‘No Retreat’

President Reagan, taken at his own word, believes in a colorblind society. He thinks that neither race nor sex should be barriers to achievement. From our vantage point, he seems like a fair man who would not knowingly discriminate against someone black or female. He believes that everyone deserves a fair shot at a job for which he or she is qualified. In January, 1981, he pledged “no retreat on affirmative-action programs.”

Yet Reagan is being asked to uproot a system that has helped ensure that federal contractors do not do what the President personally would not do and that they actively seek to hire minorities and women who might otherwise be unfairly overlooked. The White House is being pushed for a decision by those who dislike the policy.

At issue is Executive Order 11246, issued in 1965 by President Lyndon B. Johnson and retained by every President, Democrat and Republican alike, since then. The order requires companies doing business with the federal government to set goals and timetables for increasing their minority and female employees and to make all reasonable efforts to meet those goals. The regulations outlining these procedures were issued by President Richard M. Nixon and his labor secretary, George P. Shultz.

Even these attempts to bring all groups into the employment pool are apparently too much for some in the Reagan Administration. Led by Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III and his assistant, WilliamBradford Reynolds, they have been lobbying to drop the order altogether or, failing that, change it to prohibit explicitly any use of quotas, which the executive order in fact already does. Fortunately, they have Cabinet-level opposition from Labor Secretary William E. Brock III, as well as widespread resistance not only from the civil-rights community but also from business leaders who find that affirmative action can work to their advantage.

The latest ploy is the release of government documents purporting to show that federal contractors, most of them in the construction business, have had to meet rigid quotas. There are 56 cases involved. There have been 5,000 conciliation agreements with federal contractors concerning equal employment opportunity since 1981. If error is indeed involved in those cases, that’s a low percentage; the way to correct errors is to address specific cases, not change rules that have worked well for employers and employees alike.

If the President amends the 20-year-old executive order, his action will be read by many minorities and women and their friends as a conscious act of discrimination, no matter what his personal beliefs are. It would be an unfortunate, untimely, unfounded retreat from a national policy that recognizes a reality: Americans are not yet at the point where they universally ignore race and sex in decision-making, and therefore the law cannot yet ignore those factors, either.