Cronyism and Civil Rights

According to today's New York Times, the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department is an outpost of cronyism for the Bush administration. Although accusations of this presidency filling the bureaucratic ranks with hacks is nothing new, the fact that the administration sees civil rights as an arena in which to reward political loyalty is especially alarming. (Moreso than making Homeland Security a virtual hackocracy? No. But we have all known for a long time now that the administration is less concerned with homeland security than with using homeland security as a cudgel with which to pummel its opposition.)

The Times piece asserts:

The Bush administration is quietly remaking the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, filling the permanent ranks with lawyers who have strong conservative credentials but little experience in civil rights, according to job application materials obtained by the Globe.

The documents show that only 42 percent of the lawyers hired since 2003, after the administration changed the rules to give political appointees more influence in the hiring process, have civil rights experience. In the two years before the change, 77 percent of those who were hired had civil rights backgrounds.

In an acknowledgment of the department's special need to be politically neutral, hiring for career jobs in the Civil Rights Division under all recent administrations, Democratic and Republican, had been handled by civil servants -- not political appointees.

But in the fall of 2002, then-attorney general John Ashcroft changed the procedures. The Civil Rights Division disbanded the hiring committees made up of veteran career lawyers.

For decades, such committees had screened thousands of resumes, interviewed candidates, and made recommendations that were only rarely rejected.

Now, hiring is closely overseen by Bush administration political appointees to Justice, effectively turning hundreds of career jobs into politically appointed positions.

I have never subscribed to Kanye West's argument that President Bush does not care about black people. I also find the argument that the Republican Party is racist not to be compelling. (The Democrats, let's keep in mind, were the party of white supremacy for more than a century even as it eventually also emerged as the home of racial progressivism in the last half or so of that century.) But it is clear that even if most Republicans are not racist, the GOP has a race problem, and that revelations such as the ones in the Times surely do not help the party's image with regard to race. Some issues should be above politics. Unfortunately this administration does not see things that way, and its astigmatism does irrevocable damage to the country.