RIGHT TURN: WILLIAM BRADFORD REYNOLDS, THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION, AND BLACK CIVIL RIGHTS by Raymond Wolters. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1996. 499pp. Cloth $49.95.

Reviewed by Joseph Stewart, Jr., Department of Political Science, University of New Mexico
 

When the novelist Tom Robbins referred to history as the "discipline of aggregate bias," he could well have been speaking about this volume. Readers of the author's earlier volume, THE BURDEN OF BROWN (Tennessee, 1984) will be familiar with the thesis: that BROWN and subsequent civil rights decisions, properly understood, require only nondiscrimination and that moving beyond the prohibition of official segregation is not only wrong but also has perverse policy consequences. In this volume, Wolters extends that argument by focusing on the activities of William Bradford Reynolds, Reagan's assistant attorney general for civil rights and rejected candidate for associate attorney general. The book began as a biography of Reynolds, but it evolved into a favorable commentary on Reagan-era civil rights policies in voting rights, affirmative action, and school desegregation.

There is never any doubt about where the book is going. By page two the author has staked out the position that rights inhere only in individuals, not in groups, so the "RIGHT" in the title not only indicates an ideological direction, but also the author's assessment of the correctness of the policy direction Reynolds promoted. The remainder of the volume is a paean to Reynolds as "one of the heroes of the Reagan revolution" (p. 16) and a defense of Reynolds' record from conservative critics who do not believe Reynolds was as effective as they would have liked, culminating in a prediction that the Supreme Court will eventually conform to Reynolds' arguments.

In the acknowledgements, Wolters reaffirms the historian's preference for documents, although he also draws on "interviews" with Reynolds in the form of discussions of his draft chapters. Unfortunately, he apparently does not take full advantage of this access, at times resorting to speculation, "It may also be that Reynolds was persuaded ..." (p. 396), when a simple question would appear to have allowed a definitive statement.

At other times though, Wolters seems to miss part of the documentary record. For example, in discussing the 1982 House Judiciary Subcommittee hearings on extension of the Voting Rights Act, Wolters seems mystified about Henry Hyde's withdrawal of his effort to end preclearance and mentions the "rude" treatment of supportive witnesses such as Albert Saye, who was criticized for his pronunciation of "Negro." But what of Saye's testimony? Wolters neglects to mention that Saye testified that there had been no discrimination against Blacks voting in Georgia since SMITH v. ALLWRIGHT (1944)! (Scholars other than Saye have uniformly missed this as an example of total compliance with a Supreme Court decision.) Perhaps Hyde decided that with friends like this, ....

At other points Wolters is a captive of erroneous documents he cites. For example, relying on a typescript provided by the Bakersfield (CA) School District, Wolters reports that "in 1975 the Office of Education cut off federal funds for Bakersfield on the ground that the city had not complied with the Civil Rights Act of 1964" (p. 388). The last time the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) cut off federal funds to a district was during the first Nixon administration, when Leon Panetta was still a Republican. OCR referred the Bakersfield case to the Department of Justice, which settled the case and a separate suit which had been filed with a consent decree, approved by the court without a hearing. (See Moss, "Participation and Department of Justice School Desegregation Consent Decrees," 95 YALE LAW JOURNAL 1811 [1986]).

From the perspective of a social scientist, Wolters weakens his case when he relies on secondary sources. In the first two hundred pages, where the character of the book is established, when one feels compelled to flip to the chapter "Notes" to see what kind of support Wolters offers for controversial points, one often finds references to Thernstrom's nonempirical work, the texts of historians Belz and Graham, and the writings of law professor Graglia, controversial education professor Gottfredson, and English professor Steele. The point is not that these works are without utility; but reliance on them at key points makes it harder to refute Robbins' characterization of history noted at the beginning of this review. When one encounters a chapter titled, "The Social Science Critique ..." (Ch. 9) of anything, it does not seem unreasonable to expect the author to rely very heavily on the work of social scientists.

There are enough instances such as the ones noted above to suggest that even taken on its own terms this book has its problems. But taking the book on its own terms also reveals its assets. First, this is the most complete exploration of the documentary history of the Reynolds' nomination hearings to date. Such an examination is needed because Wolters is correct in his assessment of the importance of Reynolds in the Reagan revolution. Reynolds ably and, as Wolters reveals, enthusiastically articulated the Reagan administration position in the policy arena.

Second, the volume is well organized and clearly written. Third, just as Reynolds served as an articulate advocate for the Reagan civil rights position in the policy arena, Wolters, as a first rate writer, does so in an academic format.

But the bottom line on this book is that it is one of advocacy--of aggregated bias--with no attempt to hide the bias. When a jurist writes an opinion with which Wolters disagrees, even one "so meticulous and comprehensive that it was almost certain to pass muster on appeal," Wolters resorts to carping that "this writer doubts that many juries would have reached the same decision" (p. 397). There is a convenient sloppiness in logic--the Carter administration is blamed for the YONKERS litigation which "dragged on for more than a decade" (p. 395) when, in fact, the Carter administration left office six weeks after the case was filed--and in use of terms--if there were "no massive resistance in Oklahoma" (p. 444), what does "massive resistance" mean? There is no effort to consider alternative hypotheses (the word "hypothesis" finally appears on p. 416). Strangely for a historian, Wolters falls prey to the same kind of ahistoricism which characterized the administration he so obviously admires. When Wolters, in an "Appendix," characterizes his book as "generally supportive of Ronald Reagan's civil rights policies" (p. 465), he is guilty only of understatement.

Wolters' compatriots will be comforted by seeing their biases clothed in academic raiment. Those who disagree with him will find their blood pressure rising at some of the colorful characterizations of the actors or actions of Reynolds' opponents. (The "blizzard of graphs" presented by Alabama lawyer Ed Still may be the only blizzard he has ever experienced.) The former group is likely to give Wolters too much credit for this volume; the latter will probably not want to wade through the polemics to harvest what could be learned from this volume.