentages of Black residents.
Even a cursory glance will tell you that district boundaries are drawn to assure the state will be represented by four Republicans. Union County and Madison County are both in the 4th district, and Chicot County is in the 1st Congressional District, as is Baxter County.
Black residents in those counties have voted heavily Democratic; in Chicot County they make up 54 percent of the population, in Madison and Baxter counties it's 0.2 percent. Obviously, if you are a Republican you don't want Chicot County, Desha, and a couple of adjacent counties in the 4th Congressional District, and if you run the boundaries up to northwest Arkansas, you want to leave out Washington County (in the 3rd Congressional District), which has a lot of Democratic votes.
Toss in 0.2 percent and 0.1 percent counties such as Madison and Newton, and poof! It is nearly a cinch to have a Republican U.S. representative in the 4th. That's discrimination, and with the new census it is going to get worse. If Democrats were in the majority they would do the same, but it's still discrimination.
Left-handed people are accustomed to discrimination, and when we walk up to double glass doors in a storefront, we automatically grab the right-hand door, knowing the left door will usually be locked.
If you grew up in the 1950s and '60s, most primary schools only had right-handed desks, and you had to do a crab-claw hook to write. It seems the 10-15 percent of Americans who are left-handed have been discriminated against almost since the beginning of time.
Muslims are taught to be only right-handed. The left hand is for sanitary wiping.
Everything we do is predicated by the bias of being right-handed. Many languages still contain references to left-handedness to convey awkwardness, dishonesty, stupidity, or other undesirable qualities.
However, a left-handed tennis player does have an advantage when serving to the ad court. A good spin serve will send their opponent out on the sidewalk.
How about Arkansas citizens of color? Surely you don't think they are equally represented. If you add local boards and commissions to the board appointed by the governor, the state total is easily over 1,000.
To be non-discriminatory these boards and commissions should have 50 percent women and on average 15 percent people of color. An equally proportioned board with 12 members would be made up of six women and six men, of which two are of color and one is left-handed.
If any such board exists, I'd like to know about it.
Email Richard Mason at richard@gibraltarenergy.com.