WASHINGTON-The Federal Communications Commission’s delay in compiling a telecom diversity report could foreclose future female and minority bidding credits because of new anti-affirmative action legislation, which in turn could trump the Clinton administration’s highly publicized race relations initiative.
The FCC recently announced it would document that women and minorities have been under-represented in the telecommunications industry as part of the 1996 telecom act’s mandate to remove entry barriers facing small businesses.
Under the Supreme Court’s affirmative action-curbing Adarand decision in 1995, such a study is required to justify gender and racial set-asides and quotas. The high court’s ruling clashes with 1993 legislation that encouraged the FCC to make opportunities available to women, minorities, small businesses and rural telephone companies in wireless license auctions.
As a result, the FCC dropped female and minority bidding credits in auctions for digital paging and pocket phone licenses, though incentives for small business were retained. Bidding credits had enabled a number of women and minorities to pick up regional licenses in the narrowband personal communications services auction two-and-a-half years ago.
But with GOP legislation going further than Adarand, an FCC diversity study could end up being meaningless. Had the agency embarked on the study sooner, the FCC might have been able to reinstitute wireless license bidding credits and other diversity measures.
Cathleen Sandoval, head of the FCC’s Office of Communications Business Opportunities, was not available for comment.
FCC Chairman Reed Hundt met earlier this month with the Rev. Jesse Jackson in what one trade publication described as an open and frank discussion on telecom diversity.
Bills introduced last Tuesday in the House by Rep. Charles Canady (R-Fla.) and in the Senate by Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) would ban all race and gender preferences by the federal government. Canady and former Senate majority leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) proposed similar legislation before Dole left Congress to run for president.
“The Civil Rights Act of 1997 is based on the belief that we will never overcome discrimination by practicing discrimination,” said Canady, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee on the Constitution.
Clinton, who will set up an advisory board to gather input on race problems and compile a report with recommendations, said affirmative action should be mended rather than ended.
“To be sure, there is old, unfinished business between black and white Americans, but the classic American dilemma has now become many dilemmas of race and ethnicity,” said Clinton in a commencement address at the University of California at San Diego on June 14 that kicked off his initiative.
“Can we become one America in the 21st century?” Clinton asked.”I know, and I’ve said before, that money cannot buy this goal, power cannot compel it, technology cannot create it.”
Canady said his bill “recognizes that the way to mend affirmative action is by eliminating the divisive system of preferences based on race and gender and reaffirming the original concept of affirmative action through vigorous and systematic outreach, recruitment and marketing efforts.”
However, it’s unclear whether the White House initiative or Congress’ move to kill it will go anywhere.
