I guess you’ve heard that President Bush has been busy making his appointments for the next four years. Last month, he appointed Gerald Reynolds to replace Mary Francis Berry as the chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Reynolds, a Republican, is an attorney from Kansas City, Mo., and by his own admission has no previous connection to the civil rights movement.
“I am not a civil rights activist,” Reynolds told National Public Radio in a news report aired last week. “Never have been a civil rights activist.”
He did tell NPR that he respects what civil rights activists have done in the past.
“And to a certain extent to what they do now,” he added. “But I am who I am.”
And that is, according to reports, one who does not buy into the realities of race that most black people do. For example, Reynolds doesn’t believe in affirmative action based on race. He thinks race is no longer blocking blacks from certain jobs or college admissions. He believes that affirmative action ought to be based on economic circumstances only.
Meanwhile, major institutions like the University of Georgia are seeing massive declines in the numbers of black enrollees. Georgia had 26 percent more black freshmen last fall than it did this fall, according to a report by WXIA-TV in Atlanta.
On the job front, nearly 6 percent of newspaper journalists in the U.S. are black, according to the American Society of Newspaper Editors. This is a small improvement over previous years, but still a very disappointing.
The measure of parity for most of us is what we see. A look around America’s newsrooms reveals that they don’t look anymore like America than most episodes of “Friends” did.
Black folks are smart. We achieve, just as people of other races do. So if the drop in enrollees and the lack of black faces in newsrooms can’t be attributed to a lack of intelligence or ability, what’s the explanation?
Mine is that race is still a factor in decisions about who is given a chance to succeed and who isn’t – and that most of the time preferences are given to whites, as they have been historically.
And history, after all, must be the foundation for any discussion about civil rights in America.
Yet, based on his comments, at best Reynolds seems dismissive of civil rights history. At worse, he seems oblivious or perhaps even callous toward the racial realities black people have faced.
Based on comments from other commissioners, he will fit in well. This commission, however, does not appear to be a good fit for black people.
Among other things, the civil rights commission is supposed to investigate complaints about violation of voting rights. And as we all know, many black folk complained loudly in the last two presidential elections about either being deprived of their right to vote or of having their vote counted.
If the commission is in denial about race still being a problem in America, it’s hard to believe its members will take these complaints seriously.
Are race relations better in this country than ever? Yes, they are. Jim Crow laws are long gone, except for the ones still on the books of states like my own Alabama. Of course these laws have been invalidated by federal ones so we’re safe.
Meanwhile, corporations are still being accused of blatant discrimination by individuals who are being given the go-ahead to sue by the Justice Department.
Some blacks who move into predominantly white neighborhoods are still being targeted for vandalism.
A disproportionate number of black males are in prison or on probation or parole.
A functional, credible civil rights commission can’t be averse to facing these realities and to holding the White House and any other governmental or societal entity accountable. Despite my criticism, I know we must give this commission a chance, but we don’t need to be naive.
Based on the early returns, it’s going to be a long four years if blacks and other groups historically discriminated against have to wait for this commission to act on their behalf.
