 |
||||||||
 |
|
|||||||
|
||||||||
|
 |
Time for solutions, not conflict
© St. Petersburg Times, WASHINGTON -- It was another example of life imitating art, I guess. Government appointees debating an important issue as if they were guests on CNN's Crossfire. The question was whether African-Americans and other minorities had been disenfranchised in the Florida election last November. The forum was the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which in its history has played an important role in promoting racial justice. As I watched the commission meet for four hours Friday, I found myself getting angry. It wasn't the specious statistical analysis of alleged discrimination that disturbed me. Nor was it the high-handed manner in which chairwoman Mary Frances Berry ran the meeting. What upset me as a citizen was that the commission members were not trying in the least to forge a common understanding of the problem. Why, I asked myself, are the taxpayers footing the bill for yet another forum to foster more conflict between the races? After the meeting, I asked Berry if she had made any effort to work with the dissenters on her panel to write a report that could be endorsed by the Republican appointees as well as the Democratic ones. Since the report calls for steps to be taken by Republican administrations in Washington and Tallahassee, I reasoned, wouldn't it be wise for her to bring GOP appointees on board? Berry is a college professor who can dazzle you with her intellect. I know she understood my simple question. But she avoided answering it and instead suggested that I did not grasp how the commission works. If the Republicans had wanted to reconcile their differences, she said, they could have talked to the commission's staff about it. In other words, Berry, as chairwoman, felt no duty as a public official to resolve the partisan conflict on this issue. She prefers the Newt Gingrich model of government as endless conflict between ideologies. Of course, it's possible that the two points of view on the commission could not be reconciled. Yet everyone agrees that the system of balloting in Florida needs improvement. I sensed the Republican appointees would have supported all other aspects of the report if it had been just a little less categorical in its findings of a pattern of disenfranchisement. The Republicans were by no means the only critics of the commission's statistics. Commissioner Abagail Thernstrom said she viewed the statistical analysis as a good beginning, but not proof positive of racial bias. But Berry said she was unwilling to accept any less sweeping a conclusion. Perhaps Berry, as her critics contend, was trying to prove that Democrat Al Gore was the true winner in Florida. She clearly has been under pressure from black leaders to endorse their contention that African-Americans were the chief victims of the Florida screw-up. But the more likely explanation is that Berry, who was nurtured in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, still believes, as do so many other African-American political figures, that conflict yields racial progress. I would suggest that today's racial problems require a different kind of solution. If African-Americans were disenfranchised in last November's voting, it was not as a result of Jim Crow laws, literacy tests or poll taxes. The reasons are debatable. I am not saying that black leaders should abandon their principles. Yes, there are still reasons for racial minorities to take to the streets, if necessary, to demand equality. What I am saying is that people serving in government -- be they legislators, administrators or members of an obscure federal commission -- have a different job to do. Times have changed, and Americans are looking to their government leaders to be problem solvers.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
|
Times columns today Howard Troxler Jan Glidewell Hubert Mizell Gary Shelton Sara Fritz |
