Unabashed Racism in the Bush DOJ _Civil Rights_ Division
The new Inspector General report out of the Justice Department makes clear that Randy Schlozman — the acting director of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division — illegally used political considerations to replace nearly 1-in-6 lawyers in the division with “real Americans,” and members of “the team,” ie: conservatives, preferably members of the Federalist Society. The report also finds that Schlozman lied about his illegal hiring practices repeatedly in congressional testimony.
The report is shocking. But even moreso in a topic it touches on only tangentially — racism in the Civil Rights Division of the Bush DOJ. Schlozman tried to have one “Democrat in hiding” that he oversaw exiled because she: “wrote in Ebonics,” “was an idiot,” and “was an affirmative action thing.”
(The attorney in question graduated magna cum laude from a top law school and was repeatedly praised in her performance reviews for her strong writing and analytical skills.)
There is also this email exchange between Schlozman and John Tanner, the Voting Rights division chair who infamously asserted that Voter ID requirements that disadvantage the elderly have no impact on minorities because, “minorities don’t become elderly the way white people do. They die first.”
Tanner and Schlozman are discussing how they like their coffee, with Tanner writing that he took his “Mary Frances Berry style — black and bitter.”
Berry, an African American, chaired the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights for nearly a decade, ending her service in 2004.