[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 124 (Tuesday, July 31, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1667]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         BRINGING DIVERSITY TO THE FOREFRONT OF CURRENT ISSUES

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. CHARLES B. RANGEL

                              of new york

                  in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, July 31, 2007

  Mr. RANGEL. Madam Speaker, I stand today to call attention to the 
issues of diversity this country is facing at the moment. I would also 
like to enter into the Record an opinion editorial by Lee Bollinger, 
president of Columbia University, from this week's edition of the New 
York Amsterdam News, entitled, ``What's next for diversity?''
  Diversity has been, and continues to be, an issue faced by America's 
institutions of higher education. Brown v. Board of Education was a 
monumental step forward in achieving diversity for the students in 
these institutions, but Supreme Court decisions like Grutter v. 
Bollinger, have caused many to wonder if we have forgotten what those 
involved in Brown v. Board of Education sought to do. Instead of seeing 
the Supreme Court continuously striving to achieve diversity, Americans 
see the decisions of the Supreme Court slowly chipping away at the 
precedents set forth in Brown v. Board of Education. The question, 
``What's next for diversity?'' is one at the forefront of current 
issues and it calls all those who support diversity to support all that 
promotes it and denounce all that contradicts it.
  I believe that programs meant to achieve diversity like affirmative 
action are necessary, and those who oppose such programs should be 
questioned for their motives. I hope that the questions brought forth 
by worried Americans will be answered in a timely fashion. Diversity 
has not been achieved, therefore I do not agree with those who believe 
diversity aimed programs should be phased out. I support affirmative 
action, as well as other programs aimed at achieving diversity, and 
call for the support of all others who feel the same.

                       What's Next for Diversity?

                         (By Lee C. Bollinger)

       For those of us who worked over so many years to reach the 
     Supreme Court and affirm the constitutionality of affirmative 
     action in higher education, which occurred in 2003 in Grutter 
     v. Bollinger, this is the moment we have been dreading. The 
     recent 5-4 decision limiting voluntary desegregation programs 
     in our nation's public schools represents an inversion of the 
     historic Brown v. Board of Education decision's clarion call 
     for racial equality in education. And it is all too easy to 
     understand how societal efforts to achieve racial 
     integration, including through affirmative action in higher 
     education, are now in serious jeopardy.
       To be sure, Justice Kennedy in his concurring opinion 
     stopped the majority short of slamming the door on race-based 
     diversity in our schools; and even the Chief Justice tried to 
     explain why the use of race in law school admissions is 
     different. Specifically, the Court said it was tolerable to 
     consider race as one of several factors in Grutter because 
     individual applicants were evaluated in a ``holistic'' way 
     and because ``the expansive freedoms of speech and thought 
     associated with the university environment''--and fostered by 
     diversity--``occupy a special niche in our constitutional 
     tradition.''
       Yet anyone reading between the lines of the majority 
     opinion could feel the Chief Justice straining to explain 
     Grutter's constitutionality before making the point he really 
     wanted to make: Grutter is a weak precedent with ``expressly 
     articulated key limitations'' and that ``the lower courts'' 
     have ``largely disregarded'' this ``in extending Grutter'' 
     beyond ``the unique context of higher education.''
       It is important that we read the narrowness of this 
     interpretation of Grutter alongside the sweeping rhetoric 
     that Chief Justice Roberts really wants this holding to 
     signify: ``The way to stop discrimination on the basis of 
     race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.'' This 
     is the language anti-affirmative action advocates and a host 
     of others will seize on. In this way, the methodical process 
     Thurgood Marshall and others followed to achieve the Brown 
     revolution will be used by the Roberts Court to undo it.
       The difference is that the Brown decision brought the law 
     down to earth, where it could finally see that separate 
     school facilities were, as a matter of fact and experience, 
     ``inherently unequal.'' The Seattle and Louisville decision 
     removes the law to its formalistic and disconnected position 
     of a century ago, where, as empty rhetoric, it imagines an 
     America that never was--and because of it, may never be.
       In doing so, it obscures the larger debate about race in 
     this country. Stripped bare, however, these school decisions 
     are not about precedent, they are about broad philosophical 
     differences about the role of public institutions in dealing 
     with issues of race in America. Undergirding them is the 
     feeling that Justice Scalia has made explicit, that society 
     is tired of mending centuries of slavery and Jim Crow 
     segregation, and that it is now up to those who have been 
     discriminated against to ``make it'' on their own, as other 
     groups have. For them, to consider race even for the noble 
     end of integration does more harm than good by inflaming 
     racial tensions.
       These arguments make many Americans uncomfortable, and so 
     they avoid them. I say let them be put on the table and 
     debated, not hidden beneath phony ``interpretations'' of 
     Brown. How should we respond to the fact that cities are more 
     segregated today than they were a half century ago, or that 
     the unemployment rates among African Americans in our inner 
     cities is a multiple of the national number?
       The problem for the Chief Justice is that wishing Brown 
     stood only for the simpler proposition of ``stopping 
     discrimination'' does not make it so. From the very 
     beginning, Brown impelled us to take affirmative steps to 
     achieve racial justice. And it is absurd to think the Court 
     that decided Brown would have struck down these local school 
     districts' efforts to carry out this mission. Yet this is 
     precisely the result the Roberts Court wants us to take at 
     face value. It is up to us to confront them on this and 
     insist, that if they are going to take this new turn in our 
     basic law, they must state their real reasons for it. 
     Otherwise the Court will continue pretending that its rulings 
     are consistent with the Brown line of cases--and thus devoted 
     to ``conservative'' principles--until there is nothing left 
     of Brown. If that is not the epitome of ``judicial 
     activism,'' what is?
       I often wonder what the unanimous Brown Court would think 
     of a country fifty-three years later that has proven itself 
     too impatient to achieve racial justice after centuries of 
     being too slow to recognize it. Perhaps, knowing painfully 
     the legacy of invidious discrimination they were seeking to 
     overturn, they actually would not be surprised by this most 
     recent turn of events. After all, every half century or so, 
     the nation seems to back away from solving the problems of 
     racial injustice, only to recommit itself to the cause when 
     the pot is about to boil over. From the beginning of the 
     Constitution to Dred Scott; from the Civil War and 
     emancipation to Plessy; from Brown to today--we always seem 
     to be better at articulating our ideals than delivering on 
     them.
       But it doesn't have to be this way. One of the things I 
     learned in leading the litigation in the affirmative action 
     cases was that dealing with issues of race is not something 
     that people in the mainstream of American life want to talk 
     about, but with the proper leadership, they will.
       For example, while we were eventually praised for enlisting 
     the support of forty of the Fortune 500 largest US 
     corporations and from leaders in the military, it was 
     exceedingly difficult to get those advocates to sign on to 
     the cause of affirmative action in higher education. Like 
     many of our political leaders, they were convinced that a 
     majority of Americans would oppose them, and pointed to Prop 
     209 in California for proof. It was only after the Late 
     President Gerald Ford agreed to stand with us that things 
     began to change. ``I don't want future college students to 
     suffer the cultural and social impoverishment that afflicted 
     my generation,'' he wrote in the New York Times. That is what 
     inspired General Motors to sign on--only then were we ``in 
     business.''
       I fear this latest Court decision represents the first act 
     and scene of a national tragedy of withdrawal from Brown and 
     Grutter's promise of a more inclusive America--a perilous 
     shift in the direction of constitutional law from the last 
     half century. But the scenes that follow are still ours to 
     write--if only we have the courage and will to take up the 
     pen. As President Ford said, ``If history has taught us 
     anything . . . it is the notion of America as a work in 
     progress.''

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