Reagan Hit as a ‘Rambo’ Rights Raider

The National Urban League today called the Reagan Administration “a Rambo-like destroyer of civil rights gains” in its efforts to modify 20-year-old affirmative action rules.

“If there is any single message we want to send the President today, it is this: ‘Hands off affirmative action,’ ” league President John E. Jacob said at a news conference as he released the organization’s 1986 report on black America.

“If the Administration wants to be a Rambo-like destroyer of civil rights gains, it should not pretend that its efforts are good for black citizens or that they reflect the color-blind society we have yet to become,” he said.

Johnson Order Scrutinized

The Justice Department has been trying to revise a presidential executive order signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 that authorized the government to set numerical hiring goals and timetables for firms holding government contracts.

Jacob said affirmative action must be preserved to open opportunities for blacks. “When black citizens enjoy parity in our society, affirmative action will no longer be necessary. Until then, it must be preserved.”

Jacob also said it was “obscene” for Reagan to try to tie slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. with its “attempt to destroy affirmative action.”

Jacob was referring to Reagan’s radio address last Saturday, in which he said his Administration opposed the use of quotas.

Reagan Quotes King

Reagan said then, “We want a color-blind society--a society that, in the words of Dr. King, judges people ‘not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.’ ”

In its report, the Urban League said black Americans in 1985 “slipped further and further to the rear of the parade” while most of the United States enjoyed an economic recovery.

“White America is getting back on its feet while much of black America is still struggling just to start rising off the floor,” Jacob said in the report.

Jacob noted that unemployment for the nation’s 27.9 million blacks was still 14.9% at the end of last year, compared to 5.9% for whites. And he said the median black family had only 56 cents to spend for every $1 available to white families--two cents less than blacks had in 1980 and almost six cents less than in 1970.