RHETORICAL QUESTIONS AD HOMINEM ATTACKS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE.

Byline: Richard J. Riordan, David A. Lehrer and Joe R. Hicks

IN the days since President Bush announced his administration's plans to file a brief in opposition to the affirmative action program at the University of Michigan, the debate over race and ethnicity in America has taken a huge step backward. The source of the regression is not the administration. Despite much of what has appeared in print and on the air, there is simply no way that the words emanating from the White House can fairly be described as racist or even insensitive.

For the past 30-plus years - ever since the Nixon administration's Philadelphia Plan - the issue of the use of racial criteria in employment, contracting, university admissions and the like has been a topic of debate inside and outside of the civil rights community.

In the days of the DeFunis case (dealing with a racial preference admissions system at the University of Washington law school) and its progeny in the 1970s, the civil rights community itself was deeply divided about the propriety of using race, ethnicity and gender as criteria in processes it had argued for decades ought to be color, ethnicity and gender blind.

In several subsequent cases in the 1970s and 1980s (Bakke, Weber etc.) the divisions remained, but there seemed to develop a modus vivendi among the leaders in the civil rights community that they could civilly agree to disagree.

All this changed dramatically with the introduction of Proposition 209 on the California ballot in 1996. Most civil rights leaders in the state decried the measure as racist and the product of ``bigoted conservatives.'' Civil debate was nearly impossible; it was perceived by many as a struggle between good and evil, and the modicum of understanding for differing positions that had prevailed dissipated.

The rancor the 209 debate engendered has become attenuated overtime, as the results in admissions it brought about turned positive. The University of California, in data that is not often discussed, has increased minority (American-Indians, African-Americans, Chicanos, Latinos, Filipinos, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Pakistanis and other Asians) undergraduate enrollment systemwide by 18 percent (66,727 to 78,882) between 1995 (pre-Proposition 209) and 2001, without racial preferences.

These facts, despite the contentious debate over Proposition 209, seem to have helped foster a growing understanding at the grass roots, if not at leadership levels, that advocates on each side can genuinely believe in their positions without being animated by racism and bigotry on one side, or political radicalism on the other. Indeed, the Los Angeles Times recently noted that we have entered the ``post civil rights generation,'' and the nature and tenor of discussions about race, ethnicity and gender ought, rightfully, to change.

The last few days, we have witnessed an explosion of incendiary rhetoric that threatens to undo what progress has been made. The president's statement endorses the efforts to diversify student bodies and cites, with approval, the innovative methods adopted in California, Texas and Florida - programs that, in the president's words, ``have resulted in levels of minority attendance for incoming students that are close to and, in some instances, slightly surpass those under the old race-based approach.''

The desire to gain political and ideological advantage does not justify provocative rhetoric on an issue that can enflame old passions and fears. The results can too easily produce an indelible taint; unlike most other allegations, the charge of being a bigot or cozying up to intolerance is almost never disprovable - it sticks.

Yet, Senator Tom Daschle decried the president for not having made the decision ``for civil rights and diversity''; Jesse Jackson attacked the administration for putting forth an ``extreme civil-rights position'' and flaming ``racial fears for wedge politics''; one nationally syndicated talk show host claimed that the president had ``given the middle finger to all of black America.''

There are numerous subjects on which one can take issue with this president - such debates are legitimate and deserve vigorous and passionate advocates. But ad hominem attacks that undeservedly question motives on a complicated and contentious issue with equities and good intentions on all sides are unfair and ultimately damaging.

How would these leaders have responded to one of the most liberal justices to have ever served on the Supreme Court, Justice William O. Douglas? He wrote in the DeFunis case, in words less generous than those from the White House, that the Constitution ``commands the elimination of racial barriers, not their creation, in order to satisfy our theory as to how society ought to be organized.''

The development of an honest and uninhibited dialogue on race and ethnicity in our society is critically important. Such a dialogue is contingent on advocates on all sides admitting that there might be multiple correct, effective and honest positions. It is tempting but, ultimately, profoundly harmful to succumb to the lure of injecting guilt, political correctness and accusations of disingenuousness and racism where they simply don't belong.