[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 65 (Wednesday, May 20, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E916]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               IN OPPOSITION TO RIGGS AMENDMENT TO H.R. 6

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                         HON. VINCE SNOWBARGER

                               of kansas

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, May 20, 1998

  Mr. SNOWBARGER. Mr. Chairman, I rise to explain my opposition to the 
Riggs Amendment to H.R. 6, the Higher Education Amendments of 1998.
  The principal purpose of our important civil rights reforms, now more 
than thirty years old, was to help eradicate systematic and structural 
racism. Our hope was to keep the government and its agents from 
treating people differently because of their race or ethnicity. As 
Martin Luther King, Jr. said the law cannot make us love one another. 
We can, however, work together to ensure that, at the very least, our 
government sees its citizens as individuals. Each one is unique and 
worthy of respect.
  Affirmative action, which originally meant ensuring that all should 
have the opportunity to compete on their merits, has now become a 
persistent challenge to these principles of fairness. If our 
government, through quotas and set-asides, continues to treat Americans 
differently because of their race or ethnicity, it becomes even harder 
to eliminate racism wherever it festers.
  The amendment to the Higher Education Act Reauthorization offered by 
Representative Frank Riggs was mostly consistent with these principles 
of fairness and equal opportunity for all. Representative Riggs' 
amendment would have prohibited preferential admissions treatment based 
in whole or in part on the race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national 
origin of applicants by institutions of higher education. A special 
exemption was included in the amendment to exempt preferential 
treatment on the basis of affiliation with an Indian tribe by any 
tribally controlled college.
  I opposed the amendment because I was concerned that Haskell Indian 
Nations University, which is located in my district, would be adversely 
affected by the amendment. Haskell Indian Nations University is the 
only federally owned and operated four-year institution for Native 
Americans in the country. Because the University is controlled by the 
Bureau of Indian Affairs and not by a tribe, I felt that it would not 
qualify for the exemption included in the Riggs amendment.
  Additionally, I opposed this amendment because I believe that we must 
seek to end policies that discriminate. This cannot be done in a 
piecemeal fashion. We must reach out to all groups to ensure that all 
Americans have equal access to opportunities. Quotas and set-asides 
undermine our effort to secure this for everyone.
  For these reasons, I opposed the amendment.

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