Page 1 |
Save page Remove page | Previous | 1 of 2 | Next |
|
small (250x250 max)
medium (500x500 max)
Large
Extra Large
Full Size
Full Resolution
|
This page
All
|
Loading content ...
I Greensboro News & Record, Monday, March 4, 1985 I Civil rights sloganeering Washington Post Writers Group WASHINGTON — When the | Reagan administration installed its own majority on the U.S. Civil ft%htj5 Commission last year, we optthjpts hoped that the commission night make it- Edwin M. Yoder Jr. self more use- | ful — might: ve beyond I its accustomed I gadfly role and I develop some interesting thoughts. Instead, something strange and unfortunate has happened. Where, it once buzzed and chivvied the government over every imperfection, major and minor, the commission has taken up the ritual cry of "color blindness" in response to nearly every civil-rights challenge. The latest example is the war of words that broke out when the commission issued a report on the Memphis fire-fighters case. In that matter, the Supreme Court had said something rather basic: When an affirmative-action hiring program for public employees clashes with seniority rules, the affirmative-action plan yields. It seemed a sensible and limited statement of priorities. But according to the Civil Rights Commission majority, the court had affirmed "that race and gender are not proper bases to reward or penalize any person." Not only does this gloss go well beyond what the court actually said; it establishes a rule so rigid that, under it, almost no affirmative-action program could be justified. This extreme view did not go unanswered. A commission minority. Mary Berry and Blandina Ramirez, were not to be outdone. The majority, they declared, had made a ghastly historical error. Civil-rights laws "were not passed to give civil lights to all Americans," only — and, it would appear exclusively — to victims of historic discrimination and to them alone! laKe degree away, and hark what discord follows. These two extreme views — that, on the one hand, the law must be so utterly "color-blind' as to take no cognizance at all o race, sex or historical discrimina tion; that, on the other, it is so col or- or sex-conscious as to protect no one who doesn't belong to a previously "disadvantaged" group — blot out all the middle ground. "Color-blindness" was the consti tutional value invoked by Justice John Marshall Harlan in 1896, when the court first upheld Jim Crow laws. It remained a valuable idea when those laws came under siege half a century later, and a generation used to legal discrimination needed new ways to think about the law. But neither Harlan nor his successors of the '50s and '60s were appealing to a never-never land of absolute legal abstractions. They had in mind a practical standard of equity and impartiality in the law. Color blindness, understood in its historical context and meaning, has not outlived its relevance. But it is in clanger of being appropriated to political sloganeering, calculated to call reasonable and useful, as well as invidious, remedies into question. As if in reaction, Berry and Rami rez invoke a mirror image of coloi blindness, according to which civil rights laws are the exclusive entitle ment and turf of the disadvantaged. Indeed, had there been no racial segregation we would need no civil- rights laws — as, lacking the history of slavery, we might need no 14th Amendment. But converting historical truisms into legal doctrines serves no useful purpose. Here is another manifestation ol the ultra-individualism that seems to reign within the Reagan administration as an all-purpose standard The worth of all government goals and programs depends on whethei they meet the test of the invisible hand of competition. "Color blindness" is the equivalent, in the civil- rights field, of the mysterious "market forces" that supposedly make just apportionment of the world's goods. The notion that there might be a larger community interest, apart from or transcending your narrow personal interest and mine, is aside. Everybody for himself anc the devil take the hindmost!
Object Description
Page/Item Description
Title | Page 1 |
Full text | I Greensboro News & Record, Monday, March 4, 1985 I Civil rights sloganeering Washington Post Writers Group WASHINGTON — When the | Reagan administration installed its own majority on the U.S. Civil ft%htj5 Commission last year, we optthjpts hoped that the commission night make it- Edwin M. Yoder Jr. self more use- | ful — might: ve beyond I its accustomed I gadfly role and I develop some interesting thoughts. Instead, something strange and unfortunate has happened. Where, it once buzzed and chivvied the government over every imperfection, major and minor, the commission has taken up the ritual cry of "color blindness" in response to nearly every civil-rights challenge. The latest example is the war of words that broke out when the commission issued a report on the Memphis fire-fighters case. In that matter, the Supreme Court had said something rather basic: When an affirmative-action hiring program for public employees clashes with seniority rules, the affirmative-action plan yields. It seemed a sensible and limited statement of priorities. But according to the Civil Rights Commission majority, the court had affirmed "that race and gender are not proper bases to reward or penalize any person." Not only does this gloss go well beyond what the court actually said; it establishes a rule so rigid that, under it, almost no affirmative-action program could be justified. This extreme view did not go unanswered. A commission minority. Mary Berry and Blandina Ramirez, were not to be outdone. The majority, they declared, had made a ghastly historical error. Civil-rights laws "were not passed to give civil lights to all Americans," only — and, it would appear exclusively — to victims of historic discrimination and to them alone! laKe degree away, and hark what discord follows. These two extreme views — that, on the one hand, the law must be so utterly "color-blind' as to take no cognizance at all o race, sex or historical discrimina tion; that, on the other, it is so col or- or sex-conscious as to protect no one who doesn't belong to a previously "disadvantaged" group — blot out all the middle ground. "Color-blindness" was the consti tutional value invoked by Justice John Marshall Harlan in 1896, when the court first upheld Jim Crow laws. It remained a valuable idea when those laws came under siege half a century later, and a generation used to legal discrimination needed new ways to think about the law. But neither Harlan nor his successors of the '50s and '60s were appealing to a never-never land of absolute legal abstractions. They had in mind a practical standard of equity and impartiality in the law. Color blindness, understood in its historical context and meaning, has not outlived its relevance. But it is in clanger of being appropriated to political sloganeering, calculated to call reasonable and useful, as well as invidious, remedies into question. As if in reaction, Berry and Rami rez invoke a mirror image of coloi blindness, according to which civil rights laws are the exclusive entitle ment and turf of the disadvantaged. Indeed, had there been no racial segregation we would need no civil- rights laws — as, lacking the history of slavery, we might need no 14th Amendment. But converting historical truisms into legal doctrines serves no useful purpose. Here is another manifestation ol the ultra-individualism that seems to reign within the Reagan administration as an all-purpose standard The worth of all government goals and programs depends on whethei they meet the test of the invisible hand of competition. "Color blindness" is the equivalent, in the civil- rights field, of the mysterious "market forces" that supposedly make just apportionment of the world's goods. The notion that there might be a larger community interest, apart from or transcending your narrow personal interest and mine, is aside. Everybody for himself anc the devil take the hindmost! |