Mr. President, to his credit, President Clinton has initiated a long-overdue review of all Federal affirmative action laws.

After nearly 30 years of government-sanctioned quotas, timetables, set-asides, and other racial preferences, the American people sense all too clearly that the race-counting game has gone too far. The President is responding to these pressures, and his review could not have come at a more propitious time. . . .

[L]et’s remember that to raise questions about affirmative action is not to challenge our antidiscrimination laws. Discrimination is illegal. Those who discriminate ought to be punished. And those who are individual victims of illegal discrimination have every right to receive the remedial relief they deserve.

Unfortunately, America is not the color-blind society we would all like it to be. Discrimination continues to be an undeniable part of American life.

But fighting discrimination should never become an excuse for abandoning the color-blind ideal. Expanding opportunity should never be used to justify dividing Americans by race, by gender, by ethnic background. Race-preferential policies, no matter how well-intentioned, demean individual accomplishment. They ignore individual character. And they are absolutely poisonous to race relations in our great country. You cannot cure the evil of discrimination with more discrimination.

Mr. President, last December, I asked the Congressional Research Service [CRS] to provide me with a list of every Federal law and regulation that grants a preference to individuals on the basis of race, sex, national origin, or ethnic background. Frankly, I was surprised to learn that such a list had never been compiled before, which, I suppose, speaks volumes about how delicate this issue can be.

Earlier this year, the CRS responded to my request with a list of more than 160 preference laws, ranging from Federal procurement regulations, to the RTC’s bank-ownership policies, to the Department of Transportation’s contracting rules. Even NASA has gotten into the act, earmarking 8 percent of the total value of its contracts each year to minority-owned and female-owned firms on the theory that these firms are presumptively disadvantaged. They may not be disadvantaged at all.

As a follow-up to the CRS report, I have written to my colleagues, Senators Bond and Kassebaum, requesting hearings on the most prominent programs identified in the report—the Small Business Administration’s section 8(A) program and Executive order 11246, which has been interpreted to require Federal contractors to adopt timetables and goals in minority- and female-hiring.

These hearings, I expect, will demonstrate that there are other, more equitable ways to expand opportunity, without resorting to policies that grant preferences to individuals simply because they happen to be members of certain groups. And unless the hearings produce some powerful evidence to the contrary, it is my judgment that the section 8(a) program should be repealed outright. . . .

I intend to introduce legislation later this year that will force the Federal Government to live up to the color-blind ideal by prohibiting it from granting preferential treatment to any person, simply because of his or her membership in a certain favored group. . . .

So, Mr. President, the coming debate over affirmative action will be much more than just a debate over reverse discrimination. It will be a debate that focuses us to answer a fundamental question: What kind of country do we want America to be?

Do we work toward a color-blind society? I hope so. A society that judges people by their talents, their sense of honor, their hopes and dreams, as individuals? Or do we continue down the path of group rights, group entitlements—special rights for some—judging people not by their character or intellect, but by something irrelevant: the color of their skin?

Source: 104th Congress., 1st Sess., Congressional Record (March 15, 1995): S 3929.