Pendleton Urges Defeat of Sweeping Civil Rights Bill

Clarence M. Pendleton Jr., chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Monday urged defeat of a bill that would bar discrimination based on race, sex, age or handicap throughout an organization if any of its parts receives federal aid.

In a wide-ranging speech before a Newport Beach luncheon meeting of the Town Hall of California, Pendleton said the legislation, which is pending in Congress, “amounts to an open invitation to the federal government to extend its reach virtually without limit throughout American society.”

A black, conservative Republican whose opposition to affirmative action and many traditional civil rights programs has drawn attacks from many blacks and liberals, Pendleton also took the opportunity to criticize the comparable-worth salary concept and affirmative action programs.

His main focus, however, was the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1985, designed to overturn a Supreme Court ruling restricting civil rights laws. The proposed law, he said, would “create more dissension than you can imagine and limit people’s access to opportunity.”

Pendleton told the gathering of 36 civic and business leaders at the Sheraton Hotel that the bill “is probably the broadest interpretation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ever imagined.” If passed, he predicted, it would “result in a massive federal intrusion into both state and local government and the private sector.”

Congress and the courts should reject “any notion that discrimination can be eliminated or minimized by race-balancing in the form of proportional representation,” Pendleton said. “Nor should Congress condone equality of results in the form of preferential treatment such as quotas, timetables or set asides. The main objective of the federal, state and local government must be to provide equal opportunity based on merit.”

Pendleton said that “equality of opportunity”--and not more laws--is the key to achieving “that laudable goal of a color-blind, race- and gender-neutral society.

‘Just Open the Door’

“Our government, composed primarily of white males, has passed a plethora of civil rights laws (that) provided a way for these well-intentioned white men to give us a helping hand. And I am here today to tell you that a lot of us don’t want the helping hand. Just open the door, allow access to the mainstream, and a lot of us will help ourselves.

“Don’t continue to patronize us,” he said. “The patronizing is demeaning, and it sustains the public perception that we cannot make it without your help.”

Pendleton, who was head of the Urban League in San Diego before being appointed to the Civil Rights Commission by President Reagan in 1982, appealed to his listeners to attempt to defeat the pending legislation.

“Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid of being called a racist or a bigot,” he said. “It’s not the worst thing that will ever happen to you. And don’t be intimidated.

“But do not make the mistake of believing that you are being left off the hook, absolved of some responsibility. You must enter the debate. Help our politicians to design and implement sensible new approaches that are nondiscriminatory,” he said.

Hits at ‘Counting Noses’

Pendleton said the intent to provide equal opportunity by those who fought for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “has given way to equality of results through such well-known bureaucratic devices as fair share, proportional representation, special preference.

“Twenty-one years later, it is still necessary to ‘count noses’ to determine if there is discrimination,” he said.

Pendleton created a furor last fall when he called the concept of comparable worth, a controversial proposal to reduce the gap between women’s and men’s earnings, “the looniest idea since Looney Tunes came on the screen.”

On Monday, he said his commission has carried the most extensive government study ever done on comparable worth and will recommend to President Reagan and Congress that they reject the concept and “instead rely on the principle of equal pay for equal work.”

L.A. Action Assailed

While on that subject, Pendleton also took the opportunity to assail what has been called a comparable worth agreement reached for certain City of Los Angeles employees.

“In all due respect to Mayor Tom Bradley, they don’t have comparable worth in the city of Los Angeles,” Pendleton said. “All the city did was to elevate the salaries in two occupational categories, women who are librarians and secretaries.

“So what you had was a wage adjustment that was done in the collective bargaining sector, which is permissible. But that only involved 3,800 out of 27,000 employees. There was no job evaluation done, no study,” he said.

Calling for a re-evaluation of affirmative action, Pendleton said the program, “which began with the best of intentions and ideals, has ended up setting black against white, creating new protected classes, making victim status desireable and forced society to question the accomplishments of its children.

“And most tragically, it has created a generation which sees no need to take risk and, therefore, will never see its reward.

“No quota will make one of us successful,” he said.

“We have a special responsibility to remove the barriers that prevent people having access to equal opportunity. Let’s get rid of these godawful special protections.”