What's the counterargument to justice for all?

Published December 18, 2014

by Lewis Pitts, former Civil Rights attorney, published in News and Observer, December 17, 2014.

There is something dangerously Orwellian about a group of UNC Board of Governors complaining about the lack of “diversity of opinion” at two centers connected to the UNC School of Law that receive no state funding.

The 32-member UNC Board of Governors is dominated by appointees from our Republican-lead General Assembly. The General Assembly has been clear in its goals of cutting the budget of the UNC system, having UNC curriculum serve business by focusing on job readiness and cutting taxes for corporations. A meeting Dec. 11 was to discuss the status and possible budget cuts to 34 UNC “centers,” which focus on wide-ranging topics from Applied Computational Studies to Natural Hazards Mitigation Research.

But it was the Center for Civil Rights and Center on Work, Poverty and Opportunity that drew the most ire of Board members.

The Orwellian question here is, what exactly is the “diversity” of opinion being sought? The fuss about lack of “diversity” of viewpoint at these two centers reminds me of my civil rights lawyering days when we would jokingly say that extremists want a panel discussion on race to have a speaker from the Ku Klux Klan.

Our nation and laws, for good reason, have only one view: We are to be one nation with individual liberty and justice for all. We have pledged in many ways our allegiance to principles of equality, justice, equal protection of law, the worth and dignity of all no matter skin color or ethnicity, and the general welfare. Despite these noble goals, our constitution embraced slavery.

Eventually we fought a bloody civil war and passed three amendments to the constitution that guaranteed an end to slavery and its legacy, the right of former slaves to vote and equal protection of law for all. The amendments were followed by federal laws promising protection from racists, violence and all forms of discrimination. As statistics on nearly every aspect of life – such as wealth, health or incarceration – show, people of color have far less of the good things and far more of the bad things. No doubt we have not achieved these noble goals, but the struggle to do so is part and parcel of our sacred history.

Surely there is no legitimate “counterpoint,” as one board member called for, to equal rights and protection for all. Rather than a counterpoint, there needs to be a doubling-down on enforcement of the state and federal laws intended to obtain racial justice throughout our land. This is exactly what the Center for Civil Rights does and does remarkably well.

Similarly, there is no legitimate counterpoint to revealing the increasing level of grinding poverty experienced by North Carolinians. What causes poverty, its impact on children, the jobless rate, the lack of mandatory living-wage laws, how the social safety-net is tattered and torn, and how far behind the U.S. and North Carolina rank on international scales regarding poverty are critically important issues for the Center on Work, Poverty, and Opportunity to be addressing and publicizing.

The work being done by these two centers is at the core of a cornerstone of U.S. law: the Equality Principle. In our self-governing democracy, our civil rights laws must be enforced with vigor, and people must be informed about the plight of their fellow human beings. Publicized facts and details about racial and economic injustice are just as important, if not more important, as facts about successes in our state.

Pride in our public university system, the oldest in the nation, includes pride in the knowledge that centers such as these two are affiliated with the UNC system. Students as well as the general public need to be taught the three Cs of critical, creative and courageous thinking as essential skills for self-government and fulfilling civic responsibility.

The twisted critique of the Board of Governors is unpatriotic and subversive of core values. To embed its critique in the clothing of “lack of diversity” is not just Orwellian, it makes a mockery of our values and is shameful.

Lewis Pitts of Greensboro practiced as a civil rights lawyer for over 40 years.

December 18, 2014 at 11:50 am
Richard Bunce says:

There is no counterpoint to justice for all... there are multiple approaches to achieving justice for all besides just preferences and income redistribution.

December 18, 2014 at 2:13 pm
Frank Burns says:

Why should the public be funding an advocacy group at all? There is no advocacy group for taxpayers. If you ever wondered why the cost of higher education keeps going up, here is one reason. The professor has got a great gig, he gets to be paid a nice salary for running this organization which means, just giving his opinion. He probably gets a full time salary from the university to teach part time because after all, he has this advocacy group to run. The program needs to end period regardless of diversity of opinion.

December 18, 2014 at 4:33 pm
Doug Lowder says:

The counterpoint to Nichols' progressive/communist views is inserting ways for people to not be on the government teat permanently. The first answer from any of these "centers" is always the government must do something. Why is the view that more freedom and self sufficiency never at the forefront? The reason is that it takes away their power. Unfortunately when this pseudo-socialist state we have built comes tumbling down none of these people will be prepared at all for the economic collapse.