Clinton Official Defends Affirmative Action Programs : Congress: Deval Patrick tells House panel to dismiss the ‘myth’ that unqualified minorities are being given preferential treatment.

The Clinton Administration official responsible for enforcing federal laws that protect minority rights Friday chastised lawmakers who want to change affirmative action programs for believing myths, warning that “pitting groups against each other” would be a “most hurtful strategy.”

“I think frankly it would behoove us all to concentrate a little bit more on what the rules are on than on what the myth is,” Deval Patrick, assistant U.S. attorney general for civil rights, told the first House panel to take up the politically charged issue of affirmative action.

“And a lot of the myth is that there are unqualified, undeserving women and minorities who are getting benefits that ought to go to qualified and deserving white men. And the evidence just doesn’t bear that out,” he said.

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Facing Republicans bent on scaling back the programs and Democrats intent on keeping them intact, Patrick tried to walk a fine verbal line.

In a pending review of affirmative action programs, the White House is open to making changes, Patrick said. But “there is no interest here in retreating on the basic issue and basic commitment to expanding opportunities for all Americans.”

Patrick’s testimony came as the Senate voted to eliminate a federal program designed to encourage minority ownership of cable and broadcast companies. With virtually no debate, the upper chamber voted to repeal a 17-year-old tax break that would have netted entertainment giant Viacom Inc., a savings of some $500 million in federal taxes when it sold one of its cable systems to a minority-controlled partnership.

The House recently repealed the law, which the White House had hoped to salvage by making reforms.

Also in the Senate, Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) took aim at the White House review of affirmative action programs while defending his recent controversial comments on the issue. Two weeks after denouncing “government-sanctioned quotas, timetables, set-asides and other racial preferences,” Dole went to the Senate floor to warn the Administration that “there can be no splitting the difference--no third way” in assessing affirmative action programs.

“Discrimination continues to exist,” Dole said. “The colorblind ideal is just that--an ideal that has yet to be achieved in the America of 1995.

“But do you become a colorblind society by dividing people by race? Do you achieve the colorblind ideal by granting preferences to certain groups? Do you continue programs that have outlived their usefulness or original purpose? The answer to these questions is, of course, a resounding no,” Dole said.

Patrick’s comments came in a hearing before the House Economic and Educational Opportunities subcommittee on employer-employee relations, one of several congressional panels expected to draft changes in affirmative action programs later this year.

Subcommittee Chairman Harris W. Fawell (R-Ill.), set the tone for Republicans on the panel by bluntly telling Patrick: “If we end up with a law that is condoning discrimination--and that’s what I think people think, and I think--we’ve gone wrong.”

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“Where did our civil rights law go wrong that we got into that mess?” he asked.

Other subcommittee Republicans echoed Fawell’s comments. “What I do sense out in America now is the growing sense that these kinds of individual discriminations are sort of piling up,” said Rep. James M. Talent (R-Mo.).

“The problem is when the remedy (to past discrimination) that we’re seeking is one that . . . is perceived to be--and I think all of us are uncomfortable with this as well--individualized injustice on one individual--(when) one person who is not himself or herself responsible for that happening to others, bears the burden of helping to remedy that past injustice.”

But Patrick countered that affirmative action laws, as upheld by many court decisions, allow consideration of minority status only in cases where applicants’ job or academic qualifications are comparable and where the quality of the resulting pool of students or workers would not be compromised. He suggested that efforts to amend affirmative action programs are motivated by workers and students seeking scapegoats for their inability to advance.

“One thing we have to do,” Patrick said, “is educate the public generally away from the idea that everything that happens to them is the result of somebody else getting something they didn’t deserve.”

Reverse discrimination “is a powerful . . . symbol,” he said. But he added that such cases are rare, making up fewer than 2% of cases pending before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Patrick, 38, a soft-spoken Harvard Law School graduate who is African American, readily acknowledged that his education and career had been helped by affirmative action. Pressed by critics of the programs, Patrick offered no apologies for the aid he received.

“Everybody--everybody--gets a leg up,” he said. “Everybody gets help. That’s the way of the world. Affirmative action is only about giving that break to people who didn’t--and don’t--tend to get that break--women and minorities. That’s all it is. And what you do with that opportunity, how you perform with that opportunity, is up to you.”