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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (June 16, 1989)
IP The Battalion OPINION Friday, June 16,1989 Friday, Ju Civil Rights Act b-day gets bashed It’s the 25th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the Supreme Court is celebrating. They’ve begun by slicing up Title VII, the part of the act designed to keep racism and sexism from invading the workplace, and handing it out to groups of conservative white males to gobble up like pieces of birthday cake. Monday’s actions in the Court dem onstrated a lack of concern by the Court for minority group members and women trying to fight back against dis crimination, which, although on the de cline, is still prevalent in the United States. The two decisions made by the Court Monday deal with discrimination in em ployment. Both decisions make clear the Court’s increasingly conservative stand on the issue. The Court decided that whites em ployed by the Birmingham, Ala., fire department had the right to step in and challenge an affirmative action plan that had been set up through negotiations between the city and blacks who were fighting alleged discrimination in the fire department. The court also threw out a lawsuit by a woman who was challenging an alleg edly discriminatory seniority system at a private company in Illinois, because they believed the woman should have filed the suit when the plan was adopted, not when the discriminatory effects began. The Birmingham decision is espe cially interesting in light of the the Illi nois decision. The white firefighters waited to file suit against the city until they thought they were being denied promotions, while the woman was told she should have filed before discrimina tion actually began. Though there may be legal reasoning behind these deci sions, the decisions aren’t necessarily fair. The Birmingham decision totally un dermines the pprpose of affirmative ac tion. It not only removes the promise of less discrimination in the workplace, it hampers the ability of employers and their employees to get together and ne gotiate complaints of discrimination. Those against affirmative action pro grams argue reverse discrimination. They say that the programs take jobs away from white men and hand them over to less qualified minority group members and women. This may actually happen once in a while. But not usually. For example, let’s take a look at the Birmingham Fire Department. The consent agreement made by the black firemen and the city was drawn in 1981. Since the minority hiring and pro motion program has been in place, there has been no significant increase in property or lives lost in fires. The qual ity of the fire department has not de creased since the new black firemen were hired. And blacks aren’t exactly ‘taking over the department,’ either. It’s not all that suprising or unreasonable to hear that, in a city with as high a black population as Birmingham, there are 160 black firemen in a department with 650 mem bers. What about women? Well, we may have come a long way, baby, but we still have some distance to cover. Even in this modern era, women make only about 69# to every dollar a man makes, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to get any better soon. The Equal Rights Amendment received no support from the Reagan administration, and the Bush administration has made no move to support it, either. This country is full of people who call themselves ‘self-made men.’ These indi viduals claim that anyone can make it big in America if they just pull them selves up by their bootstraps. But lets face up to some facts: Horatio Alger does not come around much anymore. We’re not going to live up to our claim of being a free country until equal job opportunities are available to everyone, equal money is given for equal work and equal promotions are given for equal qualifications. That’s what Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act stands for. It is an at tempt to help people get used to the idea of placing qualified minorities and women in positions traditionally held by white males. Maybe someday no businessman will blink an eye at putting a qualified black woman in an executive position. Then affirmative action will have outlived its usefulness. We are a racist, sexist country. We can’t afford to get rid of Title VII just yet. Ellen Hobbs is a junior journalism major and editor of The Battalion. Court decision dumb The Supreme Court just keeps whit tling away at the legal remedies for dis crimination. None of the Court’s recent decisions has been particularly dramatic — just the shift of the burden of proof here, the insufficiency of statistical proof there. And I suppose most of us who aren’t black can’t imagine that such deci sions will ever make any difference in our lives. To the 50 percent of you who are women, these decisions damn well will matter. And if you’re one of those con servatives who thinks all the problems of poor minority citizens in this country would be solved if they’d just get a job, try explaining the new court decisions to blacks who are out looking for jobs. On Monday, the Court effectively ruled that the fire department in Bir mingham, Ala., a city that is majority The Battalion (USPS 045 360) Member of Texas Press Association Southwest Journalism Conference The Battalion Editorial Board Ellen Hobbs, Editor Juliette Rizzo, Opinion Page Editor Fiona Soltes, City Editor Drew Leder, Chuck Squatriglia, News Editors Steven Merritt, Sports Editor Kathy Haveman, Art Director Hal Hammons, Makeup Editor Molly Ivins Syndicated Columnist black, could go back to the status quo as of 1974, when it had 453 firefighters, 42 of them black, none in a supervisory po sition. By ruling that an affirmative action plan agreed to by public officials and approved in court may be attacked even years later in a new suit by workers who took no part in the original agreement, the Court makes consent plans like the one reached in Birmingham vulnerable to challenge by any white supremacist who can find a lawyer. What remedies are now legal if any white man can claim reverse discrimina tion because a company or a depart ment store starts hiring blacks or women? Editorial Policy The Battalion is a non-profit, self-supporting newspa per operated as a community service to Texas A&M and Bryan-College Station. Opinions expressed in The Battalion are those of the editorial board or the author, and do not necessarily rep resent the opinions of Texas A&M administrators, fac ulty or the Board of Regents. The Battalion also serves as a laboratory newspaper for students in reporting, editing and photography classes within the Department of Journalism. The Battalion is published Monday through Friday during Texas A&M regular semesters, except for holiday and examination periods. Mail subscriptions are $17.44 per semester, $34.62 per school year and $36.44 per full year. Advertising rates furnished on request. Our address: The Battalion, 230 Reed McDonald, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-1 111. Second class postage paid at College Station, TX 77843. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Battal ion, 216 Reed McDonald, Texas A&M University, Col lege Station TX 77843-4111. Motors klcs /mopws PAR.(c ! By Holly Be* STAFF WRIT! Texas A&P 115 lives will Texas becaust torcycle helm effect Sept. 1. This law 1 mopeds and wheeled mote A 15-meml tion Research litical scitntis ined the two helrhet law T 20 years. They fount tory helmet la UPD \ By Alan Serr .SENIOR STAI Mail Call Batt follows Bill of Rights EDITOR: This letter is in response to Troyce Wilson and Alan Wakim’s opinions on why The Battalion staff placed an ad (which was considered to be in poor taste) for a memorial service for the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. I’ll be the first to admit, I thought the ad was kind of funny or rather way out of place; but, hey, you have to remember that there are people here who worship and praise the man and are indubitably entitled to do so even if it deviates from the norm or relates to a tragic past. You might want to refer to the First Amendment which is in this thing we call the Bill of Rights. wearing my “Hard Rock Cafe — Matamoros, Mexico 1 shirt which 1 bought there during Spring Break 1 would not doubt that many are quick to associate mere the “Cult Ring Leader.” Personally, I think it’s hilarious So guys, next time you can’t understand why The Battalion staff places an ad for the memorial serviceof Khomeini, Salman Rushdie, Ted Bundy or Matamora Ring Leader — take a deep breath and count ten (Amendments). If not, you better watch out. I justmigk be wearing my Matamoros T-shirt that day. Michael Custaneda ’89 preven Crimeline, th gives a rimes and as! Crimeline, week at 845-C sage, ing ( crime. In additio crime preven month ago, v e public on “Our goal the I was so prompt in writing this letter because I felt I, too, was the subject of poor taste as seen by others. I receive sneers from fellow Ags whenever I walk on campus Letters to the editor should not exceed 300 words in length. The editomlS serves the right to edit letters for style and length, hut will 'nake ever) tfl( maintain the author's intent. Each letter must be signed and must indudttii sification, address and telephone number of the writer. Letters to the editor should not exceed 300 words. Nuclear power not solutior Editor’s note: This guest column was submitted to The Battalion as a letter to the editor in response to Matt McBur- nett’s column that ran Wednesday. Matt McBurnett’s column on nuclear power concluded with the statement, “... an informed person is usually a sup portive one.” I question Matt’s lack of factual support in his argument for the public support of America’s nuclear en ergy program. The major problems of nuclear facili ties lie not in large-scale accidents, but in disposal of wastes and small, continuous leaks. Between 1980 and 1985, 6,928 ac cidents involving radioactive and chemi cal wastes were logged in plants and dumps. The Congressional Research Team has concluded that nearly one- half of the 1,246 hazardous waste dumps are currently polluting our groundwater. The Office of Technol ogy Assessment estimates that almost 10,000 hazardous waste sites pose se rious health problems to the public. and fuel rods by 1998. What kind of a solution is that? In order to be effective, they’ll have to maintain these dumps for centuries. The Department of Energy estimates it takes 1,500 years for high- level wastes to reduce their radioactivity to minimal levels (those they held before being contaminated), spent fuel rods take 10,000 years, and plutonium 239 will take anywhere from 250,000 to 500,000 years to detoxify. In addition, deep-mine sites being built for such wastes are impractical because of the high salinity of groundwater in these mines, which would eventually corrode through the drums. Consequently, it is easily seen tlizi clear power is not the energy pro! solution. The real solution lies ins us. We must, as a responsible sp« limit this runaway energy consum trend. The greenhouse effect con greatly reduced by all of us ifwert support mass transit, energy const' tion and reforestation (which convert carbon dioxide back to Fifty-four percent of carbon monos pollutants come from cars. Wee; ride together. Eighty percent of waste ends up in landfills; 87 percer these will be filled by 1993. Wei easily recycle all this trash. Each Americans throw away enough al< num to rebuild the commercial air every three months. When are we to stop this outrage? The Unive Clen AUSTIN (. ents signed ir law by Thurs ay measures ells, overhai system and k services to sul Working a line to wrap t Legislature’s -iHs said he High-level wastes include fuel rods and contaminated materials. The Fed eral Nuclear Waste Policy Act will have deep-mine disposal of high-level waste Nuclear facilities will indeed limit car bon dioxide emissions, but to such a small scale that they would not justify the waste problem they create. Carbon dioxide emissions by non-nuclear power plants make up only 14 percent of U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions, and only 4 percent of global greenhouse-gas emis sions worldwide. There are no easy solutions, wet stop taking the Earth for Enough concerned people can dost; thing to stop this. As with all columns, opiniof pressed by Guest Columnists art necessarily those of The Battalion sons interested in submittinggueS umns should contact the Opinion' Editor at 845-3314.