Carlton Waterhouse, Biden’s EPA Nominee, is Beyond the Pale Even for Biden’s Leftist Administration – Sees a Racist America that Does Not Exist

Thursday, July 29, 2021 // Research

Carlton Waterhouse, President Biden’s nominee for Assistant Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency is a radical leftist who is obsessed with race in every aspect of American life.  His obsession with race has led him to recommend racially separate elementary and secondary school systems, special tax benefits based on race, to oppose the civil rights laws of the 1960s, and to use his platform in academia to indoctrinate young people in a racially divisive world view.

Waterhouse has shown that his radical agenda will seep over into everything he does.  Reviewing previous writings from him and about him shows that he’s will use his new perch at the EPA to prosecute this radical agenda, at the expense of companies and individuals.

Obsessed with Race

Put simply, Carlton Waterhouse’s is obsessed with race.  For Waterhouse, race – not freedom, individual opportunity, the rule of law, religious plurality, minority rights, order liberty, or any feature of the American experiment – is the animating feature of American life.  Racial strife for Waterhouse is the alpha and omega of life in America.  It’s apparent in what he writes and what others say about him.

He believes that whites are so intent on subjugating blacks that the American legal system cannot protect them.  From “Avoiding Another Step in a Series of Unfortunate Legal Events: A Consideration of Black Life under American Law from 1619 to 1972 and a Challenge to Prevailing Notions of Legally Based Reparations”

Due to the law’s prominent role in subordinating blacks, this article maintains that African Americans today cannot depend on the law alone as the guarantor of their status and well-being.

Waterhouse has written that this legacy of formal legal subordination was not broken when America ended de jure discrimination with landmark civil rights legislation, but continues unbroken through today.

This reality is as firmly in place today as it was when the Declaration of Independence was signed. White racial dominance meant white men were authorized to use force to capture and return enslaved Black men or women who were off their plantations without permission. Likewise, white racial dominance enabled white mobs to lynch Black women and men with impunity and send pictures of the perpetrators and bystanders to friends and relatives as postcards. White racial dominance empowered two white men in Money, Mississippi, to kill 14-year-old Emmett Till without fear of legal repercussions in 1955, and it empowers police today.

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White society today, as in the past, trusts the police much more than African-Americans, so these killings lead to comfort and reassurance at some level for most whites. African-American men in particular are seen as a threat, so their deaths, like their mass incarceration, reinforce and protect the system rather than threaten it. Until the racial dominance at the heart of this centuries-old reoccurrence is renounced, rejected and replaced with justice, we need not wonder, “What’s going on.”

As he has tweeted, he sees an America organized around white racial dominance.

It is unsurprising then that he opposes some of the most important civil rights legislation in American history.

So Radical He Opposes the Civil Rights Legislation of the 1960s and 1970s.

Nearly all Americans believe that the civil rights laws of the 1960s, which prohibited de jure discrimination in the United States, were one of the most important accomplishments of the twentieth century.  And while there are legitimate debates about the implementation of certain provisions of the Voting Rights Act, there is broad belief that while there may need to be tweaks around the edges that unquestionably the laws were a step in the right direction.  Unfortunately, Waterhouse,  thinks civil rights laws were a step in the wrong direction and part of an unfortunate legislative history.

He’s said as much repeatedly in his writings.  Again, from “Avoiding Another Step in a Series of Unfortunate Legal Events: A Consideration of Black Life under American Law from 1619 to 1972 and a Challenge to Prevailing Notions of Legally Based Reparations Carlton Waterhouse,” which he wrote in 2007 when he was a Professor at Florida International University.

Rather than a crowning achievement of American democracy, the civil rights legislation of the 1960s and 1970s represented one more step in a series of unfortunate legal events that ultimately reflected the dominant attitude of society’s white majority toward ending the Jim Crow practices of the south.

This was not the only time Waterhouse criticized passage of civil rights legislation.  In his PhD Dissertation, he made a similar assertion.

Rather than a crowning achievement of American democracy, the civil rights legislation of the 1960s and 1970s represented one more step in a series of legal developments that moved America from one racial paradigm to another but ultimately reflected the dominant attitude of the society’s white majority toward ending the Jim Crow practices of the South more than the intrinsic justice of the American legal system. These laws represent a continuation in a series of harmful legal events, despite their role in removing the imprimatur of legal legitimacy from much overt discrimination against blacks and others.

Waterhouse’s views stand in stark contrast to those of President Obama who in 2014 stated “Few achievements have defined our national identity as distinctly or as powerfully as the passage of the Civil Rights Act. It transformed our understanding of justice, equality, and democracy and advanced our long journey toward a more perfect Union.”

Radical Law School Professor who has a Inaccurate, Jaded, and Divisive View of Americans and Our Legal System

Carlton Waterhouse’s view of the state of American democracy is deeply out of step with this of average Americans.  While no American would maintain that the country is perfect, Waterhouse believes that America, Americans, and the American legal system are irredeemably racist.

Again in his “Unfortunate Events” journal article Carlton paints a picture where white Americans through the legal system continue and will continue to subjugate African-Americans. Page 17:

In this regard, Derrick Bell’s assessment of what he calls “Racial Realism” provides an important and more accurate assertion that equality is beyond the limits of what America’s existing legal system can and will provide. Bell explains:

“Black people will never gain full equality in this country. Even those herculean efforts we hail as successful will produce no more than temporary ‘peaks of progress,’ short-lived victories that slide into irrelevance as racial patterns adapt in ways that maintain white dominance. This is a hard-to-accept fact that all history verifies. We must acknowledge it and move on.”

These views are unsurprising considering Waterhouse’s obsession with racial politics. It is also unsurprising then that his radical political beliefs have leaked through in all aspects of his professional life.  As a law school professor, where he’s supposed to objectively teach the curriculum, his students have repeatedly noted his obsession with race has biased something as mundane as property law.  Reviews of his teaching bear this out.

“Professor Waterhouse is a great guy and he is more than welcoming to all students. However, his class is simply about race. He brings race into everything he teaches and, frankly, it’s inappropriate. We have options to take classes built around race. Property should be about property law. Not, how bad white people are and how great everyone else is.”

“He is very passionate about race. He leads discussion that last entire class periods over race, w/o talking property. We spent so much time discussing race problems and none about ways to be involved. Some prop topics I would have benefited from more class time actually spent on them.”

“He’s a good lecturer, but that lecture was hardly ever relevant to property law. He focuses on delivering “truth” on racial issues, which is selfish and unfair, considering the issues on his agenda that he loves to discuss are not tested on the bar exam. Sadly, his class was mandatory.”

“Hope that you don’t get Waterhouse for Property. He spends a disproportionate amount of time focusing on race issues and neglects other areas of property law. Extremely disappointed with this class.”

This all ends up being important because it paints a picture of a radical who is not comfortable being an objective arbiter giving due consideration to different world views, but would rather use his bully pulpit to prosecute an agenda out of step with mainstream America. His previous writings give us an idea of what he would do if given the ability to shape U.S. law.

Waterhouse Wants to Pursue Divisive Race Based Exclusionary Programs

Carlton Waterhouse’s prescription for addressing prior racial injustice would set aside sixty years of racial progress in America by re-dividing the country along racial lines.  By prescribing solutions that would create black-only programs and preferences, Waterhouse would stoke racial division and create animus where it does not exist.

Wants to Resegregate America Schools According to Race by Establishing Schools Explicitly for Black Students

America has a long way to go in offering quality education to poor African-American students.  The most obvious solution to poor education quality for black students is to allow them to take their tax dollars and chose the school they want to attend, giving the same choices in schooling that many white children have.  Unfortunately Waterhouse’s prescription is to set up a separate school system focusing only on black children, further dividing communities and creating a second class education for black children.

Educational reparations would focus on improving the education provided to the youth of black communities. To accomplish this, I suggest that the Educational Fund provide grants to aid in the establishment of charter schools in black communities. These schools would be open to all children, but their curricula would be geared toward meeting the educational needs of black children. Similar to businesses funded by the Economic Trust, schools gaining support would show their commitment to promoting the values adopted by the Education Trust.

Waterhouse further elaborates on the curriculum in his PhD dissertation.

Nonetheless, in my view an Afrocentric education is preferable over a multicultural model for two primary reasons. My concept of an Afrocentric education does not exclude education about European contributions to world history, philosophy, law, etc. Like Brooks, I reject an educational model that blinds students to the contributions of other peoples and cultures. In my view, the primary distinction between an Afrocentric and a multicultural curriculum is the lens through which study takes place. The traditional educational model assumes the white male as the lens and examines everything from that perspective. A multicultural model operates without a center point-focusing on the inclusion of sources and stories from diverse groups. An Afrocentric educational lens, in a reparative context, views things from the perspective of the black community and the women and men who comprise it. It specifically seeks to address the mis-education regarding black life, culture, and history propagated under the Reign of Terror. Multi-cultural education, in contrast, focuses on a model of inclusion for broader educational purposes. As I explain below, the particular history of blacks in America necessitates a more intentioned educational approach to correct the historic  and contemporary fallacies regarding black life.

While Waterhouse couches his school proposal as being open to everyone, but catering to the needs of black students, what he is really suggesting is a government funded separate educational system for black students.  Lest there be any doubt on what Waterhouse is getting at he makes it clear that in his mind, racially segregated schools are permissible and desirable. From his article, “No Reparation without Taxation”:

In a similar fashion, an educational program that funded the creation or operation of a school that openly discriminated based on students’ racial identity would not seem to meet the Court’s narrow tailoring requirement. The rigid racial admission requirement along with the failure to use a racially neutral approach to provide educational resources to African American students would likely doom such a program. To overcome the Court’s bias against such governmental activities, strong evidence would certainly be necessary to show that remedying past governmental discrimination against Blacks requires racially exclusive admission and jobs programs as a means of providing particular educational and employment opportunities. Making the required showing to support programs of this type would be extremely difficult but not necessarily impossible.

If widely adopted, Waterhouse’s approach would be incredibly divisive and undue all the work that was done to undue the harmful “separate-but-equal” approach that governed prior to Brown v. Board of Education.

If Waterhouse’s prescriptions for elementary and secondary education were not concerning enough, he wants to extend his racially exclusionary programs to universities. From “Follow The Yellow Brick Road: Perusing The Path To Constitutionally Permissible Reparations For Slavery And Jim Crow Era Governmental Discrimination”:

Brooks’ proposal to make funds available to blacks for education and investment follows the remedial model followed by the Court in past affirmative action cases. In these cases, the Court repeatedly upheld remedial programs that provided remedies prospectively through promotion or hiring programs that benefitted members of the racial group formerly discriminated against. Brooks’ program provides a comparable prospective benefit to African Americans. Under the proposed program, however, the Court would have to determine whether a compelling state interest existed for the federal or particular state government to implement the proposed program based on its past slavery and segregation practices. I suggest that the Court’s decision would depend on the particular findings and approach taken by the legislatures involved.

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While need based financial assistance allocated irrespective of race and America’s history of discrimination would create greater opportunities for America’s poor, it would not constitute reparations for slavery or segregation. In short, race-neutral financial support programs do not represent an effective alternative to remedy past governmental discrimination. In the absence of effective alternatives, the Court should find that programs like Brooks’ satisfy this factor. Financial support-based reparations programs for slavery and segregation consistent with the foregoing description are likely constitutional, as they should survive the Court’s strict scrutiny analysis.

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Race-based exclusions should be viewed as an appropriate legislative effort to target a particular harm for remediation rather than constitutionally impermissible racial discrimination.

This of course would be just as divisive as the black only benefits at the elementary and secondary school level outlined above.

Wants to Create Special Tax Benefits Only Available for Black Americans

If Waterhouse’s prescriptions for education were not divisive enough, he also has outlined a scheme for creating a tax benefits that is only available to African-Americans.  While it might take some crafty legislative drafting, Waterhouse believes there is a clear path forward under the United States Constitution for a black only tax credit. From an interview style paper Waterhouse published while at Florida International University:

Carlton: However, where race is concerned, Equal Protection scrutiny is heightened. The Equal Protection Clause might prevent Congress from providing for a deduction expressly available only to Black people.128 The Equal Protection Clause prevents Congress from discriminating based on race unless there are compelling reasons for doing so, and the use of race is narrowly tailored to address those compelling reasons. However, the Supreme Court has found that remedying general societal discrimination is not a compelling reason to pass laws expressly for the benefit of racial minorities, and it has found some remedies to be too loosely tailored towards remedying the specific consequences of past discrimination. Congress may be able to address this through detailed findings of past governmental discrimination against Blacks.

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Carlton: Exclusions from gross income in a reparations package seem slightly simpler in creation and administration than deductions from gross income. Perhaps the Congress could declare that a fixed amount or a percentage of a Black taxpayer’s income may be excluded from the gross income of that taxpayer.

Andre: Specifically privileging Black people in the Code might also be an Equal Protection issue.

Carlton: But it may not be unconstitutional in the context of reparations because either model of reparations might be construed to exemplify the government’s redress of past, proven discrimination.

  1. Tax Credits

Andre: Tax credits provide a much better option than extraordinary deductions or exclusions as part or parcel of a tax-based reparations proposal.

Carlton: Why?

Andre: A program using tax credits is easier to construct and limit to Black people and does not suffer from the same unfairness and inefficiency problems attendant to deductions and exclusions (although the Equal Protection Clause may still be problematic).

While Waterhouse’s writings on race-based policies in the environmental sphere are less well outlined, what we do know of his thinking about race paints a picture of a individual who is going to push the bounds of the law to prosecute a radical leftist race based agenda.