Deval Patrick, President Clinton’s nominee to head the civil rights division of the Justice Department, said this week that if confirmed he would “speak out as unequivocally as humanly possible to bigotry, wherever it comes from.”
He also said the issue of hate crimes and organized bigotry deserves “the highest attention” of the civil rights division and should be a “very, very top, very, very serious priority.”
Patrick, who is expected to have no problem being confirmed by the Senate as assistant attorney general for civil rights, made the comments at his confirmation hearings Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“We certainly welcome his statement that (hate crimes) will be one of the priorities” for the civil rights division, said Michael Lieberman, associate director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Washington office.
One senator raising the bigotry issue at the hearings was Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.). “Recently we’ve seen the emergence of some who seek to foment anti-Semitism (and) divide two historie allies,” Kennedy said, in an apparent reference to the recent controversy over remarks made by a Nation of Islam official and subsequent friction between the black and Jewish communities.
Kennedy added that he had been impressed by remarks Patrick made to the Anti-Defamation League in Boston last year on the need for sensitivity between Jews and African Americans.
“Could you tell us your views on those who seek to foment division and tension between these groups?” the senator asked the nominee.
Patrick responded that he feels “very strongly that as a nation we will rise or fall together. And I think that, as I indicated in my remarks to the ADL in Boston, in some respects in the black community and in the Jewish community, we expect more of each other.”
TO SPEAK ‘UNEQUIVOCALLY’ AGAINST BIGOTRY
He said he hoped to use what has “been described to me as the bully pulpit of this post, if I am confirmed, to speak out as unequivocally as humanly possible to bigotry, wherever it comes from. And I’ve been encouraged to view this post that way.”
A Boston civil rights attorney, Patrick was nominated to the Justice Department post Feb. 1. The position has been vacant since the start of the Clinton administration, and Jewish organizations have been among those eagerly waiting for someone to fill the post.
Jewish groups responded positively to the nomination, in contrast to the concern expressed by some Jewish organizations last year when Clinton nominated Lani Guinier, a University of Pennsylvania law professor. Clinton withdrew Guinier’s nomination after negative response to her writings, which appeared to call for quotas.
“The fact that Patrick appears able to command not only a majority of the committee but perhaps unanimous support augurs well for his ability to work with Congress in enforcing the nation’s civil rights laws,” said Mark Pelavin, Washington representative of the American Jewish Congress.
Patrick mentioned that at one time the civil rights division had a task force that targeted skinheads and said, “I think organized bigotry –if you will, a subset of hate crimes — is something that deserves as well the highest attention of the division.”
Patrick could “be a very good and forceful advocate for improved race relations and diminished tensions,” said the ADL’s Lieberman. “We are looking to him for leadership on that” issue.
Patrick, a 1982 graduate of Harvard Law School who grew up in a poor neighborhood of Chicago, previously worked for the Legal Defense and Educational Fund of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
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