| | Racial Paradox of Reagan Presidency
Earl Ofari Hutchinson
The great myth is that former President Ronald Reagan did more damage to
civil rights and social programs than any other modern day president. Reagan’s
occasional digs at civil rights leaders, and his unabashed tout of states rights,
and the conservative social agenda, fueled expectations among many
conservatives that Reagan would scrap welfare, dismantle Great Society social programs,
and most importantly torpedo affirmative action. At his first press conference
the week after his inauguration, Reagan told reporters, “I’m old enough to
remember when quotas existed in the United States for purposes of
discrimination and I don’t want to see that again.” Reagan’s Justice Department promptly filed dozens of lawsuits to overturn affirmative action plans negotiated with police and fire departments. Some of the court challenges succeeded, some didn’t. But the Reagan administration did
not mount a vigorous, and sustained legal challenge to affirmative action
programs, or whittle away regulations mandating diversity in government hiring,
promotions, and contracting programs that conservatives demanded. President
Clinton, a centrist Democrat did. He pared away many government affirmative action
programs, and the successful court overhaul of anti-affirmative action
admission programs came on his presidential watch. Reagan’s ambivalence on civil rights especially enraged conservatives in the Bob Jones University case in 1982. At first he backed the decision by the Justice Department to overturn an IRS decision denying a tax exemption to Bob
Jones which banned interracial student dating. When civil rights leaders denounced
the decision, Reagan quickly reversed gears, and dropped the issue. Ultimately the Supreme Court upheld the IRS. At the end of Reagan’s first term in 1984, his Justice Department brought
fewer civil rights suits in housing, education and voter discrimination cases
than during President Jimmy Carter’s first term. Yet, at a press conference, a def
ensive Reagan declared that “he felt no higher duty than to defend the civil
rights of all Americans.” Though civil rights leaders mocked him and ridiculed
his claim, Reagan’s Justice Department was far more aggressive in prosecuting, and getting convictions, in high profile police abuse and racially motivated murder cases than the Carter administration. Reagan continued to be especially sensitive, and on occasion speak out, on the issue of racially motivated violence. In his last message to Congress before departing the White House in 1988, Reagan claimed that his Justice Department had prosecuted more criminal civil
rights cases than any other administration in American history. Though civil
rights leaders continued to assail Reagan’s record on civil rights enforcement,
Reagan’s Justice Department had taken a genuine activist role in criminal civil
rights enforcement. That exemplary record was due in part to the diligence of
federal prosecutors, and, despite popular belief, to the weak history of
criminal civil rights enforcement during the administrations of moderate and
liberal Democrats, Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter. Civil rights leaders also worried that Reagan would dump the 1965 Voting Rights Act enacted During Johnson’s administration. Reagan gave every appearance that he would do just that. During the 1980 presidential campaign, he publicly
branded the voting rights act “humiliating to the South.” This delighted
white Southerners. But once in office Reagan promptly did a volt face. In 1982, he
approved a 25-year extension of the Act. This insured that black voting rolls
would continue to rise, the number of black elected officials would continue
to surge, and that the Democratic Party would remain competitive in local
races in the South. Then there was the King holiday. The instant that King was gunned down in
Memphis in 1968, civil rights and black congressional Democrats demanded the
Congress make King’s birthday a federal holiday. For a decade and a half, the
bill languished in Congress, and the attacks on King’s character and radical
politics grew more intense. Eventually, mass black pressure, and the relentless
lobbying efforts of liberal Democrats, and moderate Republicans paid off.
Congress passed the King holiday bill in October 1983. Despite massive pressure from
North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, and King critics, and Reagan’s deep
personal misgivings about the King bill and King, he signed the bill a month later.
This made him the first and likely the last American history to sign a bill
commemorating an African-American with a national holiday. At a King
observance, the year after the holiday officially was celebrated in 1986, Reagan
denounced racial bigotry and discrimination. Reagan, in effect, wrapped himself in
King’s mantle. Bush Sr., Clinton, and Bush junior have followed that precedent
and on every King holiday evoke his name and speak out against racial
discrimination. Civil rights leaders still tag the Reagan presidency the single worst period
for racial progress in recent U.S. history. But despite black fears, and to
the bitter disappointment of many conservatives, Reagan did not end affirmative
action, dismantle welfare or totally gut social programs. Reagan’s White House
years were marked by ambivalence, hesitancy, and conciliation, not the all
out assault on civil rights that blacks feared and Reagan boosters expected. And
that perhaps is one of the greatest paradoxes of the Reagan presidency.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. Visit his news and
opinion website: www.thehutchinsonreport.com He is the author of The Crisis in
Black and Black (Middle Passage Press).
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| | Posted 6/13/2004 4:27 PM - 167 Views - 8 eProps - 8 comments
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