There are three crucial governmental policies that need to be implemented that the Biden administration will almost certainly reject. Without these policies, the trends that they are meant to resist may become impossible to reverse.

The first is putting an end to the poison of identity politics; the destructive division of the people by race, ethnicity, sex, and sexual preference; and the formulation of policies through these prisms.  (Biden's appointees reflect this: their touted "qualifications" are their race, ethnicity, sex, and sexuality, not their skills or experience.)  The flagitious Critical Race Theory and such ideological monstrosities as the 1619 Project need to be eliminated from K–12 school curricula.  Instruction in literature, music, and art need to be freed from identity politics, so that the contributions of, for example, Shakespeare and Mozart can be appreciated by everyone, regardless of their race, ethnicity, or sex, rather than denigrated because they were produced by white males.  And Titles VI and VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act should be enforced against any firm, institution, or educational entity that discriminates against or prefers anyone on the bases of race, sex, and the other grounds specified, as the enacting Congress intended.  For that act was the legal instantiation of Martin Luther King's entreaty to end identity politics by having people judged by how they behave rather by their race, ethnicity, or sex.  (The self-proclaimed heirs of King's civil rights movement have completely inverted its aim and celebrate the very identity politics King struggled to eradicate.)  But I doubt that Team Biden, which has used identity politics to gain power, will now try to eliminate this political and cultural cancer.

A second desperately needed policy is combatting the bias and attempt at thought control by Big Tech.  The immunity of Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act should be conditioned on not censoring speech or speakers.  (Any speech that it is feared might lead to violence or child abuse but the constitutional status of which is uncertain could be referred to the authorities rather than censored.)  But as I said, I doubt that team Biden will pursue such a policy, for Biden has been the beneficiary of Big Tech's censorship and its money.

The third desperately needed item is fighting the cancel culture.  A useful approach would be to amend Titles II and VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to make it illegal for any for-profit firm or recipient of federal funds to discriminate in hiring, promotion, serving, or educational admissions on the basis of political viewpoint, including the use of ideological criteria such as pledges or evidence of support for identity-conscious programs and priorities.  (The inclusion of "serving" and defining internet service as a public accommodation would also address Big Tech's political censorship.)  Again, however, because conservatives tend overwhelmingly to be the victims of the cancel culture, there's little chance that Biden will attempt to combat it — though red states could use their civil rights laws to do this at the state level.

As I said, I believe that these policies are necessities if we are to avoid descent into a poisonous and dysfunctional future of racialism, censorship, and political ostracism.  I only hope they can be adopted before it's too late.

Larry Alexander is the Warren Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of San Diego.

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