Apparently bowing to Republican pressure, the US Committee on Civil Rights have postponed the release of their report on Bush's civil rights record until after the election. After all, it'd hardly do if a government agency released the embarassing truth.
Fortunately, that hasn't stopped the online version from seeing the light of day.
This document is hefty enough that immediate analysis will take time. But there are some highlights from the Executive Summary... after the bounce.
Update [2004-10-21 20:0:0 by lilithvf1998]: Earl Ofari Hutchinson is plugging this in his most recent AlterNet article. You go, Earl!
First off--and no surprise to anyone really--civil rights got, at best, lip service from Bush's administration:
...President Bush seldom speaks about civil rights, and when he does, it is to carry out official duties, not to promote initiatives or plans for improving opportunity. Even when he publicly discusses existing barriers to equality and efforts to overcome them, the administration's words and deeds often conflict.
The Executive Summary also points out that, while Bush has a "commendably diverse Cabinet and moderately diverse judiciary", his nominations have not been generally supportive of civil rights. It also points out that, after adjustments for inflation, the six biggest civil rights programs received "a loss of spending power for 2004 and 2005."
Then we start getting to specific failures on Bush's part:
- He dragged his feet on the Help America Vote Act;
- He under-funded No Child Left Behind;
- He worked against Affirmative Action;
- He slahshed rent assistance and under-funded A Home of Your Own;
- He ignored environmental hazards to minorities and low-income populations;
- He allowed broad loopholes in racial profiling guidelines;
- He "conveyed mixed messages" regarding hate crimes;
- He discriminated against immigrants from Haiti as well as Muslim and Middle-Eastern immigrants;
- He under-funded or eliminated funding from many Native American health, education, housing, and law enforcement programs;
- He has set back women's rights even as he "paved the way" for women's economic gains;
- He has opposed ENDA and the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, as well as supporting a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage;
- He has faltered on his commitments to underserved minorities.
On the plus side, the report does mention potentially positive gains for those with disabilities--potential, because the report acknowledges that it is too early to determine the full impact of his policy. He has apparently also helped language minorities although he doesn't require agencies to measure his policies' effectiveness under Title VI. Finally, he gets big marks on--wait for it!--faith-based initiatives.
Nobody should be surprized by the contents of this report, but to have a comprehensive, government-issued report on the matter will give much heft to the argument that, in all, Bush's record on civil rights stinks on ice.
Skipping ahead to the report's conclusion, there was one section that leaped out to me:
President Bush has said that all violent crime constitutes hate crime. That belief ignores the common feature of bias-motivated lynchings, draggings, beatings, and firebombings: that they are committed upon people because of characteristics such as race, color, creed, ethnicity, national origin, or sexual orientation.
The reverse is also true; that is, President Bush refers to programs that have little or no civil rights relevance as ones that promote equality and justice. For example, the program that he most frequently promotes as a civil rights measure, the faith-based initiative, has nothing to do with civil rights, except that it allows employment discrimination prohibited under Title VII. He equates the lack of support for churches with prejudice and bigotry, making a case for his initiative that the public feels compelled to support. He speaks about the faith-based initiative in civil rights terms more than any legitimate civil rights proposal. Characterizing unrelated programs as ones that end prejudice and bigotry not only confuses the public, but also directs resources and attention from relevant initiatives, and as such is detrimental.
Kerry damned well better refer back to this report tonight.