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I know the #1776Commission is old news, but as someone who's spent a lot of time on one of its main characters, John C. Calhoun, I can't let something pass without a comment. I know Twitter is not the place for complexity, but hang with me.
A lot of people understandably dunked on the Commission's claim that Calhoun was somehow the inventor, godfather, whatever, of affirmative action and identity politics (on the left).
And while I agree the claim is wrong, I think it's worth fleshing out why rather than just dismissing the claim out of hand as ridiculous.
Because here's the thing. There ARE examples of advocates for minority rights using ideas remarkably similar to Calhoun's. To give just one, in my epilogue I tell the story Lani Guinier, the first woman of color tenured at Harvard Law. https://hls.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/10344/Guinier
Bill Clinton nominated Guinier to the Justice Dept. in 1993 and then rescinded his nomination under a storm of criticism over Guinier's published work on minority rights and democracy. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-06-04-mn-43290-story.html
During the fight over her nomination, Paul Gigot compared Guinier to John C. Calhoun directly in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, writing that “In the Guinier view, some voters are more equal than others.”
What were these views? The next year, Guinier published a book titled...wait for it: THE TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY, in which she detailed how a supposedly colorblind majority rule could oppress minorities, and recommended policy changes.
Those changes included cumulative voting, a proposal to give minority representatives’ votes more weight on issues directly impacting them, or requiring supermajorities, “or its equivalent, a minority veto on critical minority issues.”
Here's the book. https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Tyranny-of-the-Majority/Lani-Guinier/9780029131695
We should acknowledged that some modern advocates of minority rights have used some very Calhoun-like arguments. It would be strange if they didn't, considering that both Calhoun and they worked within the same constitutional framework.
Instead, the reason the Commission's report is ridiculous is the vastly different historical contexts and moral purposes of Calhoun and people like Lani Guinier.
Calhoun was seeking to preserve the power of an already quite powerful minority, and defending an institution that was morally reprehensible.
Guinier was trying to find a way to protect minority groups who have NEVER had power within our majoritarian system, and who historically have been oppressed.
There is a huge moral and historical difference between these two things, but it takes a little more effort to lay out. I think it's worth it.
