Bush Places Flunkey at head of Civil Rights Commission 
Tuesday, December 14, 2004 at 03:37AM
TheSpook
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It is not that the new chairman of the United States Commission on Civil Rights doubts racial discrimination still exists, as his detractors have charged, it is that he is not quick to see it. He is not sure he has personally experienced it. "I just assume somewhere in my life some knucklehead has looked at me and my brown self and said that they have given me less or denied me an opportunity," said the chairman, Gerald A. Reynolds, 41, an African-American lawyer. "But the bottom line is, and my wife will attest to this, I am so insensitive that I probably didn't notice." It is an outlook that could not be more different from that of his predecessor, Mary Frances Berry, whom President Bush declined to reappoint. Instead the president chose Mr. Reynolds, a fellow conservative who once described affirmative action as a "big lie," as chairman of the 47-year-old advisory panel with a storied history of pushing the government to combat discrimination. Ms. Berry, 66, made a reputation in her 25 years on the commission for haranguing presidents for not doing enough to recognize what she considered the persistent vestiges of discrimination. She fired off a 166-page report last week as a parting shot that criticized the Bush administration for fomenting a divided nation.  [more]
Article originally appeared on (http://brownwatch.com/).
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