On the Matter of Civil Rights, Do We Still Need a Commission?

Sometimes the worst way to get an answer from the President of the United States is to ask a simple question.

Two days after the Supreme Court struck down a Richmond, Va., quota-driven “set asides” plan that guaranteed blacks and other minority members at least 30% of that city’s construction contracts, a reporter asked President Bush if he thought this ruling was a setback for affirmative action. Bush replied that he “didn’t want to get into that,” except to say that he believes in equal opportunity and supports affirmative action.

During last year’s presidential campaign, candidate George Bush spoke in the same generalities. He steered clear of the concerns that regularly pitted civil-rights groups against the Reagan-Bush Administration, such as the frequent charge that the White House and Justice Department constantly sought to dismantle affirmative-action programs. Bush spoke instead of his intention to reach out to the disadvantaged and minorities and to make them very much a part of his version of a “kinder, gentler America.”

As President, that is still his message. He has also met with civil-rights leaders, assuring them that they will have access to his Administration and will be consulted on civil-rights matters. At some point, however, Bush will have to move beyond political symbolism and gestures. He will need to tell us which affirmative-action policies he is committed to and what he believes should (and should not) be done to fulfill the promise of equality in our society.

That time may be close at hand. In the wake of an embarrassing episode at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, the White House indicated that a Republican member has been asked to resign to create a vacancy that Bush could quickly fill as a first step in his plan to restructure the panel. But the President will soon discover (if he does not already know) that the commission’s problems have less to do with the current chairman’s recent legal entanglement (an arrest in an adoption case involving a 14-year old Apache girl in Arizona) than with the deep divisions and head-on clashes among commissioners over fundamental values and principles that are also much in dispute throughout our society.

There is also the question of whether we still need a civil-rights commission.

Let me recall some brief history. In January, 1984, the day after the newly reconstituted Civil Rights Commission ended its first meeting, Rep. Don Edwards (D-San Jose), chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee on civil rights, called the newly appointed commissioners (of which I was one) “a totally irrelevant group of people because they are anti-civil rights, not pro-civil rights.”

Civil-rights activists said the commission had fallen into the hands of the “wrong” people--specifically, individuals like fellow Democrats Morris Abram, Robert Destro and me who had been involved for years in the civil-rights movement but who differ on some issues with the philosophical majority that the civil-rights lobby had endorsed in the past and fought hard to retain.

During the past 20 years, the established civil-rights leadership had promoted policies and made choices largely defined by narrowly constituted, Washington-based special interests. Too often they were out of touch with the public at large. One obvious example has been the results-oriented, group-rights approach of the ascendant civil-rights factions, which have been virtually unanimous in actively favoring affirmative-action policies using employment quotas and preferential programs based on race.

Now in 1984 there was a new majority that would vote “wrong” on these important issues. The Civil Rights Commission was charged with betraying the cause of minorities and the civil-rights movement because of the positions it was taking--opposition to mandatory busing, racial hiring quotas, job layoffs based on race, comparable worth (unless agreed to in labor-management negotiations).

The claim was also made that the bipartisan commission, half of whose members were selected by Congress, regularly echoed the Reagan Administration’s line on civil rights. This was foolish. All eight members were vigorously independent.

What really rankled those who styled themselves as truly “pro-civil rights” was that the commission never echoed the line of civil-rights advocacy groups--or any other groups. This was as it should be. The previous commission contracted with the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund in 1980 to “prepare a report on the implementation of the proposed equal-rights amendment,” an issue for which NOW has lobbied extensively. There is nothing wrong with favoring ERA; I support it too. What is wrong is handing a government project over to a partisan group that has a vested interest in its outcome. That is not my idea of independence.

These are only some of the issues Bush needs to address. Does he believe in an equality of access and opportunity rather than of condition and outcome as a first principle? That individual rights should not give way to group rights? That race should not be the predominant basis on which status is determined, individual worth assigned, entitlements settled or legal rights measured?

There is an even more basic issue. Is there still a need for a Civil Rights Commission? For the last several years the civil-rights lobby has persuaded the Congress to cut in half the annual funding of the commission--until one could be put in place that would be, in their view, “pro-civil rights.” Now the President and Congress must decide if the commission, whose history spans three decades, should be reauthorized.

Major questions should be considered. After 30 years as a non-enforcement agency monitoring discrimination in the country (its principal mandate), is its work largely done? Are not current civil-rights laws (both federal and state) adequate to deal with illegal discrimination? If not, should these laws be amended or new ones enacted? Can the commission be justified as a high priority when budget cuts are required? After 25 years of sweeping federal, state and local legislation that struck down standing barriers to equal opportunity for minorities and women in virtually every area of American life, is discrimination the same national problem it once was?

My own feeling is that the commission has outlived its usefulness. If, however, the political decision is made for reauthorization, it should be a different kind of commission with a new mandate--specifically, one that will help deal with the special problems afflicting the poor and disadvantaged in today’s society. I am not so naive as to believe that discrimination no longer exists. But is discrimination analytically useful today to explain why, for example, millions of blacks remain trapped in poverty and failure?

What is needed are fresh perspectives to confront the emerging and deeply layered problems of the next decade and beyond--in housing, education and, more urgently, in our inner cities. At the same time, disparities in income and educational achievement between whites and minorities (and in some areas between men and women) need close attention. Are these differences simply the result of discrimination? Almost as a crutch, discrimination has too often been used to explain almost everything. The black underclass would not disappear if racism were eradicated tomorrow.

These are the hard but important choices that Bush will have to face up to if he intends to provide the serious leadership necessary to fix not only a future course for the Civil Rights Commission, but future directions for civil rights in this society.