George Bush Really Doesn’t Care About Black People! Discrimination by His Dept of Justice Prov
Brian Zick
Kanye West's observation that "George Bush doesn't care about black people!" has been verified in the most official way possible.
Via Paul Kiel at TPM Muckraker, Roberta Baskin for WJLA (ABC News Washington D.C. affiliate) reports: 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.
(…)
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." And you could see this coming: 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."
About 50% more likely. Conyers: "Exceedingly high." The report showcases successful diversity programs at Microsoft, DuPont, IBM, and even other federal agencies like the U.S.D.A and Patent Offices. And page after page of recommendations calling for: "accountability", recruiting from "minority bar associations," …"mentoring programs," and "exit surveys to ask attorneys why they leave. Wait for the punchline: And when the Department of Justice first released the report, page after page of the recommendations were covered up.
Please consider supporting our work.
I hope you found this article important. Before you leave, I want to ask you to consider supporting our work with a donation. In These Times needs readers like you to help sustain our mission. We don’t depend on—or want—corporate advertising or deep-pocketed billionaires to fund our journalism. We’re supported by you, the reader, so we can focus on covering the issues that matter most to the progressive movement without fear or compromise.
Our work isn’t hidden behind a paywall because of people like you who support our journalism. We want to keep it that way. If you value the work we do and the movements we cover, please consider donating to In These Times.
