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Bush vs. Berry -- Battle Over Future of Civil Rights Panel
A Look at the History of the Controversial
Panel
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson, The Hutchinson Report
President Bush plans to replace this week two top leaders of the
U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which issued a scathing report on
voting irregularities in Florida after the 2000 election and last made
headlines by criticizing the president's civil rights record shortly
before November's presidential election
December 6, 2004 - The clash between President Bush and Civil Rights
Commission chair Mary Frances Berry over when Berry's term expires is
more than a head bump between two strong-willed public officials whose
views on civil rights differ wildly. It's about what the rights panel
should be about, and how tightly its commission should be under the
thumb of the White House.
Bush may dump Berry any time now; the White House says her term and that
of Vice Chairman Cruz Reynoso expired Dec. 5. Berry, ever the defiant
gadfly, publicly defied Bush and said she won't leave until Jan. 21,
when she reckons her term is up. The eight commissioners have six-year
terms, and under an agreement with Congress the White House can appoint
four commissioners.
Berry is an unabashed liberal Democrat who hails from the older 1960s
civil rights oriented generation of blacks in the South that experienced
segregation first-hand. During her quarter century on the commission,
Berry tried to make it a fighting agency that exposed and rooted out
racial and gender discrimination.
The problem is that the commission has always been hamstrung by money
and politics. It has no enforcement power, and its paltry budget of $9
million is one of the tiniest of any federal agency. Bush has proposed
lopping off another $1 million for 2005. Conservatives have railed
against the commission as a racially divisive, Republican bashing,
liberal advocacy group. They want Congress scrap it altogether. A House
Judiciary Subcommittee is currently investigating the commission for
alleged financial hanky-panky.
Berry and Bush bumped heads well before Bush was re-elected. The
Commission under Berry's tutelage virtually accused Republicans of
stealing the Florida election through vote fraud, tried to sandbag the
seating of a Bush appointee to the commission and touted affirmative
action programs at college campuses in Texas, Florida and California.
Three weeks before the presidential election, Berry infuriated
Republicans by authorizing the posting on the commission's Web site of a
report by career staffers that accused Bush of miserably failing to
provide leadership on the enforcement of civil rights laws. Republicans
screamed foul. They charged that Berry released the report that they
hadn't read or approved to embarrass Bush and help tip the election to
Democratic presidential contender John Kerry.
Bush's civil rights record is not as terrible as Berry claims. Nor is it
as terrific as Bush claims. Bush's Justice Department initiated more
lawsuits on education and voting rights cases than during Clinton's
final years. And former Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a
directive and guidelines in 2003 to all federal law enforcement agencies
banning the practice of racial profiling. But prosecutions of police
abuse and hate crimes plunged during Bush's first term.
Berry's greatest fear, though, is that Bush will pack the commission
with conservative hard-liners who will turn it into a do-nothing,
rubber-stamp agency. Berry should know about that. In the 1980s, Berry
and the commission lambasted President Reagan for backing a decision by
the Justice Department to overturn an IRS decision denying a tax
exemption to Bob Jones University, which bans interracial student
dating. Berry also relentlessly opposed Reagan's anti-affirmative action
stance. A piqued Reagan promptly fired her and three other
commissioners. Berry sued in federal court and got her job back, and
Congress backed away from its threat to take the power to appoint
commissioners away from Reagan on the grounds that he abused his
authority.
It was a pyrrhic victory. Reagan's choice for commission chair, Clarence
Pendleton, proved an embarrassment, with his shoot-from-the-hip attacks
on civil rights leaders, his blatant opposition to affirmative action
and his refusal to aggressively investigate civil rights abuses.
Pendleton was also dogged by scandals involving government contracts and
expense padding. The commission degenerated into a squabbling, toothless
shell. In the next decade, other than issuing the occasional bland and
innocuous report, the commission was rarely heard from. Ironically, the
controversy over Bush's election breathed life back into the commission,
and brought it, and Berry, back onto the public's radar.
There was never any doubt that Bush would oust Berry from the commission
the first chance he got. But will the commission, as Berry fears, become
an inert panel of Bush administration yes-persons? Bush says no, and
promises that it will uphold his strong commitment to civil rights.
We'll know if that's true when we see Bush's replacement for Berry. We
won't have long to wait.
Related Readings of Interest
Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He
is a featured columnist for Blacknews.com and African American
newspapers nationally. |
