Racial Hypocrisy in Government

...This civil rights unit, working with a similar policy-setting committee recommended for the President's Council on Domestic Affairs, would be responsible for making certain that departments do more than sit back and wait passively for complaints of discrimination...

...If the Commission's recommendations are carried through, he will be required to work with still another committee to be set up in the President's Council on Domestic Affairs, whose executive director is John Er-lichman...

...Noncompliance [with fair employment practices] abounds and yet no contract ever has been canceled...

...In Boston, a year earlier, the Commission discovered that of approximately 1,000 building trades apprentices, fifty-eight were black...

...The regulatory agencies (Interstate Commerce Commission, Civil Aeronautics Board, Federal Power Commission, and others), the Commission recommended, should broaden their view of regulation beyond mere administration of rates and licenses, and explore unequal employment, exploitation of the ghetto poor, and other social inequities among the industries they are supposed to watch...

...We pass the laws, then we choose those we want to enforce...

...It was this step that kindled a ray of hope that civil rights enforcement may yet get some consideration in the Nixon Administration...

...Louis County (Missouri) plant, of whom 2,500, or less than eight per cent, were black—in a metropolitan area where blacks constitute fourteen per cent of the population...

...The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has been plagued since its inception five years ago by lack of money and staff while officials paraded in revolving door fashion in and out of key positions...

...And there is talk that the House Judiciary Committee might yet establish the long discussed special subcommittee to oversee civil rights enforcement...

...Its home office, the Commission noted, is in a city where Mexican-Americans are 43.6 per cent of the population...

...In Greenville, Alabama, the Dan River Mills textile plant, also under Federal contract, had three blacks out of a total work force of 200...

...For instance, hearings last January showed the McDonnell-Douglas Company, the nation's fourth largest defense contractor, employed more than 33,000 persons in its St...

...Erlichman, a former Seattle lawyer, is a pragmatist whose depth of sensitivity to the problems of urban society still defies precise definition by experienced White House observers...

...Comparable action to keep a sharp and steady eye on enforcement is also needed on the Senate side...

...Commission on Civil Rights to make civil rights enforcement something meaningful— making it permeate the whole structure of the bureaucracy as well as down into the hundreds of channels of government influence in private and public life, in employment, jobs, housing, buying, lending, and in all the areas of living which the United States Government now touches...

...The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which carries the brunt of responsibility for assuring fair housing in the nation, was charged by the Commission on Civil Rights with urging Federal financial regulatory agencies to take anti-discrimination measures that— until April—it refused to take itself...

...only seven debarment actions have been brought," said the Commission...

...It would prod the departments and agencies to pursue positive standards and meaningful enforcement programs in a new atmosphere in which the official in charge of civil rights enforcement would enjoy the same rank and prestige as that of the chief operating officials in an agency...

...At last count it had a backlog of 4,000 investigated cases awaiting decision, with another 2,600 requiring investigation...

...The bureaucracy, the Commission noted, historically has had a way of frustrating even Presidents...

...much less would he promise to read it, or even a condensed version of it...

...Equal employment opportunity has been required of Government contractors since the 1940s, but discrimination is still prevalent, said the Commission...

...Louis attorney, put her finger on the heart of the matter when she said: "The real concern is whether, when the American people talk about the rule of law, we really mean it...

...This was true because, first, Shultz had early won himself a reputation in the Administration as an organizer and administrator of perception, awareness, and a certain amount of sensitivity conspicuously lacking in other Nixon lieutenants, and, second, because of the nature of the Commission's recommendations...

...Meanwhile, black members of the House have promised to set up a "shadow cabinet" to follow the progress—or lack of it—of the Commission's recommendations...

...Nixon, piqued at being reminded twice in slightly more than two weeks of the President's duty to provide "moral leadership"—William Scran ton's Commission on Campus Unrest had emphasized the point much more sharply—did not personally acknowledge the Civil Rights Commission's work...

...It takes from sixteen to twenty-four months to process a complaint, an unconscionable delay "rendering cases moot," making conciliation more difficult, and—if the Justice Department thinks it should act—requiring entirely new investigations...

...Achievement of civil rights goals depends on the quality of leadership exercised by the President in moving the nation toward racial justice," the Commission emphasized...

...In San Antonio, Texas, in December, 1968, the El Paso Natural Gas Company, which holds Government contracts and is regulated by the Federal Power Commission, employed 1,450 persons of whom only 10.6 per cent were of Hispanic descent...

...The holiday spirit is building, and they can savor, at least for awhile, what passes for the good life...

...An example of "courageous moral leadership" by him could whip the Federal underlings out of their lethargy or passivity and could inspire the American people as well...

...In Federal employment itself, the Government, it is true, is not keeping Negro workers concealed behind screens as it did during World War I. Black and Spanish-surnamed Americans have made substantial progress in getting jobs, the Commission on Civil Rights reported to President Nixon last month, but they are still badly under-represented in the higher pay brackets...

...The tradition of voluntarism, which permeated and immobilized all previous Federal compliance efforts, appears still to be present...

...As for the Justice Department, the Civil Rights Commission concluded that despite being the key Federal agency in civil rights enforcement, it takes a narrow view of its duties, focusing on litigation almost to the exclusion of broader efforts involving civil rights groups and legal advice organizations outside the Federal establishment...

...Nevertheless, the bureaucrats—Cabinet members, their assistant secretaries, deputy assistant secretaries, section chiefs, bureau heads— the whole echelon of middle and top layer officials—can relax a bit...

...merit's criminal division, stimulating "a massive advertising campaign to prevent auto theft and narcotic addiction," and enlisting Federal and private agencies, businesses, and individuals...

...The proposal will doubtless be resisted at virtually every executive and sub-executive level, with arguments ranging from the purist's opposition to a "quota system" to the more volatile "discrimination in reverse...

...Frankie M. Freeman, Commission member and St...

...Ironically, the latter approach has been used by the DepartROBERT GRUENBERG is a Washington correspondent for the Chicago Daily News...

...One needs no crystal ball to predict that the Commission's study will soon occupy its own forgotten, dusty corner in the archives, given the climate that currently exists in Washington on civil rights in general and commission reports in particular...

...Other Civil Rights Commission recommendations ranged across the entire spectrum of Government, concentrating largely on the tedious detail of the bureaucracy, but boiling down to one central message: raise civil rights enforcement, and the enforcing officers, to a level equal to other programs and officials, and increase enforcement activity with positive programs, instead of lying back and waiting for complaints...

...The low priority assigned to the enforcement of civil rights may also be seen by noting where the Civil Rights Division ranks in the Justice Department: with its 274 positions—not fully staffed—it is less than half as large as the Anti-Trust Division, less than two-thirds the size of the Tax Division, and considerably smaller than the Civil and Criminal Divisions...

...America's minorities have made it clear that there is not time for that anymore...

...The all-powerful House Government Operations Committee, mostly dormant in pursuing significant questions of major public policy under its former chairman, recently deceased Representative William L. Dawson, of Chicago, will have a new chairman, Democratic Representative Chet Holifield, of California, whose liberal voting record and sometime feistiness could conceivably mount a challenge to the Administration...

...In jobs paying $16,700 and more, less than two per cent of employes are black and less than seven-tenths of one per cent are of Hispanic origin, judging from their family names...

...The main thing is not to rock the boat, either with the Administration or with Congress, especially with hare-brained schemes like those proposed by the U.S...

...Open up, man—I put in 300 years helping write it" How effective Shultz, for all his commitment, will be, remains to be seen...

...He did have Leonard Garment, his adviser on minorities, "acknowledge with appreciation" the Commission's monumental work and passed the report on to George P. Shultz, director of the Office of Management and Budget...

...Sanctions, already authorized in some instances by agency regulations—¦ such as in employment discrimination on Federally-aided projects—should be applied instead of resisted, the Commission contended, while the Federal financial regulatory agencies should develop procedures for taking action—including the cancellation of Federal charters and insurance— against banks and savings and loan institutions that discriminate...

...New procedures have been designed to speed up the process, but it is too early to tell if they will...

...Racial Hypocrisy in Government by ROBERT GRUENBERG Washington T^he Thanksgiving season is at hand, and the trees are almost totally bare here in the nation's capital as smoke curls from the comfortable homes nestling in the low hills of nearby Virginia and Maryland, or in the genteel close-in suburbs...

...Inasmuch as Mr...

...Nixon could not be expected to ride herd on every assistant secretary or lesser spear carrier in the departments and agencies charged with enforcing civil rights programs, the Commission suggested that a civil rights unit be established within the newly created Office of Management and Budget, which holds a powerful hand on the purse...

...While urging other Federal agencies to select sites for major installations with an eye toward assuring open housing for their low-income workers, HUD had yet to apply such criteria to itself at the time of the Commission's study...

...The priorities, it would appear, are higher for stamping out auto thievery than stamping out job or housing discrimination...

...In developing minority group employment at the higher wage levels, the Civil Service Commission should plan "minimum numerical and percentage goals coupled with specific target dates," the Commission urged...

...While the report focuses on what should be done at the executive level, there is plenty of material for exploration by Congress...

...The old Budget Bureau took the attitude, the Civil Rights Commission found, that it was none of its business if civil rights follow-through in the various programs was achieved effectively or not...

...For the moment they are not much disturbed...

...Washington itself, etched in the stark revealing lines of fall, has shed the last of its foliage and is now stripped down to sere blacks and grays...

...the great promise of the civil rights laws . • • has not been realized/ " Summing up the results of its study, the Civil Rights Commission gloomily noted that "the great promise of the civil rights laws, executive orders, and judicial decisions of the 1950s and 1960s has not been realized...