Racial Quotas Proposal Blasted

The American Jewish Congress took sharp issue today with a report by the civil rights committee of the New York Bar Association supporting voluntary racial quotas by employers, college admissions officers and housing developers. Voicing “profound concern” over the report “emanating from such a prestigious source,” the AJ Congress contended that the quota plan would be counter-productive because it would turn private citizens into “racial Robin Hoods” engaged “in the same kind of discrimination against innocent individuals which created the situation they seek to remedy.”

The Bar Association’s report declared that “voluntary programs using quotas for ameliorative purposes to correct the effects of substantial prior discrimination are legally permissible in such areas as employment, education and housing.”

The AJ Congress’ reply, written by Lois Waldman, associate director of its Commission on Law, Social Action and Urban Affairs, described the report as support for “do-it-yourself quotas–that is quotas instituted by private parties or institutions on their own initiative and not as part of a remedial order imposed by a court or administrative agency.” It called the Bar Association recommendations an “Ill conceived proposal, justified neither by the cases nor by wise demands of social policy.”