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StumbleSun editorial:
Change for the better
Justice Department’s civil rights division to become more active in fighting discrimination
Friday, Sept. 4, 2009 | 2:07 a.m.
One of the most famous episodes of the 1960s civil rights movement was the Kennedy administration’s successful push for racial integration at the University of Alabama over the objections of segregationist Gov. George Wallace. Key players in the effort included Attorney General Robert Kennedy and his Justice Department.
The department’s civil rights division in subsequent years continued to play a critical role as an advocate for the disenfranchised in cases involving affirmative action, voting rights, housing, busing, disabilities and hate crimes.
But under the Bush administration, that role was severely limited, with the division addressing only individual cases involving intentional discrimination. The civil rights division was further damaged under the Bush administration by hiring practices that favored conservative ideology over the department’s historically balanced, nonpartisan approach.
Thankfully, the division is changing for the better under the direction of Attorney General Eric Holder.
As reported Tuesday by The New York Times, the division will take a broader and more proactive role in combating policies in housing, hiring and other areas that cause minorities to fare worse statistically. The division will also hire more than 50 additional lawyers and take a nonpartisan approach to enforcement of civil rights laws.
The division, in other words, will return to the advocacy role that is necessary to give the nation’s civil rights laws the teeth that they deserve. Victims of racial or gender discrimination are bound to get a fairer shake under the Obama administration than was true with the prior administration.
Beefing up the division and giving it a more robust focus are also consistent with other progressive ideas from Holder that merit serious consideration by Congress. As the Times reported, these proposals include passage of a federal hate-crimes law, elimination of the sentencing disparity between possessors of crack and powder cocaine, and greater financing for indigent defense.
Too many Americans have been harmed by discriminatory practices that have exposed society’s ugly side. We look forward to a civil rights division that will expend maximum effort to end discrimination once and for all.
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Why not just copy the NYT editorials here? It would save you the cost of paraphrasing them. New York City is a bastion of liberal politics and thus the existence of a liberal paper like the NYT makes sense. What sense does the Las Vegas Sun make in Nevada?
Well robert, I guess to me since I don't subscribe to the NYT's, the RJ and Sun brings the news to my doorstep. Makes sense to me.
I hope you people who have been having trouble with the term race will be enlightened after reading this article. Race refers to where a citizen of a countries ancestry comes from. A citizen or a national from another country cannot be considered a race in our country because his race is determined by where his ancestors came from when they came into his country. A French citizen does not have a race in our country they have a nationality and a citizenship in another country. So we know that different races of citizens make up the French population, as do different races of citizens in the U.S. make up our population.