I have had more than one occasion (here, here, and here, for example) to complain about the coverage of civil rights issues in the Washington Post articles by reporter Darryl Fears. Now he’s committed another one.
Indeed, this last article is almost a textbook example of media bias. Ostensibly about the unexpected resignation of independent conservative Russell G. Redenbaugh from the Commission on Civil Rights, and his charges that the CRC doesn’t seem to have improved in the four months of conservative control, Fears’ own voice is indistinguishable from that of the liberal critics of the new CRC, whom he both echoes and quotes.
First, here’s something that appears to be a quote, sort of:
The commission is poised to press what some civil rights advocates, some academics and the two remaining liberal board members call a Republican agenda. On Friday, the board is scheduled to consider launching studies on whether Social Security shortchanges African Americans and whether minorities and women deserve advantages in the awarding of federal contracts. Both issues are part of Bush’s agenda.
The commission’s staff relied on research by the conservative Heritage Foundation and the libertarian Cato Institute to shape the proposal for the study.
Some civil rights advocates? Some academics? Would it too much to ask for some, you know, names? Bush’s agenda? Might there be any civil rights advocates or, strange though it may be to consider, academics who see these as legitimate areas of inquiry and not part of some nefarious Republican plot?
Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, an umbrella group, predicted that “in each of these studies, I can assure you that they are going to reflect the right’s ideology. It confirms our worst fears that the commission is little more than a handmaiden for the far right.”
[CRC Chairman Gerald] Reynolds said the Social Security study has nothing to do with partisan politics. “I want to see if the current [Social Security] system has a disparate impact on racial minorities,” he said. “I don’t know where the truth is, and that’s the whole point of the exercise.”
…
Henderson, [Nancy Pelosi-appointed liberal CRC commissioner Michael] Yaki and others who are generally opposed to Social Security changes say they are concerned about the commission’s reliance on the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute.
Did Fears, or anyone else in the WaPo, or any of the liberal commissioners, ever complain (surely the above is a complaint) about how the Mary Frances Berry Commission relied on research by liberal interest groups? Was their program part of the “Clinton agenda”?
The bias that is inherent in the way Fears wrote this article is not so much his portraying the new Civil Rights Commission as conservative — for surely it is — or even in noting that its approach to civil rights is in line with President Bush’s. The bias is in the glaring but unexamined assumption that a conservative approach to civil rights isn’t an approach to civil rights at all, but a right wing deviation. Thus, in this view, there’s no such thing as a liberal approach to civil rights. In the Fears/Wade Henderson view, civil rights means what liberals and Democrats say it means, and so it would make no sense to write an article pointing with horror to the CRC relying on the research of “civil rights groups.” Opposition to racial preferences, by contrast, does not represent a different view of equality and civil rights but an illegitimate, right wing abandonment of civil rights.
One of the chief counts in this indictment of the newly conservative CRC is Chairman Reynolds’s interest in examining how blacks fare under the current Social Security system. This interest, the article charges, shows the new Commission to be little more than a right wing hit squad because the research of the conservative groups on which it allegedly relies (the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute)
supports Bush’s contention that Social Security shortchanges African Americans because their life spans are shorter than those of white beneficiaries. That assertion was roundly condemned by AARP and the NAACP.
And it doesn’t stop there. Now some are demanding that the impact of Social Security on women should also be examined:
More than half of all women receiving Social Security benefits are spouses of deceased, retired or disabled workers. The same is true for only 3% of men.
Furthermore, older women rely more on Social Security for retirement income than older men do.
And women make up 58% of beneficiaries over age 65, so they cannot afford to put that security at risk.
The time is long overdue for women’s voices and concerns to be a central part of a debate that is vital to women of all ages.
Oh, wait. That demand comes from Nancy Duff Campbell, co-president of the National Women’s Law Center, a progressive, feminist legal organization. Or maybe this demand to study the impact on another disadvantaged minority (or majority, but who’s counting?) now places them in sympathetic association with the right wing zealots at the Civil Rights Commission.
John,
I agree with you that the Fears piece is biased, but the Republicans sort of brought this one upon themselves. Questioning the social security receipts to racial civil rights falls into the same outcome v. process trap that Republicans often rightly accuse preferentialists of succumbing to. Now you have calls for them to expand the inquiry to results related to women, and soon to be every other group. The problem is that social security, a universal program, doesn’t cause societal disparity — things like the cultural and economic sources of higher death rates (crime, less health care. the various “achievement gaps”), are what cause the outcome. As much as I sympathize with Bush for wanting to reform social security before it blows up, this is not a good line of inquiry and a bad way place to seek “political cover” because it won’t sway its targets and opens the intellectual door to a variety of bad policy analyses. I don’t blame the Commission as much as the administration because the Commission is struggling for survival and it can’t really say no to the administration. Its between a rock and hard spot right now, coming out of the reign of insanity it experienced for the last 15 years.
Chetly – As someone who never believed that “disparate impact” established the existence of discrimination, I completely agree. I would agree that it is legitimate to look at the impact of social security (or anything else) on blacks or women, but for the above reason I believe this would almost never be a civil rights issue, and thus that it is a mistake for the CRC to get into it — at least without some suspicion that intentional discrimination is involved somewhere.
If I were in the CRC’s position, I’d cater somewhat to the administration to prevent the them or the far right from disbanding them. The difficulty will be whether they can show enough independence in the longer-term to restore the image of the institution.