The Right Move on Rights

TWENTY years ago the Kerner Commission predicted that our country would soon be stratified into two "separate and unequal" factions if the conditions of the day persisted. This disturbing prediction has become a nightmarish reality, and the presidency of Ronald Reagan is to blame.

Earlier this week Congress rightly overturned Reagan's veto of the Civil Rights Restoration Act, the primary provision of which suspends federal funds from any institution that discriminates. This act strengthens the government's commitment and ability to ensure equality for its citizens. It is a reassuring sign at a time when racial tension has grown without check, in such incidences of white on Black violence as the Howard Beach murder or the conflicts at UMass-Amherst.

Even though America is contending with such a terrible problem, it should come as no surprise that Reagan chose to oppose this bill--his destructive unwillingness to attack the problem of racial inequality has been demonstrated repeatedly. As The New York Times noted in an editorial this week on the civil rights bill, "Ronald Reagan appears determined to go down in history as a President who sought actively to set back the cause of civil rights."

WHEN Reagan took office in 1981, one of his first policy decisions was to have the Justice Department cut back on civil rights cases it handled, reducing the enforcement and the effectiveness of laws that protect minorities such as Blacks, women, and the handicapped from various forms of discrimination. Just six months earlier, however, during his Senate confirmation hearing, then-Attorney General designate William French Smith specifically said he was committed to vigorous enforcement of civil rights laws and an extension of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act.

But, in yet another disasterous antirights move during his first year in office, Reagan opposed extending the provisions of the Voting Rights Act. Approval of the original Act in 1965 was one of the major legislative triumphs for Blacks and the Civil Rights Movement--providing that in counties where a discrepancy existed between the numbers of Black and white registered voters, the federal government would assume discriminatory interference had been a factor and send federal registrars to handle future registrations.

The program was effective in cutting down white intimidation of Blacks who wanted to exercise their constitutional right to vote. The result has been that Black Southerners are now the fastest growing voter population in the nation and are finally able to exercise some influence in the democratic process--which has been most notably demonstrated by the election of liberal Southern congressmen who shot down Judge Robert Bork's nomination and by Jesse Jackson's successful organizing efforts.

Increased registration has had a crucial impact in liberalizing the legislative process, as demonstrated by Congress' swift reversal of the Reagan veto of the Civil Rights Restoration Act. Every Democrat in the Senate voted to overturn the veto, and only 10 out of the 250 Democrats in the House who voted opposed the bill. Such nearunanimity among Democrats in opposition of the President is completely unprecedented in the Reagan years, since most Southern conservatives unquestioningly follow the President's wishes. Their willingness to buck the President on this issue is testament to the increased influence of Black constituents.

REAGAN may be a lame duck president, but he still wields an enormous ability to affect national opinion. His justification for not enforcing civil rights laws and for vetoing this newest piece of legislation has been that these laws are no longer necessary or effective. Some are convinced. Over and over again, Reagan's actions have demonstrated his belief that the market system should rule all--that people should be completely free to discriminate on any basis, for any purpose.

The President's attempts to scale back court and legislative expansion of civil rights guarantees is as inappropriate in the 1980s as it would have been in the 1960s. Discrimination suits continue to be an effective means of vindicating the victims of prejudice, guaranteeing for all equal protection under the law and making people realize that it makes no logical sense to deny any citizen legal rights. Only when elected officials such as Reagan work to deny people this course of action does it become ineffective.

For the past seven years Reagan has applied his supply-side tenets to the country's social programs--and this ideology has failed as badly as it did with the nation's economy. Reagan has reversed the strides taken in the 1960s--showing utter indifference to the struggles Blacks and other minorities have undergone to obtain even limited access to consitutional rights.

Along with his stubborn unwillingness to support the civil rights cause, Reagan has vociferously opposed affirmative action programs of any type. The number of Black Reagan appointees the Cabinet, Administration, and federal judgeships is shamefully low. His slashing of federal funds to social programs, work programs and education has constructed prohibitive barriers to economic and social advancement in the Black community. A National Urban League report issued in January of 1987 asserted that the Reagan Administration's domestic policies were and are "morally unjust, economically unfair, and have widened the economic gap between the races."

Back in 1981, the executive director of the NAACP, Benjamin Hooks, warned Blacks to brace themselves for hard times similar to those faced during Reconstruction, saying that Reagan "could end up putting Black folks in a worse position than if a racist were in the White House." This has turned out to be true, but the damage shouldn't be irrevocable. The reversal of Reagan's veto indicates that his wholesale neglect of minority concerns is no longer acceptable to this country.