<font size="5"><center>Report: Civil Rights Division Fails to Hire Blacks</font size></center>
TPMuckraker
By Paul Kiel - May 7, 2007, 9:26 AM
I'm not sure if this qualifies as ironic or just sadly fitting.
As we've attempted to document here, the Civil Rights Division has been
the focus of the most dramatic effort at politicization in the Justice
Department. Career lawyers, harassed and discouraged, have left in droves,
while political appointees like Bradley Schlozman have stocked the division
with stark conservatives.
So this will come as no surprise.
ABC's Washington D.C. affiliate WJLA-TV crunched some numbers in the Civil
Rights Division's criminal section -- the section charged with pro]secuting the
worst civil rights offenses like hate crimes. And here's what they found:
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.
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.
As Richard Ugelow, the former deputy section chief of the employment
section in the Civil Rights Division puts it, "We would sue employers for having
numbers like that." Ugelow, you might have guessed, is one of the dozens of
career lawyers who have left the division in the past six years.
So that's how bad it is in the division's criminal section. But what about the
voting section, which is charged with defending the voting rights of
minorities? That's the section that bore the brunt of Schlozman's obsession
with voter fraud. Well, we know Schlozman did an outstanding job hiring
Federalist Society members. But as for hiring blacks? Probably not so well.
House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) says that his committee will
launch an investigation of the Civil Rights Division's hiring practices.
Presumably this will be a complementary probe to the one of Bradley
Schlozman's efforts to conceal the hiring of Republicans in the division.
There's plenty to go around.
Note: The Justice Department responded to WJLA-TV's story by saying that
the Civil Rights Division as a whole is the most diverse office in the
Department of Justice.
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