Ethnic activists foster rivalry and tension - Clinton administration's efforts to categorize the demographic groupings used in Office of Management and Budget statistics - Column

0 Comments | Insight on the News, August 8, 1994 | by Deroy Murdock

It has been 30 years since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 131 years since Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, yet the noble objective of a color-blind, merit-based American society still seems ages away.

Now President Clinton's Office of Management and Budget may be shoving this elusive goal even further into the future. OMB has launched a series of public hearings on "Race and Ethnic Standards for Federal Statistics and Administrative Reporting." These meetings in Boston, Denver and San Francisco are airing proposals to create finely tuned racial classifications "reflecting the diversity of the nation's population," according to an OMB announcement.

The OMB and the House Census subcommittee have heard ethnic activists argue that the usual black, white, American Indian, Asian and Hispanic categories are too broadly. drawn. The parents of some mixed-race children are calling for a new "multiracial" rubric to reflect the ethnic makeup of the estimated 1 million kids of biracial unions. The Arab-American Institute wants a Middle Eastern box available on the next census. There are Latinos who wish to slice the Hispanic label six ways. Even some Hawaiians are torn between calling themselves "native Americans" and "Pacific Islanders." Their solution? A "native Hawaiian" designation.

Where might such racial hairsplitting end? Can it be long before white folks march into competing camps of Anglos and Saxons?

Deciding who fits into such new categories could put government into a business chillingly akin to eugenics. As Sally Katzen, OMB administrator of information and regulatory affairs, blandly observes in the Federal Register, "The issue of self-identification of race and ethnicity versus third-party identification also has been raised:" Are government ethnicity inspectors - armed with eye-color charts and DNA testing gear - beyond imagination?

If the White House yields to pressure to classify Americans as if they were species. at a zoo, it will accelerate a dangerous trend. The core democratic value of equality before the law is being undermined by myriad schemes of racial favoritism that replace consensus and amity with ethnic rivalry and tension. Ideas such as those before the OMB could lead to a Rwanda on the Potomac.

For instance, racially gerrymandered legislative districts, often shaped like swatted spiders, cobble together minority voters in disparate communities to give black and Hispanic candidates virtually prepaid tickets to Congress. Some civil rights activists already fret that counting light-skinned and dark-skinned blacks separately could require the remapping of legislative constituencies.

The Federal Communications commission offers extremely attractive terms for minority-owned companies that bid on licenses to provide services such as wireless telephone communications. These firms, and those owned by women, are offered 25 percent "bidding credits" that would, for instance, allow them to pay just $750,000 on a successful $1 million auction bid. White guys need not apply for this special favor.

The Clinton health plan couldn't resist a dip in the preference pond. That proposal calls for the creation of the National Council of Graduate Medical Education. It would assign students to medical school specialties (such as neurology or cardiology) based on the extent to which their ethnic groups are "underrepresented in the field of medicine generally and in the various medical specialties." Meanwhile, Asian-Americans have charged that public universities have tried to limit the admission of highly qualified students from that group lest they be overrepresented.

Such racial bean counting already boosts costs and headaches for American industry. Many firms that work with public agencies must keep records on the ethnic composition of their staffs. These tasks only will grow more bothersome and expensive if companies must plug their workers into a profusion of new racial pigeonholes.

Although Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed it proudly in his "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, the notion of a color-blind society today seems as foreign as the Taj Mahal. In fact, this idea is as American as the change in your pocket. As those nickels and dimes say, "E pluribus unum."

It's as important as ever that America dedicate itself to the ethics of equality and individual rights and responsibilities. The American Tower of Babel, which some are demanding of the OMB, would do profound violence to these sacred principles. The federal government should go in the opposite direction by leading public agencies in ignoring its citizens' flesh tones, eye colors and hair textures. The only legitimate reason for government to distinguish one American from another racially is when authorities describe identifying features while seeking a fugitive or missing person. This exception aside, the public use of ethnic formulas, goals and timetables is little more than state-sponsored racism.

From the White House to the state-house to city hall, Americans should be treated as Americans. Period.