In the post immediately below I described the Adopt-A-Box blogger memo mining project organized by Hugh Hewitt, and provided what I thought was a good example of what we can find in those files that the MSM probably won’t.
Here’s another example, provided by Ric James’s examination of a box on “Equal Opportunity in Education.”
Most of the contents of that box dealt with comments on comments on comments regarding a draft letter for President Reagan to send to Morris Abram, Vice Chairman of the Commission on Civil Rights. Abram, a native Georgian and graduate of the University of Georgia, had written the president to complain of a threat by the Dept. of Education to cut off funds to the University of Georgia because of its use of a Board of Regents test that allegedly had a disparate impact on blacks.
Read James’s post on his blog, hoodathunk, to follow the trajectory of Abram’s letter and the draft of a reply from the president. I believe that one of Roberts’s suggested revisions deserves emphasis, which is why I’m calling attention to it here even though it was also mentioned by James. The draft reply given to Roberts for comment contained the following language:
I am informed by Secretary Bell that officials at the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights have alleged that opportunities to take the remedial courses at Georgia’s traditionally black college campuses are not equal to those provided at its traditionally white campuses. If true — and the Department officials must, of course, prove this allegation — such a denial of equal opportunity to individuals will need to be corrected. So long as I am President, however, you can be assured that all allegations of discrimination will need to be fairly proven, and that the Federal government will not interfere with the use of any academic test or standard based on differences in the pass-fail rates or any other “results test.”
Here is Roberts’s comment on that language:
Finally, in my view — a view hotly and angrily disputed by Micheal [sic] Horowitz — the last two sentences of the second paragraph are too hostile in tone to the allegation of discrimination. As I see it, anyone reading those sentences would get the impression that the President does not believe for a minute that Education can prove that the University of Georgia discriminated in the provision of remedial programs. I would moderate the two sentences to read: “If true, such a denial of equal opportunity to individuals will need to be corrected. So long as I am President, however, the Federal government will not interfere with the use of any academic test of standard based on differences in pass-fail rates or any other ‘results test.'” This suggested revision makes the point without overkill.
The mainstream media have portrayed Roberts as hostile to civil rights (an understatement), and I suspect everyone today who is critical of racial preferences and “results tests” has encountered the criticism that we favor colorblindness because we are in fact blind to the discrimination that still exists. Thus I think the above quote from Roberts is significant because it shows that he is very much aware that discrimination still exists. He wanted to save Reagan from the gaffe of appearing to be “too hostile in tone to the allegation of discrimination,” i.e., to the possibility that the DoE’s charges might possibly be true.
This is not the suggestion of a man who believes discrimination exists only in the past.
