It is sufficient to say that we share your concern and have gone on record with our views in most unequivocal language. Such tactics as those you abhor are truly suitable to only the totalitarian state. In the case of the minority race IBM card, even the minority races find it abominable. And so it goes with everything of recent date that smacks of George Orwell's 1984 "Big Brother Society". This loathsome trend must not be allowed to continue unchecked. Duverger, a writer for Le Monde wonders if we have not or will not lose our democratic principles. I wonder. Keep up the good work *** please! Sincerely, R. M. BURNHAM, Chairman, Morale Committee, AFTE Local 9, NASA. MCLEAN, VA., DEAR SENATOR ERVIN: I wrote you earlier as Chm of the Morale Cmte of our union. We are staying on top of the news relating to your Herculean efforts. You're entitled to kudos, now, no matter what the outcome. And obviously anything we can do to help we would be more than happy to do. If anything should occur to you that you think we can do, please let us know. We are now in complete agreement with your efforts. We are most strongly opposed to any effort by the Civil Service Commission to try to regulate the controls necessary. Legislate, as only you so well know, is the real answer. Letting CSC police the Agencies is akin (to use Vice President Humphrey's analogy re the Viet Cong) "to putting the fox in the chicken house." We agree with you. We need something similar to the Ombudsman. Only then can this alarming trend be halted. On the matter of coercion, I have in my files a letter signed by a supervisor, a member of the union, alas, which says: "Voluntary contributions to the CFC have not worked, therefore . . . and anything less than 100% participation as to both employee participation and dollar quotas will be considered less than satisfactory." However, we know who the real forcing catalyst is. It was not the man who signed. He (the signer) has since withdrawn this bludgeon, risking the wrath of his supervisor who feels he is omnipotent and has a vested right to rule by the divine right of kings. The signer was obviously embarrassed when confronted by us: "What in the world ever possessed you to write a memo like this?" His reaction, expected, was: "Yeah, I guess I better withdraw that thing, huh?" As a single voice: "Yes!" I know you are busy. I expect no acknowledgement. All I want to do here is reiterate our strong agreement with what you are doing. We are on record with NASA management that we are. See the attachment, please. This was signed by our President whose title got cropped in the reproduction. Our best wishes for continued success. Sincerely, R. M. BURNHAM, SILVER SPRING, Md., Hon. SAM ERVIN, Chairman, Constitutional Rights Subcommittee, DEAR SENATOR ERVIN: May I say thank you for your proposed "Bill of Rights" for Federal employees. I sincerely hope that you will be able to get it passed and that it will become law. Since 1940 just prior to World War II when I worked for the National Defense Council, Federal Agencies have more and more encroached on the constitutional rights of Federal employees. Soon Federal employees will be told where they can live, what they can wear, what they can eat, and when they can breathe. In 1940 when I worked for the National Defense Council, I was investigated by the FBI; in 1953 when I worked for the Federal Civil Defense Administration, I was investigated and given clearance by the Civil Service Commission; in 1957 when I went to work for the Atomic Energy Commission, I was again investigated and given security clearance and this investigation was repeated in 1962 just before I left AEC. Because I have worked for 12 different Government agencies in my 24 years of service, I have been fingerprinted at least 12 different times. I have been assigned a social security number for income tax purposes. My fingerprints, my medical records, and my employment record are on file with the Civil Service Commission and numerous other agencies. Now I am supposed to fill out a form stating whether I am black or white. If the Government doesn't know the answer to this by now, somebody's pretty dumb. So again I say thank you for your "Bill of Rights." May it become law and at least help to curb "Big Brother." Sincerely yours, Technical Writer, U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. [From the Washington Post, July 31, 1966] USING BIGOTRY AGAINST BIAS (By Joshua Lederberg) Can a good society be built on bad biology? Not long ago, I received an incredible demand, the more so as it was a formal requirement under United States law. It would compel me to look again at my colleagues and the staff of our university department with the eyes of a bigot to produce a racial census of employees belonging to certain minority groups. The purpose to help enforce laws that forbid racial bias in employment on Government-aided projects-may be laudable. It is not that purpose but the means, namely calculated racial discrimination, that deserves critical discussion, not only because of its flimsy basis in scientific biology, but more importantly because it is setting the precedents for the kind of society we are building. Must we accept the self-defeating paradox that bias can be eliminated only by obligatory discrimination, even if this now claims to be only descriptive for purposes of enforcement? A generation ago, how many Jews would have relished being registered as such for employment or university admission, even if the quota (unlike the numerous clauses of the Czar of the Russias) were set at an advantageous ratio? Within our present-day minority movement, however, there are many activists whose political visibility depends precisely on the most intense discrimination of racial types. The problem is a difficult one, and easy answers are likely to be both meaningless and distorting. Lockheed Aircraft Co. recently reported on some results of a laudable recruiting campaign, including the statement that it now employed exactly 967 members of minority groups as scientists, engineers and accountants. The social value of the campaign speaks for itself. But does the number 967 mean anything whatsoever? It reflects the unskilled judgment of a body of unqualified non-anthropologists acting according to an undefinable set of criteria. Yet Lockheed, like Stanford, must submit a compliance report that, under law, must be defended for its accuracy in terms of actual records; therefore, some administrator must have made person-by-person classification, an obligatory discrimination. In numerical terms, the main issue is "just who is a Negro?" Most of us have a stereotype in mind. My first anxiety is the reinforcement of that unrealistic stereotype by the force of law. There is a real problem in meeting the formal demands of a compliance report: Is there a biologically sound definition not for the stereotype, but for a collection of actual human beings? I am certain that there can be no such definition under Federal law; if there were, it would be repugnant to almost all of us. Do we count how many African ancestors belong to a given human being? What parts of Africa do we count, and unto what generations must we go back? Just what fraction of African ancestry constitutes a Negro? And who would be certain of these facts concerning his own ancestry? Who would have the right to press the point on a human being who regarded such matters as his private affair? There ought to be little doubt that the law has no place for ambiguities like these. The University of California, Berkeley, is not notorious as a hotbed of racial bias. However, its Anthropology Department, the professional group which professionally must be committed to scientific accuracy in the evaluation of race, has unanimously refused to comply despite a formal university directive in accordance with the Federal demand. I would join them in asserting that we are all Negroes, as a challenge to any meaningful process of decision that could be objectively applied. The Medical School at Stanford has taken a different tack, suggesting that each employee designate his own preference for minority classification, if any. In our department, these records are confidential, and each employee is encouraged to alter his preference from time to time according to his own whimsy. But I remain deeply apologetic at even this intrusion into the feelings of my staff. The Federal agencies are aware how nonsensical these procedures are. When I expressed my chagrin to the Office of Educational Statistics in the Public Health Service, a sympathetic reply suggested that the issue was indeed not genetics nor anthropology, but social welfare. One personal response: "A Negro is a person whose visible physical characteristics are such that he would be at risk of insult by a redneck." Plainly, rednecks will now command a premium salary to fill the job of “offcial discriminator for compliance reports." Until I find one, I am still at a loss how to make out such a report except by self-inventory. Even so, if this defintion remains in force, I know a number of blond-bearded youths who will have to be added to the roster. From a scientific standpoint, there can be no objective classification, at leas with the tools actually available in an employment office. Self-identification might work; whether it will serve any useful purpose for enforcement agains bias might then be questioned. More important than the practical difficulty of racial typology is the crucial question of the kind of society we want to build in the long run. The Black Muslims and the White Supremacists share one view with a certain segment of liberal thought: that we should inculcate race-consciousness as a fundamenta! issue of social organization. Formal classification by race is the essential teret of apartheid. My own scientific training leads me to rebel at any form of race-consciousness even for the purpose of short-run amelioration of historic prejudices. This is not to insist on cultural homogenization, but I find it preposterous to imagine the Government riding herd on cultural any more than religious affiliations of the citizenry. The historic injustice in America's race relations has been so extreme that the resort to expedient remedies is not a surprising reaction and I cannot pretend to speak for a majority opinion in reacting to the racial census. However before these formalities become well-entrenched, we should seek wider d.cussion of their implications, whether we are building a non-racial or a multiracial community. Section 1(b), 1(c). To state or intimate, or to attempt to state or intimate, to any employee of the United States serving in any department or agency that any notice will be taken of his attendance or lack of attendance at any assemblage, discussion, or lecture held or called by any outside parties or organizations to advise, instruct, or indoctrinate any employee of the United States serving in the department or agency in respect to any matter or subject other than the performance of the task to which he is or may be assigned in the department or agency; (d) To require or request, or to attempt to require or request, any employee of the United States serving in the department or agency to participate in any way in any activities or undertakings unless such activities are directly within the scope of his employment SEPTEMBER 27, 1966. DEAR SENATOR -: On September 15/16, 1966, a group of Treasury Department administrators were called to Miami for a conference led by Mr. Amos Latham, Treasury Personnel Officer, with regard to new revisions in Chapter 713 of the Treasury Personnel Manual. Over the years the Treasury Department has placed special emphasis on the hiring of Negroes under the Equal Employment Opportunity Program, and considerable progress in that regard has been made. However, the emphasis of the present conference was that our efforts in the field of Equal Employment Opportunity have not been sufficient. Under the leadership of President Johnson and based on his strong statement with regard to the need for direct action to cure the basic causes leading to discrimination, the Treasury Department has now issued specific instructions requiring all supervisors and line managers to become actively and aggressively involved in the total civil rights problem. The requirements laid down by Chapter 713 and its Appendix include participation in such groups as the Urban League, NAACP, etc. (these are named specifically) and involvement in the total community action program, including open housing, integration of schools, etc. The policies laid down in this regulation, as verbally explained by the Treasury Representatives at the conference, go far beyond any concept of employee personnel responsibility previously expressed. In essence, this regulation requires every Treasury manager or supervisor to become a social worker, both during his official hours and on his own time. This was only tangentially referred to in the regulation and its appendages, but was brought out forcefully in verbal statements by Mr. Latham and Mrs. Nolan. Frankly, this is tremendously disturbing to me and to many of the other persons with whom I have discussed the matter. We do not deny the need for strong action in the field of Civil Rights, but we do sincerely question the authority of our Government to lay out requirements to be met on our own time which are repugnant to our personal beliefs and desires. The question was asked as to what disciplinary measures would be taken against individuals declining to participate in these community action programs. The reply was given by the Equal Employment Officer, that such refusal would constitute an undesirable work attitude bordering on insubordination and should at the very least be reflected on the annual efficiency rating of the employee. The principles expressed in these regulations and in this conference strike me as being of highly dangerous potential. If we, who have no connection with welfare or social programs, can be required to take time from our full-time responsibilities in our particular agencies and from the hours normally reserved for our own refreshment and recreation to work toward integration of white neighborhoods, integration of schools by artificial means, and to train Negroes who have not availed themselves of the public schooling available, then it would seem quite possible that under other leadership, we could be required to perform other actions which would actually be detrimental to the interests of our nation. I am enclosing portions of the material furnished us at Miami in order that you might be personally aware of the policies prescribed. I earnestly solicit your strong attention to this matter and to the submission of legislation which would protect the Civil Service employee from this encroachment upon his personal rights and privileges. OCTOBER 12, 1966. DEAR SENATOR ERVIN: I believe attached copies are self-explanatory. This is the latest (if not ultimate) outrage about to be perpetrated on Treasury employees. This, Senator, is the "very end". I am just one more of the many, many Internal Revenue Service employees who can state, unequivocally, "Man we've had it". This is the Federal agency constantly referred to these days (in and out of Government circles) as "The American Gestapo Service". You name it and we've got it. Coercion, brain-washing, intimidation, harassment, brow-beating, crude, gross invasion of individual privacy, all of which is seldom employed in subtle or sophisticated approaches, quite the contrary, but rather in the old "you do it or else" style (tyranny baring its naked fangs!) by some bureaucrat by his superior who is scared-out-of-his-half wits, etc. (in other words, a passel of bureaucratic Pavlovs and their trained dogs!) I assure you "nobody but nobody" escapes! There are virtually reams of lists over the years, secreted in some "immediate" supervisor's safe or file on employees "under his rule" who "donate (?)" to United Givers Fund or Drive (and myriad other solicitations) with notations by every employees name as to how much or how little (and it had better not be "no contribution" written by your name!) Memorandum to: Administrative Officers. From: Chief, National Office Branch, Personnel Division. SEPTEMBER 9, 1966. The President and Secretary Fowler are vitally interested in encouraging Federal employees to participate in the many community action programs throughout the nation. As a means of informing employees of activities through which they can help their local areas, a special issue of the "Employment News" will be devoted to community action projects. In this issue, articles and photographs showing Internal Revenue employees at work on these special activities will be featured. The National Office is included in this program. We are, therefore, asking that you send your articles and photographs to my office, attention Barbara Monat, by Monday, October 3, 1966. Manual Supplement 1(11) RDD-6, "Community Action Programs," is attached and outlines in detail Internal Revenue's interest in these programs. If you have any questions, Miss Monat may be reached on extension 4965. J. G. FOWLER. INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE MANUAL SUPPLEMENT COMMUNITY ACTION PROGRAMS Both President Johnson and Secretary Fowler have recently asked Federal employees to take an active part in community projects designed to eliminate the basic social problems which slow up progress toward the goal of equal employment opportunity for everyone. Many employees are already doing this independently in an unofficial capacity. Quite often we hear about employees who, on their own time, tutor underprivileged children in the slums, council youths at Job Corps Centers, assist at rehabilitation centers for the mentally retarded, teach accounting and technical tax courses at minority group colleges or adult education centers, and many similar projects. We also hear about District Directors and other IRS officials who work in an official capacity on Human Relations Commissions or inter-agency government groups. All of these projects are worthwhile and they contribute toward the goal which President Johnson and Secretary Fowler have asked us to set for ourselves. It has occurred to us that many Revenue employees may not know how or where to find responsible community groups and projects which readily offer them an opportunity, as an individual, to help make equal employment a reality. We be lieve one of the best ways to convey this information to them is by telling them what some of their fellow employees are doing. Therefore, we are going to print |