SEP 12 1966

UNITED STATES CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION IN REPLY PLEASE REFER TO
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20415

 

AIR MALL YOUR REFERENCE

Saget

Dr. Joshua Lederberg SEP 6
Professor of Genetics

Stanford University School of Medicine
Stanford Medical Center

Palo Alto, California 94304

Dear Dr. Lederberg:

I appreciate your writing to me for information about the minority
group statistics program. The Commission's jurisdiction covers
only those employees who work directly for the Federal Government
as civil service employees, The Secretary of Labor is responsible
for enforcing equal employment opportunity among Government
contractors, and therefore would be setting the rules for minority

group surveys of the employees you seem to be directly concerned
about,

My response to your letter must necessarily be limited to the
statistics program in effect for Federal civil service employees.
You may wish to write to Secretary Wirtz for information about the
program for contractor employees.

In the few years that we have run minority group statistical surveys,
we have not attempted to define the racial designations used in the
survey. We have left this decision up to each participant in the
survey: when supervisors make the survey by a visual head count, they
decide the racial or national origin designation for each employee;
when a self-designation system is used, each employee makes this
decision for himself. Supervisors have been given no eriteria for
racial designations other than to designate each employee in the
category he would be regarded in the community.

We recognize that the few racial and national origin designations we
use lack precision, but I believe it would be foolhardy for us to
venture where anthropologists and geneticists fear to tread.

This year we have authorized agencies with automatic data processing
capability to use a confidential, automated self-identification
system for collecting and maintaining minority group statistics.
Agencies without ADP capability continue to use the supervisory head
count. In our view, the automated system has a number of advantages

THE MERIT SYSTEM—A GOOD INVESTMENT IN GOOD GOVERNMENT
over the supervisory head count, among which are: (1) it is voluntary,
so that the employee is free to decline to participate; and (2) the
employee designates his own preference for minority classification,

We are using only those racial or national origin minority designations
that are considered necessary -- Negro, American Indian, Spanish
American, and Oriental; these are the categories in which there has

been a significant number of complaints of discrimination. We have
resisted enlarging this list to include any religious or other groupings.

I believe a certain amount of race-consciousness is necessary if we
are to make substantial progress in our fight against discrimination.
We can no longer sit back and say, "We have no discrimination in the
Federal service because our regulations prohibit it."' The time has
come to mount an aggressive campaign that will truly open new
opportunities to minority group members for employment and advancement
in the Federal service.

As one writer recently put it, "In equal employment opportunity, we have
moved from color discrimination to color blindness and now to color
consciousness."" The middle period of color blindness was really an
excuse for doing very little. Many persons who fought discrimination
for years -- and this includes sociologists, civil rights workers, and
personnel administrators -- have reluctantly come to realize that

color blindness was not enough, and that if we ever are going to defeat
discrimination we have to provide some basic data that will establish

the extent of the problem and thus form the foundation for intelligent
corrective action,

That is what the minority group statistics program is all about, It is

an effort -- especially when combined with automated personnel records --

to provide basic data about the location of soft spots in Federal civil
service employment, The data should show Federal managers those
occupational and geographical areas of employment in which greater efforts
may be needed to achieve equal employment opportunity -- without sacrificing
the principles of the merit system and without giving preference to
minority group members.

The need for solid basic data in this program is as essential as the need
for data in many scientific and business endeavors. Without such data,
we are reduced to running a third-rate equal employment opportunity program.
I recognize the dilemma you express in your letter as one we must
continue to grapple with, I feel, however, that the minority
group statistics system we are operating in the Federal civil
service -- emphasizing voluntariness, confidentiality, and self-
designation -- if nothing else, reduces the dimensions of the
dilemma, I do not say we have a complete solution, but I do

feel that the remaining risks are ones we have to take if we are
really determined to achieve the goals of the equal employment
opportunity program,

Sincerely yours,

John W. Macy, “th

Chairman