Jewish World Review
by Clarence Page
April 20, 2009 / 26 Nisan 5769
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com
Here's a quick history quiz for you. Which nationally prominent leader said this?
"Edicts of nondiscrimination are not enough. Justice demands that every citizen consciously adopts a personal commitment to affirmative action, which will make equal opportunity a reality."
Was it the Rev. Jesse Jackson? The Rev. Al Sharpton? Sister Souljah?
No, it was then-Gov. Ronald Reagan of California in his 1971 executive order. He sounded more liberal, at least on this issue, than the racial quota-fighter who became president nine years later.
Times have changed, but on race not all that much, as far as Julian Bond is concerned. The civil rights era hero, now chairman of the NAACP, whipped out that old quote like an ace up his sleeve during a debate at the Library of Congress last week to argue that what was good for Gov. Reagan two generations ago is good enough for America now.
I'm not as certain of that as he is. Sitting in the audience at the debate, I was struck by how much America's persistent problems with race have changed, while so many of our leading affirmative action proponents have not.
Yet I was also struck by how replacing race-based affirmative action with the class-based kind is easier to say than to do, especially at elite colleges and universities.
That's one reason why Bond opposed the evening's proposition: "Should affirmative action be based on wealth and class rather than race and ethnicity?"
President Barack Obama thinks it should, he has said in writing and out loud. "We have to think about affirmative action," he said in at last summer's convention of black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American journalists in Chicago, "and craft it in such a way where some of our children who are advantaged aren't getting more favorable treatment than a poor white kid who has struggled more." It is safe to say that, in the fashion of President Richard Nixon opening doors to China, Obama's position later helped him with white voters and didn't hurt him very much with blacks.
Full Commentary: http://jewishworldreview.com/0409/page042009.php3
Showing posts with label clarence page. Show all posts
Showing posts with label clarence page. Show all posts
Monday, April 20, 2009
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Top court's unfair play against fair play
Chicago Tribune
Clarence Page
April 27, 2008
Lilly Ledbetter worked in a Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. plant in Gadsden, Ala., for 19 years before she received a valuable tip from an anonymous source: She was making $6,500 less than the lowest-paid guy who had her job.She did what anybody might do. She sued. She was in for a surprise. So were a lot of civil rights experts. If any cases were intended to be covered by Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, they thought, it was cases like hers.Indeed, even the women I know who are hesitant feminists, the middle-of-the-road womenfolk who insist, "I'm not a feminist, but . . ." usually tend to follow that "but" with, "I believe that women should receive equal pay for equal work."But after Ledbetter's case made it all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court last year, the high court ruled 5-4 that the law did not apply to her. She was too late. She should have filed her complaint years earlier when the original discrimination occurred.Indeed? As a legal matter, the decision was defensible, but as a practical matter it was inexcusable. One might even call it judicial activism, tilting a law intended to protect workers against discrimination into one that gives a big edge to employers who discriminate.The law said she had to file her discrimination complaint within 180 days of the alleged unlawful discrimination. The surprise came with the Supreme Court's interpretation of when the clock is supposed to start on that 180 days. Since the 1960s, nine federal circuit courts and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had ruled that the 180-day clock started—or restarted—every time the employee received an unequal paycheck. After all, it was reasoned, every unequal check is an illegal act of discrimination. But imagine Ledbetter's surprise when the high court ruled that, no, the 180-day statute of limitations began with her very first discriminatory paycheck almost 20 years earlier. In other words, if employers manage to discriminate against workers for at least 180 days without getting caught, they're home free, exempt from discrimination lawsuits.In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called on Congress to step in with new legislation to clarify and restore the intent of the original civil rights act. A bill to do just that was named after Ledbetter and passed the House last year. But the Senate version failed last week to win enough support to survive a threatened veto by President Bush. [To view the entire story, go to: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-oped0427pageapr27,1,5676597.column ]
Clarence Page
April 27, 2008
Lilly Ledbetter worked in a Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. plant in Gadsden, Ala., for 19 years before she received a valuable tip from an anonymous source: She was making $6,500 less than the lowest-paid guy who had her job.She did what anybody might do. She sued. She was in for a surprise. So were a lot of civil rights experts. If any cases were intended to be covered by Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, they thought, it was cases like hers.Indeed, even the women I know who are hesitant feminists, the middle-of-the-road womenfolk who insist, "I'm not a feminist, but . . ." usually tend to follow that "but" with, "I believe that women should receive equal pay for equal work."But after Ledbetter's case made it all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court last year, the high court ruled 5-4 that the law did not apply to her. She was too late. She should have filed her complaint years earlier when the original discrimination occurred.Indeed? As a legal matter, the decision was defensible, but as a practical matter it was inexcusable. One might even call it judicial activism, tilting a law intended to protect workers against discrimination into one that gives a big edge to employers who discriminate.The law said she had to file her discrimination complaint within 180 days of the alleged unlawful discrimination. The surprise came with the Supreme Court's interpretation of when the clock is supposed to start on that 180 days. Since the 1960s, nine federal circuit courts and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had ruled that the 180-day clock started—or restarted—every time the employee received an unequal paycheck. After all, it was reasoned, every unequal check is an illegal act of discrimination. But imagine Ledbetter's surprise when the high court ruled that, no, the 180-day statute of limitations began with her very first discriminatory paycheck almost 20 years earlier. In other words, if employers manage to discriminate against workers for at least 180 days without getting caught, they're home free, exempt from discrimination lawsuits.In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called on Congress to step in with new legislation to clarify and restore the intent of the original civil rights act. A bill to do just that was named after Ledbetter and passed the House last year. But the Senate version failed last week to win enough support to survive a threatened veto by President Bush. [To view the entire story, go to: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-oped0427pageapr27,1,5676597.column ]
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