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OPEN
LETTER
Mrs. Linda Chavez
President
Center for Equal Opportunity
Sterling, VA
Dear
Mrs. Chavez:
Like The Fonz might say: "Hey!" How
foolish of me not to figure you would resurface in
Virginia after the ugly national blowup over your
being named Secretary of Labor by then
President-elect George Bush. If you had leveled with
the President about the illegal alien episode, you
would have survived the firestorm. But now you have
again risen from the ashes. Yesterday, the New
York Times suggested Virginia Tech blinked when
the Center threatened the Hokies with a federal
lawsuit if they didn't stop giving racial minorities
what you defined as unfair, special advantages. The Times
reports Tech is not the only school on your hit
list, saying, "Since the letters have gone out
... five universities ...[including] the University
of Virginia" may been intimidated into changing
their policies.
The Cavaliers scared of Chavez too? It is hard to
believe such a one-two punch could be true yet not
reported in the Virginia press. To paraphrase those
Halloween horror movies: She's baaaack, the
Reagan-era's self-appointed liberal ghost buster
having moved to the Republican-leaning Virginia
after a big loss as the GOP Senate candidate in
Maryland some years back.
Linda, you bill yourself as the "most hated
Hispanic in America" on the grounds you were
President Reagan's point woman in the fight against
the "civil rights establishment, the feminist
movement and the multi-culturalists." While
Ollie North was secretly down in the basement making
up his own fairy tales, you were upstairs, publicly
rummaging through the closet to see what kind of
fairy tales you could put out.
Let me say this: If you can find some all-powerful
clique of "liberal do gooders" at Virginia
Tech, then NASA is wasting it's money paying anyone
else to search the heavens for life on another
planet.
As for losing that spot in the
Bush cabinet, I never thought it was a hanging
offense, either then or eight years earlier for the
Clinton-nominee you helped savage for a similar
mistake. Naturally, your supporters said you were a
victim of payback by the Clintonites, liberals, Bush
bashers, and the Reagan haters.
At the time, I didn't understand why they were
careful not to blame the Commies specifically, or
Democratic National Committee officials generally.
But having now learned you were once in the Young
Peoples Socialist league and a pamphlet writer for
the DNC, I guess they didn't want to open up that
Pandora's Box.
You remember those days, of course? If not, you can
read about them in the book Linda Chavez - An
Unlikely Conservative, The Transformation Of An
Ex-Liberal [Or How I became the Most Hated Hispanic
in America].
What is with this "hated" fixation? Like
Kojak says: Who loves ya, baby?
As for the book, the author seems legitimate enough:
I mean, you wrote it!
And now, you have trained your fundraising schemes,
disguised as legal analysis, on Virginia.
Surely, this could not have come as a surprise to
the state's secretary of education nor the attorney
general. They had to know the buzzards would be
circling Virginia Tech and the other state colleges
as soon as the 2002 General Assembly passed Del.
Jerrauld Jones' resolution saying that the state's
African-American citizens no longer suffered any
lasting effects of segregation, the conclusion
contained in a backroom accord signed by the state
of Virginia and the Bush Administration.
That's right: the vote in the General Assembly was
unanimous, not a single dissent from anyone
including any member of the Legislative Black
Caucus. Who says the pen isn't mightier than the
sword? With a stroke of a pen, and a dose of the
stuff Rip Van Winkle swallowed, segregation was now
reduced to bad dream at least for college kids and
their families.
Linda, I don't blame you and other Chavezites for
thinking: This is too good to be true, we don't want
to miss that legal party.
What did this Virginia/Uncle Sam accord do? In
effect, it took away the legal basis for certain
programs used by Governors Robb-Baliles-Wilder-Allen
to protect many Virginia residents from being harmed
by certain aspects of racial discrimination.
There is not a reasonable person in Virginia who
would deny the lingering effects of segregation on
millions of our citizens. As we know, it is not yet
possible to even erect a Statute of Abraham Lincoln
without causing a furor.
Admittedly, this accord, having been implemented for
over a year without any public debate on its wisdom,
involves on its face higher education and de jure
segregation.
But anyone who ever had occasion to deal with the
lingering effects of segregation -- say, the person
who ran Doug Wilder's campaign for Governor - would
know that the accord signed by Mr. Gilmore is
fatally flawed, and something that is not in the
best interests of Virginia.
Segregation existed in all facets of life in
Virginia, intertwined on purpose, the social,
political, and economic realms each supporting the
legal edifice. The goal was to keep millions of
Virginians from being all they could be, not only in
a material sense, but in every other way the state
government could legally enforce. Thus, the effects
of de jure segregation did not merely extend to the
adults, but to their children, and their children's
children in countless ways, direct and ever so
subtle.
Mr. Gilmore can deny it, Warner Administration
officials can pretend not to see it, and the General
Assembly can pass resolutions to obscure it.
But no responsible government official, no educated
commentator, no thoughtful editorial writer, can
honestly dispute it: As Bob Dylan sang in his
famous protest song against segregation, "How
many times can a man turn his head and pretend that
he just doesn't see?".
Yes, one day, the effects of segregation, de jure
and de facto, will be truly a thing of the past. I
hope my son gets to celebrate that day and remembers
his father on it.
But that is not the case now, in higher education,
K-12 or other aspects of life, and former Gov.
Gilmore, Gov. Warner, Attorney General Kilgore, the
General Assembly and surely the Legislative Black
Caucus, know it.
For example, is anyone going to deny that the
Vietnam War experience is playing a major role in
the War in Iraq, both in terms of the strategy in
the field and at home in terms of the politics?
Of course not, at least if you expect to be taken
seriously. Vietnam is a much part of the 1960s as
are the Civil Rights Laws that
"officially" ended de jure segregation.
So: how could a war 10,000 miles away that lasted a
decade still have a lingering effect on our heroes
in Iraq, yet segregation, a political, social and
economic condition that took away the rights of
black Virginians for 10 times as long not be
relevant in 2003?
Giving everyone the chance to be all they can be,
from this day forward, is the only way to honor all
those who gave so much over so many years. You
cannot change the past, only learn from it. Virginia
needs to maintain all the legal power it has always
had to do the right thing.
Let me cut to the chase: Neither Jim Gilmore, Mark
Warner, Jerry Kilgore nor the General Assembly has
earned the right, by their own deeds, to sign any
document voluntarily giving up any of that power.
The same goes for them as group, no matter how
unanimous any vote may have been.
For we are talking about a moral commitment, we are
talking about a question of honor, something
important in Virginia's culture, where honor is not
just a five-letter word. This is still a state where
after close to 400 years, the political
establishment has yet to authorize in Capitol Square
a single statute honoring a Black Virginian, a
female Virginian, nor any number of other residents.
Virginia is a great state, I am proud my son was
born here and named after Thomas Jefferson, the only
state where it can be said that the full political
rights have been shown to apply to all citizens
based on merit.
It was done by facing reality and being an honest
steward of our values, something that would be
happening now if those who claim to have been
leaders in the fight had actually done it.
Linda, you may, as the New York Times claims,
scared Virginia Tech into temporary submission, even
rattled UVA's cage. Moreover, Governor Gilmore may
have cowed the General Assembly and the Virginia
secretary of education into hoping no one would
notice their refusal to challenge his last minute
bad deal with Washington, giving away some of our
state's rights in manner never before
approved by any Governor.
But some of us are not intimidated by your tactics,
having faced the race card being played against us
on the battlefield; and beating it back, although
admittedly not with ease.
Personally, I cannot believe the Times
actually thinks Virginia Tech was rattled by your
threats. But if it was, then, hopefully, when the
Tech board meets April 6, the Warner appointees are
given a backbone transplant, and reminded why they
were appointed, Tech will put your center's
fund-raising letters, disguised legal threats, into
the trash where they belong.
--
March 31, 2003
(c) Copyright. All rights reserved. Paul Goldman.
2003.
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