Posted on 12/17/2001 3:35:40 PM PST by M.K. Borders
December 17, 2001
Mary Frances Berry: A relic whose time has come
WASHINGTON--Some whales have vestigial legs because their prehistoric ancestors were land mammals. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is a vestigial leg on whale-like Washington. The commission has no serious function, other than to illustrate how far things have evolved. Its head is a black woman, Mary Frances Berry, who, like many antebellum plantation owners and today's civil rights lobby, believes blacks cannot cope with life in predominantly white America, that they are comprehensively victimized and must be perpetual wards of paternalistic government. Berry, 63, was appointed chairwoman of the commission in 1993 by President Clinton. She has been on the commission since President Carter appointed her in 1980, perhaps to get her out of his Education Department, where she said we should not criticize Communist China's education policies for requiring students to ``develop what they call socialist consciousness and culture.'' In 1982 she lamented that ``a massive barrage of propaganda'' by America's media caused blacks to misunderstand the Soviet Union's virtues, including ``safeguards for minorities,'' ``equality of opportunity'' and ``equal provision of social services to its citizens.'' She says that in the 1960s, the era of landmark civil rights legislation, blacks faced a ``threat of genocide'' that was ``roughly comparable'' to what Jews faced in Nazi Germany.
The Commission on Civil Rights has a $9 million budget but no enforcement powers. It is a megaphone, a hectoring institution. Berry was designed by nature for it. And notwithstanding her old enthusiasms for communist countries, she strongly believes in private property. At least, she believes the commission is her private property. Hence the current fracas.
The eight-person commission has recently been split 5-3 in favor of Berry's worldview. However, a commission member died in 1998 and Clinton nominated Victoria Wilson to complete the member's six-year term, which expired Nov. 29. President Bush has nominated a black Cleveland lawyer, Peter Kirsanow, to replace Wilson.
But Kirsanow, former chairman of the Center for New Black Leadership, rejects the plantation paternalism of today's civil rights lobby (see paragraph one, above). So Berry insists that even though Wilson's certificate of service stipulates a November expiration date, Clinton really intended to appoint her to a six-year term. Berry, resembling George Wallace blocking the schoolhouse door, says U.S. Marshals will be required to force Kirsanow onto the commission.
Berry also resembles another apostle of lawlessness in the name of civil rights--Clinton. He breezily conceded that when Bill Lann Lee served two years as ``acting''--unconfirmed by the Senate--assistant attorney general for civil rights, this was not done ``in an entirely constitutional way.''
Al Gonzales, the White House counsel, speaks of seeking an ``accommodation'' with Berry. Gonzales is new in town and unfamiliar with Berry's well-earned reputation for unpleasantness, which would cause blushes below deck in a troopship.
The Department of Justice says Wilson's seat on the commission is vacant, and is going to court against Berry, whom the liberal Washington Monthly listed in 1987 as one of five persons no Democratic president should hire: ``Her bitter single-mindedness makes her not just unpleasant but incapable of guiding policy on difficult and controversial issues.'' In 1997 the General Accounting Office called Berry's commission ``an agency in disarray, with limited awareness of how its resources are used,'' unable to ``provide key cost information'' and insisting that significant records documenting commission decision-making were ``lost, misplaced or nonexistent.'' Berry's defense was that there was ``nothing illegal.''
The ramshackle commission was created in 1957, the year U.S. soldiers enforced the integration of Little Rock's Central High School over Gov. Orval Faubus' objections. Then America actually had a severe civil rights problem. Today the civil rights lobby--speaking of prehistoric vestiges--continues to discuss blacks' problems in the anachronistic vocabulary of the civil rights movement. But the problems are mostly matters of social class. Consider: How much would the life chances of blacks in urban slums or rural poverty be improved if by the wave of a magic wand their skins were made white? Not much.
Last June, Berry's racism-is-everywhere-and-explains-everything monomania resulted in a 200-page commission tantrum that, mixing dubious anecdotes with preposterous statistical models, purported to prove widespread ``disenfranchisement'' of Florida's black voters in 2000. But President Bush still did not resign. America is Hell.
When Berry goes to Heaven (for her, the Soviet Union with China's educational system), her remains should be treated--she should like this--as Lenin's have been: preserved under glass as a reminder of the exotic fauna that once roamed through American politics. ©2001 Washington Post Writers Group Is your local paper missing out on a great writer? Would you like to see them add this columnist to their newspaper? Use this form to find your local paper's email address and recommend this columnist
LOL! An interesting way of putting it.
We need guys like Will around, he has a very "surgical" and intelligent style.
Actually, you're just one inch from the solution! Remember how the Taliban, while still in power, blasted and destroyed hundreds of cultural relics? Well, George Will calls Berry a "relic", one I say should be knocked over the head with a Looney Tunes hammer and dumped unceremoniously in the nearest dumpster.
I saw her in action on CSPAN last week. I was surprised that the liberals don't want to get rid of her because of what an embarrassment she is. She was making up rules as she went along just to keep the new commissioner from being introduced and seated. She kept calling him a "member of the audience" and used that as her excuse. She also said the President couldn't name anyone to the commission because they (the commission) have oversight over the President of the United States.
That means that in her mind, the commission IS her property, and George Will hit the nail on the head!
I dunno. Maybe she has a point...
1. When Clinton appointed the woman that is being replaced (I think her name was watson or Wilson), it was to fulfill the unexpired term of a commissioner who had died. The appointment document was set to expire in November of this year. She was appointed by a President (Clinton), as was her replacement Bush). I think the court will find that the President alone has the power to appoint commissioners.
2. Several years ago, liberal members (the names of Rangel and Nadler were proudly touted by the libs on the commission) of congress re-wrote the governing documents for the Civil Rights commission, granting themselves the powers that the Constitution grants to the President alone to appoint commissioners. I think the courts will (if they are judging constitutionality) find that Congress doesn't have the right to usurp the power of the President.
As for Mary Francis Berry, if I get the story straight, Ronald Reagan tried to fire her when he was President, and the Supreme Court ruled against him and re-instated her. However, that was based solely on the six year appointment, that he tried to end it before the end of a six year term. If her term ends during Bush's Term, I hope he appoints a good conservative to hte chair position, and send Berry packing.
I'm not a Lawyer, but I have been following this, and I was fascinated by the meeting that I had seen aired on C-Span.
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