Blacks Call State Dept. Jobs Policy Racist

Black Foreign Service officers, accusing the State Department of racial discrimination in a suit filed in federal court, said Thursday they have been passed over for promotion and subjected to pervasive racism that continues from administration to administration.

Bernard Johns, an 18-year veteran of the Foreign Service and one of two plaintiffs in the class-action suit, said: “When we speak of systemic discrimination, we’re not talking about something that started yesterday. It is institutional, and it transcends administrations.”

Only 6.3% of the 4,014 persons who have served as Foreign Service officers since January, 1984, are black, according to court papers. The suit also claims that promotions come more slowly for black officers and that blacks are regularly required to retire before reaching the highest ranks.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz was named a defendant in the suit, which was filed last Friday.

Cites ‘Major Changes’

State Department spokesman Charles Redman, responding to the charges, said: “Major changes in department procedures designed to improve the career opportunities of minorities are in the process of being implemented.”

Shultz last month sent a cable to all U.S. diplomatic missions in which he said the number of women and minorities in the Foreign Service was “unacceptably low.” He outlined a program to combat discrimination, including stepped up recruitment of minorities and a review of the way current minority officers have been treated.

But black Foreign Service officers, holding a press conference in the office of their attorneys, shrugged off Shultz’s program.

“Secretaries of state have made such statements since 1946, when an attempt was made to integrate the Foreign Service,” Johns said.

Seeks Back Pay, Raises

The suit, which was filed on behalf of 259 black officers, asks that Foreign Service personnel policies be declared in violation of the Civil Rights Act and that back pay and raises be ordered for those improperly deprived of promotions.

Walter J. Thomas, a Foreign Service officer from 1977 to 1984, said the department might hire a few more blacks but would continue to discriminate against them in advancement opportunities and, ultimately, in the involuntary retirement process called “selection out.”

“We have been faced with a revolving-door recruitment,” said Thomas, the other plaintiff in the suit. “If you bring 12 in, you select 12 out.”

Complaints about forced retirements are not limited to blacks. The American Foreign Service Assn., which functions as a labor union for diplomats, said current State Department policies call for nine out of every 10 Foreign Service officers to be selected out before reaching retirement age.

130 Face Dismissal

“One hundred (and) thirty officers are scheduled for dismissal next year and similar numbers in each of the several years ahead,” the association said in a recent press release. Under the Foreign Service system, after an officer has remained at a specific grade for a year, he is then reviewed periodically to determine whether he should be retained or forced to retire.

Johns and Thomas conceded that, in the clubby atmosphere of the State Department, whites as well as blacks face severe career pressures. But they said the situation is worse for blacks.

George M. Chuzi, one of two attorneys representing the plaintiffs, said blacks frequently are labeled as “troublemakers,” a characterization often accepted at face value by their white colleagues.