Civil Rights: An Uncertain Present

Racial dynamics in America have changed significantly in the 27 years since the 1964 Civil Rights Act passed. Then, within some circles, there was a sense of optimism, of change for the better, and of a vision of an improved and more just America. The economic growth of the '60s brought a willingness by most Americans to include people who had been left out.

But as the times got tougher, so did the attitude of most Americans. Few have the same sense of optimism -- on economic or racial issues. And so, as the 1991 Civil Rights Act is debated before Congress, affirmative action, the public policy goal for bringing in the formerly excluded, has backlashed into a buzzword for unfair preferential treatment of minorities over whites.

The ultimate irony is that civil rights legislation, the foundation of 1960s progressive social policy, has become a personalized regulation. The 1991 Civil Rights Act offers no social reform, and instead pits individual against individual. Discussion about civil rights has degenerated into a political power struggle between various interest groups, eclipsing the opportunity to envision a more just and fair society.

Moral integrity has become a pawn in a cynical chess match. The Democrats had hoped to score big domestic points on civil rights legislation, not realizing that the Republicans decided they do not need sizable numbers of black people in their political base. In fact, the GOP prefers to have the Democrats identified as the party of "African-American special interests."

And all of the civil rights bills -- whether proposed by the Bush administration, the Democratic leadership, moderate Republican senators, or even the Congressional Black Caucus -- are basically different versions of the same idea, differing in such minutiae as the specific dollar awards of punitive damages. None addresses substantive philosophical or moral realities of racial dissension. Erwin Knoll, editor of The Progressive, offered the proper chastisement when he recently said on The MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour, "I'm not sure which is the more unappealing spectacle, the Democrats pretending that this is a serious piece of legislation, or the president pretending that it's a serious threat."

President Bush and his Capitol Hill operatives have an agenda. They raise questions about the effectiveness of liberal welfare-society politics but for the wrong reasons. These questions need to be examined, but the reason is because patronizing public policies that ensure dependence truly hurt poor and minority people. Republicans may be on the right road -- but they are headed in the wrong direction.

On the other hand, liberal Democrats are at a rest stop and don't seem able to get back to the highway. In actuality they are no longer even part of the dialogue. Their policy proposals assume that black Americans simply want to assimilate or be cared for. Too many liberal politicians are motivated by a desire to relieve their white guilt rather than to empower people who have been denied access to control.

"The moral basis of civil rights discourse is based in secular liberalism, which has collapsed," states Eugene Rivers, grassroots organizer and pastor of Azuza Community Church in Roxbury, Massachusetts. "This debate points out the philosophical poverty of liberalism."

THE CHALLENGE FOR people who hope for a better future is to be able to confront the assumptions behind civil rights issues. It is time to get back to the basics of determining positive and inclusive social values, rather than spending so much energy on the symbolic value of a bill that will have little concrete meaning to the everyday experience of most people. While we debate over details -- such as what the limit on punitive damages should be -- the fox is loose in the chicken coop.

While individual persons who have been the victims of racial or gender discrimination may sometimes benefit and individual corporations may occasionally be penalized under the new civil rights bill, little would be done to protect the interests of society. Since racial discrimination is so pervasive, and yet so few cases are won, the system almost becomes a glorified lottery. The big payoff of a few folks is supposed to demonstrate that the system works. But it does not.

Until we all participate in developing a vision for the multicultural America that we want -- neither based on an assumption of racial superiority nor on the countering liberal idea of cultural assimilation -- any comprehensive set of policy proposals (housing, education, welfare, childcare, job protection) will not garner broad public support and thus will be unwinnable and useless. And even if these policies could be implemented, without a vision of the common good they would be ineffectual.

People of faith need to jump into the civil rights debate. The current parameters of the discussion are unacceptable because they avoid central questions about the past and the future, leaving us stuck in an uncertain present. In Rivers' words, "To be morally compelling, the civil rights agenda must again find its sacred basis."

Bob Hulteen was Under Review editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.