What can they do?

The Wisconsin State Journal reported that the city objected to bar owners demanding drivers' licenses for admission. State ID's were not allowed. Obviously the state loses face if the ID they tout as an alternative to a drivers' license isn't accepted, but that wasn't the complaint.

"It's been clearly documented who does and doesn't have driver's licenses in the state of Wisconsin," said Mark Woulf, alcohol policy coordinator for Madison, citing a vast divide between blacks and whites. "That alone raises eyebrows and could easily be determined to be discriminatory."

Bar owners were under pressure to come up with ways to reduce violence in their establishments, and apparently this has in fact worked:

Bouncer Glenn Galetka has mixed feelings about the policy. He called requiring a driver's license "bogus," as he doesn't have a license himself after accumulating too many speeding tickets. But he said he appreciated the policy's safety effect after a summer in which he was in the middle of frequent violence including two brawls.

"It was a way to get a certain crowd out," he said, describing that crowd as primarily young African-American men who mostly had state identification cards instead of driver's licenses. "It makes my job easier."

And there's the rub. Suppose one had a dowsing rod that could point out the people who would cause trouble if admitted that night, whether because the candidate had a violent character or because an ex's new beau was already there. It would disproportionately turn away young black males, who disproportionately caused fights in and outside the bars. Whatever you use as a proxy for violent propensity, the more accurate it is the more discriminatory it will be. (At least in this decade and this culture--the troublesome group isn't always the same.)

So what does the city value most? Public safety or guarantees of equality? Problem is, if a group feels discriminated against it may lash out and "degrade public safety," though one might legitimately ask how that would be worse that the existing level of violence. I don't think there's a simple "solution" but we might at least speak honestly about the problems.