Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Diversity in the Justice Department

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I rarely post two entries on one day, especially at BMG, but this is especially frightening. I got this link via Talking Points Memo.

The I-Team has learned that since 2003…the criminal section within the Civil Rights Division has not hired a single black attorney to replace those who have left. Not one. 

…

As a result, the current face of civil rights prosecutions looks like this: Out of fifty attorneys in the Criminal Section – only two are black. The same number the criminal section had in 1978 – even though the size of the staff has more than doubled.

In the spirit of Bush’s Environmental Protection Agency which doesn’t protect the environment or the Homeland Security Department which doesn’t actually protect much of anything, the Civil Rights Devision of the Justice Department appears to be ironically named.

This goes *way* beyond any questions of Affirmative Action or quotas (not the same thing) or anything like that. I dare anybody to suggest that the Civil Rights Division couldn’t find a single African-American lawyer qualified to fill in the criminal section.

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Comments

  1. Well, when you make sure you’re only hiring people who looove President Bush and his “policies”, black candidates are few and far in between.

  2. The Globe did a really great story about this yesterday, actually, linking it back the the firing scandel with the U.S. Attorneys. Apparently, the guy who is the head of HR at the criminal section civil rights division used to be the U.S. attorney for Missouri, where he was known for really viciously going after groups trying to do voter reg right before the last election (often violating DOJ ethics rules in the process). He had replaced a prosecuter who had a rep as one of the best in that part of the country.

  3. i know exactly what you are saying, that bush clearly is uninterested in enforcing civil rights laws.  i think you are correct – he clearly gives not a sh!t for people not in his circle of buddies.  however, i think you actually lose credibility by tying an attorney’s race to their drive and ability to go after civil rights cases.  first of all, not all civil rights cases involve race.  there are other federally protected categories.  second, black and white are not the only races in this country.  yet your post relies on the old and out-dated false dichotomy of black/white.  would a latino or asian or mixed-race attorney be ineffective in their dedication to civil rights because they are not black?  finally, there are plenty of black conservative Friends of Bush, and there are plenty of white people who have dedicated their lives to advancing civil rights.  please explain how being born black automatically makes a person pro-civil rights.  some of the most outspoken opponents of LGBT civil rights, for example, are black clergy. 

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    p>
    again let me state that i have no doubt that your main conclusion is right – Bush has gutted the goodness from the civil rights division, as he has everywhere else.  but your method of analysis is suspect.

    • You’re reading way to much into this post. It isn’t about the false dichotomy of black/white — I know that. And obviously race is not a determinant when it comes to an attorney’s ability to go after civil rights cases. And, yeah, I’m aware of the black conservatives that are, as Sharpton put it, his color but not his kind. This post wasn’t a thorough analysis of the diversity in the Justice Department. It’s just a post to alert people that:

      As a result, the current face of civil rights prosecutions looks like this: Out of fifty attorneys in the Criminal Section – only two are black. The same number the criminal section had in 1978 – even though the size of the staff has more than doubled.

      My method of analysis went something like this: “Whaaa??”

      <

      p>

      For more than a decade, Richard Ugelow was a supervisor at the Civil Rights section that sues government employers for discrimination in hiring and promotion.

      Richard Ugelow: “You can’t operate like that.  We’re hypocrites.” Professor Ugelow now teaches law at American University. We showed him the Justice Department’s statistics on minority hiring. 

      Richard Ugelow: “We would sue employers for having numbers like that.” 

      None of this should come as a surprise to the Justice Department.  In 2002, it hired KPMG, an international consulting firm to analyze the diversity of its workforce.

      It issued this 186-page report finding the department had “significant diversity issues”, that “minorities perceive unfairness,” are “significantly under-represented in management ranks,” and “more likely to leave than whites.”

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