Written by Nicholas Vetrisek
A new bill proposed by Democrats in the State Assembly is once again pushing racist policies in an attempt to address artificial grievances.
AB 979, authored by Chris Holden and Cristina Garcia, would force companies to have a certain number of Black, Hispanic, and Native Americans on their corporate boards. The bill itself is ridiculous, but the justifications for it are far worse. Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez used as justification the fact that despite Latina women being 40% of the female population of California, they only make up 3% of the population of corporate boards. This sort of reasoning is common for leftists and sounds like it would stop any argument in its tracks, but the truth is that it doesn’t mean anything at all.
FYI, they are now recreating this bill for race, in addition to gender, but specifically excluding Asians. #AB979 🧐 And with gender quotas increasing per #SB826, corporations will have very little say in who sits on their board of directors. Are we really ok with this? https://t.co/zPTKQhIejL
— June Cutter (@junecutter) July 19, 2020
It doesn’t mean anything more than the fact that despite white people being 60% of the population, they only make up 23% of the NBA—and even though women are 51% of the U.S. population, they make up less than 1% of electricians. None of these statistics mean anything other than what people are generally interested in. Judging by the data, it’s clear that Latinas aren’t interested in climbing the corporate ladder in much the same way that women aren’t interested in learning the electrician trade, generally speaking.
This isn’t just speculation either. In the most equal countries on earth—places like Sweden, the Netherlands, and Switzerland—the exact same differences are observed. Women don’t tend to want to work 60+ hour weeks for decades, which is what it often takes to reach the top in the corporate world, and men don’t tend to go into traditionally female fields like cosmetics or fashion.
This is just the societal perspective, but with regard to the companies themselves and what the government should be allowed to do, there is even more wrong with this bill. In an attempt to address nonexistent grievances, AB 979 not only makes companies worse by putting potentially unqualified people in charge, it will also make the situation worse for minorities appointed to the boards because other members may assume—correctly or not—that they are only there because it’s required by law.
This has already happened once before. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas once told a story about how after graduating from Yale Law School, law firms he applied to did not take his degree seriously because they figured he was only admitted because he was Black. Policies like AB 979 only make it harder for qualified minorities to ascend the corporate ladder.
AB 979 is a racist, counterproductive, and authoritarian proposal. It violates the rights of companies to appoint who they believe is most competent, while also excluding other minorities like Jews and Asians. To top it all off, it will create a stigma around competent minorities on boards while the only people who benefit are those who were not qualified in the first place.
