Affirmative action debate causes partisan battle
Policies could be deciding factor in the 1996 election
By James Thomas Snyder
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
When President Bill Clinton spoke before the California
Democratic Convention last weekend, his recent statements on
affirmative action drew fire.
"Let me speak," the President said, trying to subdue a group of
delegates. "Don’t scream. Let’s talk. They (Republicans) win the
screaming matches. We win the conversations."
Clinton’s recent moderate remarks place him once again in the
center of a partisan firefight.
On one side, supporters argue the loosely-defined group of laws
are necessary to remediate past and current racial injustice.
On the other, opponents deride the programs as outdated,
promoting diversity through unfair preferential treatment.
One side says too little time has passed; the other, too
much.
Regardless, affirmative action policies face unprecedented
assault by lawmakers in the new conservative climate and loom as
the defining issue of the 1996 presidential race.
Federal lawmakers have already begun to dismantle affirmative
action little by little. Last month, the Senate repealed a tax
break that encouraged minority ownership of broadcasting
stations.
Sen. Jesse Helms, R-South Carolina, introduced the Civil Rights
Restoration Act "to amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to make
preferential treatment an unlawful employment practice." The bill
is now in the Senate Labor and Human Relations Committee, with no
action scheduled.
Last month, a day after Clinton issued his first strong defense
of affirmative action policies during a student press conference,
the House of Representatives began its first study of the
issue.
Affirmative action had its first hearing in the House Economic
and Education Opportunities subcommittee on employer-employee
relations. Witnesses included Ward Connerly, the controversial
University of California Regent opposing affirmative action.
"Just as we cannot be a nation ‘half-free, half-slave,’"
Connerly said in a prepared statement, "we cannot be a nation with
half our people saying ‘We are entitled to a preference’ and the
other half standing on the sidelines seething with anger and
frustration."
But opponents have no lock on the issue. Last week, California
Democrats narrowly defeated three bills before they left an
Assembly committee. The bills would have dismantled university
affirmative action admission policies, voluntary school
desegregation plans and faculty and public hiring practices.
In late March, a California Senate panel also defeated a
proposed constitutional amendment prohibiting affirmative
action.
Despite the defeat of four bills banning affirmative action,
Gov. Pete Wilson is expected to cut back several state boards that
advise the governor on diversity and affirmative action issues. He
also supports the California Civil Rights Initiative, a referendum
expected on the November ballot that would eliminate state
affirmative action policies.
While lawmakers and pundits stake out ground around the
political poles, the White House has taken a moderate stance by
reviewing federal affirmative action. During his Saturday visit to
California, Clinton proposed creating a high-level bipartisan
commission to continue the study.
Most of the Republican presidential candidates have sounded off
against affirmative action. Wilson and Senate Majority leader
Robert Dole have joined former Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander
and conservative commentator Patrick Buchanan in lambasting the
preferential treatment policies.
Dole, a past affirmative action supporter, has recently come
down against similar policies.
"My record does not disqualify me from raising legitimate
question about the continuing fairness and effectiveness of
affirmative action, particularly when the … label is used to
describe quotas, set-asides and other group preferences," Dole said
in a statement responding to Clinton’s remarks last month.
As a result of Republican political agreement on affirmative
action, division over the policies could hurt Democrats the most.
Polls indicate affirmative action ranks high among African
Americans, traditionally the Democrats’ most loyal and powerful
voting block.
Clinton’s even-handed treatment infuriates supporters of
affirmative action, in evidence when Clinton tried to subdue
delegates who loudly voiced their support for affirmative action at
a California Democratic Party Convention Saturday in
Sacramento.
Some California Democrats did not mute their response, including
Willie Brown, the powerful Assembly Speaker recognized as the most
powerful African American politician in California.
"If you do decide to leave us on affirmative action," Brown said
at a party luncheon, recalling a conversation with the president
that evoked images of the movie Deliverance, "next time I see you
on a bandstand, make sure you have a banjo rather than a sax."