Black lawyers behind Bush's affirmative action stance

Much of the media attention following President Bush's announcement in January of his opposition to affirmative action focused on the dubious role National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice played in helping to shape his decision.

A small clique of right-wing Black lawyers, all Bush administration appointees, however, played an equally, if not more, influential role.

Shortly after Bush announced he had asked the Department of Justice (DOJ) to file a friend of the court brief with the U.S. Supreme Court opposing the University of Michigan's affirmative action policies, an article in The Washington Post reported: "Many black conservative lawyers who are Bush appointees . . . including officials at the Education and Justice Departments, lobbied vociferously for a broader argument against affirmative action."

The article was specifically referring to Gerald A. Reynolds, Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights; Brian W. Jones, general counsel at the Department of Education; and Ralph F. Boyd Jr., Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at DOJ.

All of them sided with Solicitor General Ted Olson - an adamant opponent of affirmative action - in arguing that the President should urge the Supreme Court to overturn Bakke in opposing the use of race in affirmative action under any circumstances.

Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson, who is African American and a graduate of the University of Michigan law school, argued against Bush filing a brief.

Reynolds first earned his ultraconservative credentials as a legal analyst for the Center for Equal Opportunity, a think tank that opposes affirmative action and diversity policies, and from 1997 to 1998 he served as president and legal counsel to the Center for New Black Leadership (CNBL), a conservative, national public policy think-tank in Washington, D.C.

Prior to his appointment at the Education Department, Jones was an attorney at the San Francisco law firm of Curiale Dellaverson Hirschfeld Kelly & Kraemer. He had also served as Deputy Legal Affairs Secretary to California Governor Pete Wilson and as counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington, D.C., where he worked on nominations, constitutional law and civil rights issues for then-chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). Jones also served as president of the CNBL.

Before his appointment to head the civil rights division at DOJ, Boyd was a partner at the Boston law firm Goodwin Proctor, where he specialized in corporate litigation. He spent six years as a federal prosecutor and has no prior civil rights experience.

David Bositis, senior research analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, D.C., says the three men are ideological clones of Clarence Thomas and were picked by conservative insiders in the Bush administration to do the bidding of the right-wing.

"They share the same hostility toward civil rights as the President does, and just because they are Black don't expect them to be a moderating influence," Bositis says. "Colin Powell is the only Black person in the Bush Administration who is Black in terms of political sensibilities."

Neither Reynolds, Jones nor Boyd returned repeated phone calls to their offices requesting comment.

Lee Cokorinos is research director for the New York-based Institute for Democracy Studies, a liberal institution that tracks the growing right-wing legal movement. He authored the book Assault on Diversity, which included details on the growth and rising influence of conservative African American lawyers sponsored by the right-wing, and who now influence the Bush administration.

Cokorinos says Boyd, Reynolds and Jones - all members of the rabidly anti-civil rights legal group, the Federalist Society - are part of a well-coordinated effort to turn back the clock on civil rights without appearing blatantly racist.

"The leadership or the right-wing started to put structures together in the early 1980s to get around the problem of White male faces leading the attack on diversity initiatives and affirmative action," he

Copyright Crisis Publishing Company, Incorporated Mar/Apr 2003
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