Civil Wrongs

SINCE ITS INCEPTION in 1957, the United States Commission on Civil Rights has been an outspoken monitor of federal civil rights policy and agencies. Until Ronald Reagan stepped into the picture, its activities were characterized by fierce independence from partisan congressional and executive pressure alike. Reagan first challenged historical precedent in 1981 when he replaced then-chairman Fleming with present chairman of the Commission Clarence A. Pendleton. Then, in October 1983, he tried to fire three commissioners who opposed his position on civil rights. The Commission had weathered six Presidents before Reagan became the first to fire a commissioner. Today's agency is composed of four Reagan appointees and four congressional appointees, two of whom support the Administration. Such a body can act as little more than a mouthpiece for Reagan in an election year.

The purported watchdog agency demonstrated its change in approach at the new group's first meeting last week. In sharp contrast to previous Commissions' vigorous support for affirmative action and desegregation, Reagan's Commission voted 6-2 against the use of numerical goals as a method of redressing past discrimination and against the use of busing as the last alternative to segregation. It also made its "top priority" a proposed study of the effects of affirmative action programs on Americans of Eastern and Southern European descent. More disturbing than these actions' political content, though, is the way the group simply parroted the Administration's position--without long deliberations or the independent research its staff of 250 is supposed to provide.

One commissioner described the frightening pattern of last week's actions this way: "First they moved to protect Reagan from any criticism and then they rushed to support his policies without study." Pendleton makes no bones about the Commission's alignment with the President: "The new commissioners are independent thinkers who happen to have ideologies compatible with the Administration's."

But the new political, partisan nature of the civil rights group cannot be attributed solely to coincidence. Reagan has sabotaged the Commission's purpose to study allegations of civil rights violations and to evaluate federal responses to such violations. Congress should continue its record of improvement in civil rights (which has included the strengthening of the Voting Rights Act and the passage of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday) by clarifying the Civil Rights Commission's purpose and restoring its independence. And that means wresting the power to appoint any commissioners at all from a President who has not used that power in good faith.