Guinier Relates Nomination Loss to Racism
C. Lani Guinier said Tuesday that President Clinton’s abandonment of her Justice Department nomination was “an unfortunate metaphor for the way race and racism are viewed in this society.”
Addressing the annual convention of the NAACP, Guinier said, “We are being defined, we are being characterized, we are being misrepresented by other people . . . who are not sympathetic to issues of equality and real democracy.
“Unless we want to be known as race-obsessed radicals, we are no longer permitted to discuss racism in polite conversation or law articles.”
Clinton withdrew his nomination of the 43-year-old University of Pennsylvania law professor to the nation’s top civil rights post after deciding that her views on voting rights were not compatible with the Administration’s. Clinton said Guinier’s writings could be interpreted as arguments for proportional representation, as opposed to the one-person-one-vote method.
“The view among too many people in the Democratic Party and the Republican Party is that the remedy for racism is that we just stop talking about race,” she said.
Guinier also received the Crisis magazine Torch of Courage award. Crisis is a St. Louis-based NAACP news publication.
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