Linda Faye Williams

The politics of civil rights have never been settled, but current
tensions reveal that once again they have reached a particularly
feverish pitch. At the eye of the political storm is the nation's
affirmative action policy -- a fixture on the American political
horizon since the mid-1960s.

Affirmative action, born in an atmosphere in which the
large political shock of the modern civil rights movement
temporarily lowered political and institutional barriers to re-
form, is fast being transformed into the ultimate political wedge
issue in the mid-1990s. Confusion, anxiety, and demagoguery
pervade the debate over the issue and threaten to envelop U.S.
society. On one side, a throng of Republican members of both
the House and the Senate are trampling each other to be the
lawmaker who can first and most comprehensively claim that
he eliminated affirmative action. On the other side, the pre-
dominantly Democratic Congressional Black Caucus and
other progressive members of Congress have dug in their heels
to defend affirmative action policies.

Divisions have surfaced not only between but within the
two major parties. After four months of reviewing the policy
and indicating it too might abandon key aspects of affirmative
action "as we know it," the White House instead issued a strong
statement of support in the summer of 1995. National black,
Hispanic, and female Democratic leaders praised the White

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