Perhaps chafing from a stinging criticism of his civil rights record (or glaring lack of one), President Bush earlier this month appointed Gerald A. Reynolds to head the US Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR), the 57-year old civil rights oversight body. Reynolds' appointment came as long-time Chair Mary Frances Berry and Vice Chair Cruz Reynoso resigned. Reynolds, an African American lawyer and associate at the anti-affirmative action and ironically named think tank Center for Equal Opportunity, is stridently against affirmative action, leading critics of the president's choice to raise concerns about the future of the Civil Rights Commission. Many right-wingers applauded Bush's nomination of Reynolds because they believe the commission is "outmoded" and "irrelevant." Reynolds, who described affirmative action as "the big lie," shares this view. After his nomination he rejected the past work of the commission by stating that 2004 is different from 1964. Racial discrimination may exist, he told several major newspapers, but that isn't what causes disproportionate unemployment, wage discrimination, higher disease rates, inadequate access to good education, unfair housing (and so on) for people of color. His remarks thinly veil his real beliefs about the sources of unequal conditions. At bottom, he believes that people of color are to blame for the problems they face, and if only they had a "bootstraps" mentality, things would change. In his comments to the press, Reynolds implicitly rejected the results of study after study that demonstrate the persistence of institutional racism and the necessity for affirmative action policies to reverse it. [more]
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