Copyright 2001 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.  
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri)
July 29, 2001 Sunday Five Star Lift Edition
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. B2

LENGTH: 462 words

HEADLINE: A QUESTIONABLE NOMINEE

BODY:
CIVIL RIGHTS

TO head the U.S. Education Department's office of civil rights, President George W. Bush has announced his intention to nominate Gerald Reynolds, a 38-year-old lawyer with no background in education. The top regulatory attorney for Kansas City Power and Light Co., Mr. Reynolds has a been a leading African-American opponent of mainstream civil rights groups and affirmative action.

Mr. Reynolds doesn't just oppose affirmative action; he abhors it. While president of the Center for New Black Leadership, a conservative Washington think tank, Mr. Reynolds wrote that affirmative action is "the Big Lie." It is, he writes, "a corrupt system of preferences, set-asides and quotas ... a concept invented by regulators and reinvented by political interest groups seeking money and power." Furthermore, "many of the problems devastating low income black communities are the result of a spiritual decay." Mr. Reynolds would remedy that through school choice programs, faith based institutions, "replacing self-defeating values with middle class values," urban economic development and "opposing the use of racial preferences in education and the workplace."

There are serious, legitimate questions about the parameters, effectiveness and fairness of affirmative action. But Mr. Reynolds has moved far beyond these questions to his own narrowly drawn answers, to a view that would seem to put him in a position of enforcing the very civil rights laws in education that he seeks to abolish.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has criticized Mr. Bush's selection. Mr. Reynolds does not merely differ from mainstream civil rights groups like the NAACP, he repudiates them. They are, in his words, "America's so-called 'civil rights' industry, which labors mightily to preserve special advantages for political interest groups." Whoever fills this position will have to have an open door, as well as an open mind, to this so-called civil rights industry. It is unfortunate that Mr. Bush chose someone so blatantly hostile to respected African-American groups laboring in the trenches longer than Mr. Reynolds has been alive.

This office also oversees enforcement of Title IX, the federal education statute that forbids gender discrimination in education programs that receive federal funds. Title IX is best known as the law that opened the world of sports to women. Any retreat from full enforcement of this statute could turn back the clock 30 years.

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., will chair the confirmation hearings of Mr. Bush's nominee. He has signaled his hope that Mr. Reynolds will not be formally nominated. Mr. Bush should seriously consider finding a more qualified and respected defender of equality in education.

LOAD-DATE: July 30, 2001