In today’s “woke” America, the far-left believes that “systemic racism” and “white privilege” are preventing people of color with criminal backgrounds from getting a job, which is why Maxine Waters considers criminal background checks racist and wants them banned.
Joined by Democrat Rep. David Trone (MD), Rep. Maxine Waters (CA) recently introduced the Workforce Justice Act (WJA) of 2021, a proposed amendment to the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968. If it becomes law, WJA will prevent businesses from conducting criminal background checks on prospective employees in order to remain eligible for a grant under the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) Program.
According to the Department of Justice website, the JAG program “is the leading source of federal justice funding to state and local jurisdictions. [It] provides states, tribes, and local governments with critical funding necessary to support a range of program areas including law enforcement, prosecution, indigent defense, courts, crime prevention and education, corrections and community corrections, drug treatment and enforcement, planning, evaluation, technology improvement, and crime victim and witness initiatives and mental health programs and related law enforcement and corrections programs, including behavioral programs and crisis intervention teams.”
In a one-pager describing the Workforce Justice Act released by Waters and Trone, we read:
The Workforce Justice Act of 2021 helps remove the stigma of a criminal record and provides a fair chance for justice-impacted individuals to compete for jobs while preserving an employer’s right to inquire into an applicant’s background.
The Workforce Justice Act of 2021 requires states to put policies in place that prohibit private employers from asking about the criminal history of a job applicant prior to the extension of a conditional offer of employment. States would have 3 years after the enactment of this bill to put in place these “ban the box” policies before they would become ineligible for Edward Byrne
Memorial Justice Assistance Grants (JAG). (emphasis mine)
To ensure there is no misunderstanding about what Maxine Waters is seeking, the bill provides specific guidelines clarifying eligibility:
‘‘ELIGIBILITY.—Beginning with the third fiscal year that begins after the date of the enactment of the Workforce Justice Act of 2021, to be eligible for an allocation under this section, a State shall have enacted and be implementing legislation that prohibits private employers from—
‘‘(A) requiring an applicant to disclose whether the applicant has a criminal record;
‘‘(B) inquiring about the criminal record of an applicant prior to a conditional offer of employment; and
‘‘(C) conducting a criminal background check on an applicant prior to a conditional offer of employment.’’
Translation? In order to be eligible for a justice assistance grant, businesses will be:
- Prohibited from requiring an applicant to tell them about their criminal record
- Prohibited from even inquiring about a criminal record before making a job offer
- Prohibited from conducting a criminal background check
For the record, I’m not saying that I don’t believe in rehabilitation, nor am I saying I don’t believe in second chances. But does that mean employers should be prohibited from knowing about an applicant’s criminal history? Of course not. Employers need to know an applicant’s past criminal history just like they need to know an applicant’s work history.
A convicted pedophile probably isn’t the best person to hire to run your preschool program. Your next school bus or public transportation driver probably shouldn’t be someone with an extensive record of driving under the influence of alcohol or illegal drugs. Perhaps the applicant with a criminal record of embezzling funds isn’t ideal for the cashier or bookkeeping job.
Business owners need to be able to scrutinize and research potential employees, and they need to have the ability to say “no” if an applicant is a poor fit for their company due to a criminal record.
Ever since Maxine Waters first arrived in Washington back in 1991, she has been an Al Sharpton-styled race-baiter, inciting violence in response to alleged injustices blacks have suffered at the hands of racist whites.
We got a taste of what that looks like recently when she swooped into Minnesota (where she demanded police protection) and joined Black Lives Matter protests over the death of Daunte Wright, a young black man who was shot dead by a white policewoman when he sought to arrest him on a warrant.
“We’ve got to get more active, we’ve got to get more confrontational,” Waters stated during the address to the crowd of rioters. “We’ve got to make sure that they know that we mean business. “We’ve got to fight for justice.”
Waters promised the protesters at Brooklyn Center that she will fight for justice on their behalf, particularly in the area of police reform. “I am not happy that we have talked about police reform for so long,” Waters said before addressing the trial of Derek Chauvin. “We’re looking for a guilty verdict. If we don’t, we cannot go away.”
The day after her appearance calling for more confrontation, two National Guardsmen were injured after being fired at in what authorities called a drive-by shooting in Minneapolis.
Waters’ prejudiced words were made just prior to closing arguments in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who was later found guilty of murdering George Floyd. Even the judge in the case took note of the racist tone in her explosive call for confrontation.
Peddling white people as racist has been profitable for Maxine Waters. The Daily Wire recently reported that the California representative used her paltry civil servant salary to grow rich enough to possess a net worth around $2 million, according to one estimate, and she lives in a house reportedly worth about $4 million.
Ironically, Maxine Waters has also been named one of the “most corrupt” members of Congress — four times. The liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington put her on its list of corrupt members of Congress in 2005, 2006, 2009 and 2011.
Let’s see . . . a politician with a corrupt (criminal?) past pushing legislation that keeps employers from asking about a person’s criminal past? Things that make you go, hmmm…
Over the past few weeks, the far-left has made wokeness and social justice foundational to nearly every policy.
It’s why Biden supported Major League Baseball when it decided to relocate the All-Star game to Colorado after Georgia passed election laws he referred to as “Jim Crow on steroids.”
It’s the motivation behind the Biden Department of Education’s recent endorsement of teaching critical race theory in America’s schools, including the 1619 Project and the teachings of critical race Theorist Ibram X. Kendi.
It’s the reason Biden supports Sheila Jackson-Lee’s reparations legislation addressing what new UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield calls the “sin of slavery [that] weaved white supremacy into our founding documents and principles.”
It’s the rationale Biden used in his speech to a Joint Session of Congress last week when he blamed white Americans instead of radical Islam for terrorism in the U.S.
And if trends continue, wokeness and social justice will be the reasons Biden supports Maxine Waters’ far-left push to end racist criminal background checks. After all, it’s the primary reason that “justice-impacted individuals” are unable to get a job.
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.
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