The Wall Street Journal-20080114-No- the Civil Rights Commission Does a Lot
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No, the Civil Rights Commission Does a Lot
Your Dec. 27 editorial "Too Much Good Sense" got it right: Democrats are "hot and bothered" because liberals no longer own the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The letter (Jan. 8) from Democratic commissioners Michael Yaki and Arlan Melendez nicely displays that irritation. It amounts to a feeble attempt to score political points; neither on the commission nor in the press do they exhibit any interest in serious debate on substantive civil rights issues.
Their letter does not charge us with taking positions hostile to civil rights; they dare not engage us on the merits of our work. Instead, they list our purported sins of omission: ignoring the extension of the Voting Rights Act, failing to investigate Jena 6 or Hurricane Katrina, and so forth. They have somehow forgotten that in 2006 we issued two reports on the Voting Rights Act, and that they never suggested we investigate any of the topics they now claim we neglected. Indeed, with respect to Jena 6, it was a Republican commissioner who raised the issue, but we noted that the Justice Department was already investigating the matter, and without any objection from Messrs. Yaki or Melendez we decided to track its work closely, with regular reports from the staff director.
We have issued reports on many important topics -- school desegregation, campus anti-Semitism, federal contracting disparities, among others -- of which we are justly proud. And in all our work, including a revision of the rules by which we operate, we have included the Democrats. But that work is of necessity quite different from that of 50 years ago, a point the Democrats seem unwilling to acknowledge. Issues of racial, ethnic and gender inequality have become much more nuanced, and against the background noise created by racial and partisan politics, the commission is a voice of intellectual integrity that recognizes a half-century of change. Scholars will use its work, which honors and reflects different viewpoints, for decades to come.
Abigail Thernstrom
Vice-Chair, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
Gail Heriot
Commissioner
U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
Washington
