That law was intended to ban discrimination against people because of their race. You couldn't refuse to hire someone, or rent an apartment to hm, because, say, you don't like black people. The law said we should be "colorblind" and treat everybody the same. But now, these people say, the woke movement requires people to give special treatment to people because of their race. If you own a business, for example, you must hire a certain number of blacks, even if they aren't qualified for the job. It's also perfectly all right to discriminate against white people. The solution, they say, is to return to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Murray Rothbard held a completely different view and, as always, he is our best guide on all political questions. In his opinion, employment, renting an apartment, etc. rests on the voluntary nature of the transaction. If an employer offers you a job, and you accept his offer, that's all you need. If you are an employer who doesn't like black people, you are perfectly free to refuse to offer him a job, in exactly the same way in which a black person can refuse to accept a job offer.

Rothbard saw the Civil Rights Act as a violation of the fundamental principle of freedom of contract. "On the entire question of legally and judicially imposed 'civil rights,' we have been subjected to a trap, to a shell game in which 'both sides' adopt the same pernicious axiom and simply quarrel about interpretation within the same framework. On the one side, left-liberalism, which in the name of equality and civil rights, wants to outlaw 'discrimination' everywhere, has pushed the process to the point of virtually mandating representational quotas for allegedly oppressed groups everywhere in the society; be it jobs and promotions, entry into private golf clubs, or in legislatures and among the judiciary But the Official Conservative opposition, which includes not only neocons but also regular conservatives, conservative legal foundations, and left-libertarians, adopts the self-same axiom of civil rights and equality. In the name of the alleged 'original' civil rights vision of Martin Luther King, conservatives also want to outlaw discrimination in jobs and housing, and to allow federal courts to mandate gerrymandering of electoral districts."

A good recent example of what Rothbard is talking about is the recent effort of the Trump administration and MAGA supporters to use charges of "discrimination" to force universities to institute programs to combat anti-Semitism. According to the New York Times, "Columbia University will pay a $200 million fine to settle allegations from the Trump administration that it failed to do enough to stop the harassment of Jewish students, part of a sweeping deal reached on Wednesday to restore the university's federal research funding, according to a statement from the university. In exchange for the return of hundreds of millions in research grants, Columbia will also pledge to follow laws banning the consideration of race in admissions and hiring and follow through on other commitments to reduce antisemitism and unrest on campus that it agreed to in March. The deal, which settles more than a half-dozen open civil rights investigations into the university, will be overseen by an independent monitor agreed to by both sides who will report to the government on its progress every six months. Columbia will also pay $21 million to settle investigations brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission."