Proselytizing the Justice Department

Race vs. Religion in the Struggle for Civil Rights

As of late, the U.S. Justice Department has seen a significant shift in its policies and areas of focus. Where traditionally the protection of civil rights in the United States has focused on discriminations based on race and ethnicity, the Justice Department has recently changed its focus to religious rights, arguing that because the United States is becoming more and more religiously diverse, we need to increase our emphasis on protecting religious rights of expression. With the Justice Department taking on more religious rights cases, the attention paid to racial or ethnic discrimination has decreased dramatically.

The emphasis on religion as opposed to race is not surprising considering the religious undertones that have become characteristic of Washington. Coming from an administration that has not so subtly justified the use of preemptive force as a biblical war between good and evil, it makes sense that all areas of the government have been similarly skewed.

Perhaps the most insidious characteristic of the new shift in the Justice Department’s area of focus is the lauding of such accomplishments such as protecting Muslim women’s rights to wear head wraps. I see advances such as these as smokescreens for a larger discriminatory policy, since in other areas of government we have adopted policies that are infringing on the civil rights of Muslims and others of Arab descent. The United States’ new immigration laws and racial profiling at airports are examples of discriminatory policies.

This shift in policy is particularly troubling for people of color and immigrants in the United States. The administration is effectively brushing aside the needs and struggles of minorities and instead are “engaging in social engineering…using the power of the federal government to put in place an ideological, not constitutional agenda”, says Ayesha Khan, counsel for Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

The administration is handpicking representatives to lead the Justice Department whose backgrounds are not rooted in civil rights, but rather in a controversial combination of religious zeal and law. The election of less-than stellar candidates to uphold the civil rights of those in this country is, again, something that has become characteristic of our country as of late. The Justice Department has brushed aside experienced civil rights litigators, preferring to hire lawyers who are vocal about their faith, many of whom have graduated from religious-affiliated law schools. The hiring of these religiously oriented representatives has dramatically altered the government’s civil rights mission.

Since this new trend has developed to hire new appointees based upon religious alignment rather than competency in civil rights, the number of hate crimes cases being taken on by the Justice Department in which law officials have violated civil rights has significantly declined. However, the number of cases in which the Supreme Court fought to uphold the rights of religion based groups has increased. Brian Landsberg, a law professor at the University of the Pacific and a former Justice Department lawyer, recently stated that “not until recently has anyone in the department considered religious discrimination such a high priority…no one has ever considered it to be of the same magnitude as race or national origin.”

The shifting of the Justice Department’s agenda should be read as an affront to people of color. The struggle for racial equality is not over, as was suggested by Kevin Hasson, founder of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, who recently was quoted as saying that racism has diminished over the past years and that we “can now deal with the problems of racism more effectively on a…local level… [we no longer need] the federal government to come riding over the hill.”

This is a far cry from the present struggle for racial equality that is being fought out on every level of American society. The White House is currently stocked full of people who adamantly oppose Affirmative Action and who feel that racism is a thing of the past. It is also stocked full of people who are adamantly vocal about their religious devotion. The combination of these two things explains the new, and dangerous, direction that the Justice Department is taking.

This was written for Advancement Project’s Blog www.justdemocracyblog.org

by Clare Bakota