When Neutrality Learned to Discriminate

There was a time in America when racial discrimination didn’t require an investigation. The sign told you. WHITES ONLY. The employment policy told you. Black workers could work here. White workers could work there. Certain jobs and opportunities were simply unavailable to Black Americans. The discrimination didn’t hide. It announced itself. Then came the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The signs began coming down. Explicit racial discrimination became illegal. America had taken an enormous step toward fulfilling its promise of equal opportunity. But something else happened. The signs came down. Some of the barriers stayed. And they learned a new language: Neutrality. In this episode of Conversations on Justice, I return to the Supreme Court’s landmark 1971 decision in Griggs v. Duke Power Co. to examine one of the most important—and increasingly contested—insights in American civil-rights law. Before Title VII, Duke Power openly segregated its workforce, confining Black employees to its lowest-paying department. After Title VII prohibited racial discrimination, the company imposed new requirements for certain transfers and promotions: a high school diploma and aptitude tests. The new rules didn’t mention race. Everyone faced the same requirements. On paper, the system looked perfectly neutral. But Black employees continued to be disproportionately excluded from opportunities previously denied to them. So the Supreme Court asked the question that changed everything: What do these requirements actually have to do with performing the job? That question matters because Griggs was never simply about statistical differences. And it was not an instruction to lower standards. Quite the opposite. If a test predicts successful job performance, keep it. If a credential is genuinely necessary, require it. But if we’re going to exclude qualified people because they failed a supposedly merit-based standard, shouldn’t we first determine whether that standard actually measures merit? Neutral doesn’t necessarily mean necessary. And that’s where the story becomes larger than Griggs. Throughout my career in juvenile justice, I encountered teachers, police officers, principals, probation officers, and judges who genuinely cared about children and wanted fair outcomes. Yet facially neutral systems were producing racially disparate results. That forced me to confront a question that has become central to Justice ReDesigned: Are we judging the character of the people—or the character of the system? Sometimes good people inherit old barriers. They administer policies they didn’t create. They follow practices they believe are fair. And the system continues producing outcomes nobody currently administering it consciously intended. That doesn’t mean every disparity proves discrimination. It doesn’t mean good intentions are meaningless. And it certainly doesn’t mean every neutral policy is illegitimate. It means we should be willing to look. Measure. Ask why. Determine whether the barrier serves a legitimate purpose. Keep what works. Redesign what doesn’t. Because discrimination does not necessarily disappear when discriminatory language disappears. Sometimes... it simply learns to speak the language of neutrality. And that leaves us with the question at the heart of this episode: The signs came down. But did all the barriers? This is When Neutrality Learned to Discriminate, another Conversation on Justice about people, systems, merit—and why justice sometimes requires us to look beyond intent and examine what our institutions are actually producing. Get full access to Justice ReDesigned at steventeske.substack.com/subscribe