Chavez no 'diversity hire'
Jaws at this newspaper, and undoubtedly beyond, dropped at the announcement that one-time Coloradan Linda Chavez - a frequent contributor to our commentary pages - had been nominated to be secretary of labor. But as the dust settled, the appointment began to make sense. She is a Hispanic conservative. She opposes affirmative action and bilingual education but backs reform of the nation's immigration laws. Chavez, 53, a former staff director for the U.S. Civil Rights Commission in the Reagan administration, in fact seems a perfect choice for a George W. Bush administration: She's all conservative, all the time, but perhaps she's also seen as being somehow different, as bringing diversity to the administration. It would be hard to sell that, however, to most members of the Latino community. We do not agree with those who would seek to lay down a political party line for all public officials of color. Indeed, there is great value in people rising to high office independent of their ethnic or racial ties. Chavez cannot properly be expected to carry out policies that reflect a 'Latino consensus.' But, by the same token, her appointment should not be held up, as it has been in too many national press reports, as a concession to the Latino community. To give Chavez her due, while she has disagreed with the greater Latino community - and this newspaper - on bilingual education and affirmative action, she has not abandoned her concern for Hispanics. She disagrees only in the remedies she would apply, not in the ultimate goal. She's obviously no Dolores Huerta, she's no Norma Rae, but that's not what the Bush administration was looking for, either. What it was looking for, it found: A bright, ambitious woman, who is well respected in conservative Republican circles and who, because of her early employment with the American Federation of Teachers, has experience within the labor movement that other labor secretaries, such as Elizabeth Dole, notably lacked. The Center for Equal Opportunity, which she founded, has also dug deeply into employment issues, albeit consistently on the conservative side of the debate. For many Latinos, however, the nomination of Chavez as secretary of labor arouses concern. As several supporters of bilingual education have observed: It could have been worse. She could have been named secretary of education. But with a new administration come new people and new philosophies. Linda Chavez is every bit as well-qualified to be a cabinet member in a Bush administration as her counterparts on the left would have been in a Gore administration. |