Drawing the Civil Rights Line
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The preliminary jockeying is over. On Monday, supporters of a new civil rights bill will add the final touches and soon send the bill to be voted on by the House of Representatives. That vote will, at last, draw a clear line between promoting racial politics and promoting racial justice. Nearly two-thirds of the House and of the Senate supported last year’s version. The new bill, just as fair and just as necessary as the one President Bush vetoed last year, commands super-majorities — and needs them to override Mr. Bush’s stubborn opposition. The bill restores rights lost during the 1980’s when the Supreme Court misinterpreted and undermined longstanding civil rights law. This bill is not, as the Senate Republican leader, Bob Dole, would have it, the work of a “little band of liberals.” It’s the work of a big, bipartisan band of moderates, liberals and also conservatives who believe that insuring fairness in the workplace for minorities and women is a decent goal. There is nothing threatening here; it is hard to see what actual provisions the bill’s opponents find so offensive. The bill would again allow minorities and women to require employers to demonstrate the business necessity of a job policy that disproportionately excludes them from hires and promotions. They had that power for 18 years until 1989, when the Supreme Court overturned its own unanimous 1971 precedent. The bill also would correct other high court regressions — making clear, for example, that racial harassment on the job violates a law Congress passed in 1866. But the Bush Administration bashes the bill as a “quota bill.” It argues, without evidence from those 18 years of experience, that the bill would drive employers to hire by fixed percentages, in order to avoid the difficulty of proving their cases in court. The “quota” slogan has been unfair from the beginning. Indeed, Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, recommended last year’s bill to the White House, something he never would have done for a quota bill. Nor would 66 senators have voted for it. And now proponents have produced compromise language in lengthy negotiations with business leaders that should finally put a stake through the heart of the “quota” name-calling. More : query.nytimes.com |