A discount for the right skin color

It was the week of the Martin Luther King holiday, and the public library in Germantown, Md., was gearing up to host MoComCon, the annual Montgomery County Comic Convention. The day-long event celebrates "comics, graphic novels, and fandoms," according to the MoComCon website. It includes cosplay contests, kids' crafts, anime viewing, a dance party, Pokémon trivia, and "Superhero Storytime." And, of course, plenty of space for vendors to market their comic-related wares.

Looking through the convention website, reporter Mallory Wilson of The Washington Times discovered something: Vendors were being charged "different prices based on race and gender, with the highest prices reserved for businesses run by white men."

For a 6-foot table with two chairs and access to electricity, the website listed a rate of $325. But if the application was from a "woman- or minority-owned business," the charge dropped to $250.

When Wilson asked about the disparity, a Montgomery County spokesperson defended it. The pricing differential, she said, was intended to make the convention "as inclusive as possible" and to boost vendors who were "focused on trying to reach minority, Black, and brown communities." The executive director of Friends of the Library, the chief sponsor of MoComCon, approved as well. Charging different fees based on sex and skin color, Ari Z. Brooks told the Times, "reflects our joint commitment to promote inclusivity in library programming."

A vendor at a comic convention. (John Tlumacki/Boston Globe) Except that there is nothing "inclusive" about penalizing or rewarding people on the basis of their race and gender.

Nor is there anything ethical about it.

Nor is there anything legal about it.

To his credit, Montgomery County executive Marc Elrich — unlike his spokesperson — realized at once that the pricing scheme was unconscionable. When a reporter at a press briefing asked him about the Times story, he didn't equivocate. "If they're doing it, I can't see how that's not illegal," he said. "Different rates for different races? That is so old school, we are well past that day. . . . There's no way — I can't believe that."

Under Section 27 of the Montgomery County Code, it is illegal for any "owner, lessee, operator, manager, agent, or employee of any place of public accommodation" to discriminate on the basis of a dozen characteristics, including race, color, sex, or ancestry. That prohibition has been on the books since 1965. It was enacted, in other words, shortly after Congress passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which outlawed discrimination based on race and sex in any establishment engaged in interstate commerce. The Civil Rights Act, in turn, was grounded in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids any state to "deny to any person . . . the equal protection of the laws."

True to his word, Elrich promptly nixed the MoComCon pricing scheme. The revised vendor application for the convention (which was postponed because of weather) no longer differentiates illegally by race and sex. The charge for all vendors has been lowered to $175.

But while Montgomery County is no longer engaged in such wrongheaded "inclusiveness," the mindset behind the original plan is alive and well in countless other places.

Two generations after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, 60 years after King's timeless plea that Americans be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character, more than a decade and a half after the Supreme Court's ringing declaration that "the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race," the practice of sorting people by their physical characteristics persists.

Numerous jurisdictions and institutions continue to enforce racial and gender set-asides in contracting and hiring. The City of Boston blithely announces on its website that municipal procurement contracts are "available exclusively for minority- and women-owned businesses." The State of California requires that the boards of publicly held corporations include a minimum number of "diverse" members. Almost as soon as racial preferences in college admissions were ruled unconstitutional last summer, journalists and experts began explaining how simple it would be to circumvent the ban.

Any number of corporations have adopted race-based approaches to managing their workforce. Some lay out the precise racial percentages that they want their staff to reflect. Others announce plans to increase their hiring of Black employees by a specified quota. Even some companies forced to shrink their payroll pledge that decisions about layoffs will be made through "an antiracist/anti-oppression lens."

Worst of all, intellectual justification for the very phenomenon that King and so many other civil rights heroes abhorred — treating individuals differently because of their color, sex, or other immutable characteristics — is now provided by people who claim to oppose racism.

"Racial discrimination is not inherently racist," asserts Ibram X. Kendi in his book on antiracism. "The defining question is whether the discrimination is creating equity or inequity. If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist." In case that isn't clear enough, he underscores the claim: "The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."

That is a grievously false and destructive proposition. It was repudiated by civil rights champions from Frederick Douglass to W.E.B. Du Bois to King. Racial discrimination for any reason, well-intentioned or ill-intentioned, is immoral. To reach a decision about anyone because of their race is by definition demeaning. It amounts to an assault not just against merit but against our common humanity. And far from speeding the day when invidious racial distinctions will be a thing of the past, it pushes that day ever farther down the road.

Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe, from which this is reprinted with permission."