PICKERING IS THE SOUTH’S OUTDATED FRUIT
BY JULIANNE MALVEAUX
Listening to Nina Simone sing, “Mississippi Goddamn” is like listening to
Billie Holiday sing “Strange Fruit”. You get edgy, your blood tingles, and
you wonder about the gift that allowed these women to take all of the horror
of racism’s legacy and turn it into lyricism. If you listened a generation
ago, you might find yourself horrified and angry. Now, listening to those
songs ought to be like walking through a museum, experiencing an ugly piece
of history. But Senator Trent Lott (R-Miss.) would drag the past into the
present with his strong support of US District Judge Charles Pickering’s
elevation to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Pickering is a judge who
has his feet planted firmly in the past. If his nomination is successful, he
will be able to poison both the present and the future.
Lott and Pickering are good old boys from the unreconstructed South, both
as good friends of more than 30 years and colleagues in Mississippi Republica
n politics. Both graduates of the then-segregated University of
Mississippi, it’s not too much of a stretch to describe them both as either
sympathizers or members of the Conservative Citizen’s Council (the
contemporary version of the Ku Klux Klan) and the now-disbanded Mississippi
Sovereignty Commission. Indeed, when Judge Pickering was a state Senator he
requested to be “advised of developments” on Commission investigations and
thus, presumably supported the ways the commission collected data and
actively opposed the rights of African Americans, union members, and civil
rights activists.
It doesn’t take more than a glance through Pickering’s record to
understand why many progressive organizations, from Planned Parenthood to the
NAACP to the National Association of Social Workers oppose him. When I read
his record, I hear strains of those disturbing songs, of Nina Simone singing
of Mississippi, or Billie Holliday crooning notes and crunching hearts over
lynching. Pickering has openly expressed his disapproval of the Voting
Rights Act, ruling several times that even though district lines have been
drawn in violation of the Voting Rights Act (or the Constitution); they don’t
have to be redrawn. He described the one-person, one-vote doctrine as
“obtrusive” in the 1993 Fairly v. Forrest County case that attempted to
equalize the size of Mississippi voting districts. The Fairly case is
evidence of Pickering’s strong affinity with the past. In a 1993 case, he
quoted extensively from overruled cases from the 1940s. Instead of learning
from “Strange Fruit”, Judge Pickering probably spends his “down time” wishing
he were in the land of cotton, whistling “Dixie” in the face of social and
economic progress. When the Alliance for Justice reviewed Judge Pickering’s
case record on voting rights matters, they found his consistent opposition to
the matter of voting rights for African Americans.
Further, Judge Pickering seems to turn a blind eye to job discrimination,
ruling for employers in all but 3 of 17 cases that were reviewed by the
Alliance for Justice. Not only has he consistently rejected job
discrimination claims, but he has also rejected credit discrimination and age
discrimination claims. He tends to take the most narrow view of evidence
offered by those claiming discrimination, and has even arbitrarily halted
civil rights litigation filed in his court, without requiring those accused
of discrimination to reply to their accusers. While it is extremely unusual
for a judge to award attorney’s fees to someone accused of discrimination,
Pickering did so when an African American nurse sued South Mississippi Home
Health in 1996. His hostility to plaintiffs who bring race, gender, and age
discrimination cases to court is enough to disqualify him from the circuit
court.
After all, Mr. Pickering would work in the Fifth Circuit, where
discrimination cases are rising, not filing. Two years ago, the Ingalls
Shipyard (located in Trent Lott’s home town of Pascagoula, Mississippi)
settled Earline Bell’s discrimination case with a monetary settlement and a
gag order. Ms. Bell tolerated a lynching noose placed in her workplace more
than once, and was bounced between courts for several years before receiving
her settlement. Now, the EEOC says that cases involving lynching nooses are
rising alarmingly, with more than 25 being filed in 18 months. In a climate
where racism is rampant, it makes no sense to elevate a judge that is myopic
when discrimination occurs.
President Bush offered a positive Black History Month statement just a
week ago, but in nominating Charles Pickering to the Fifth Circuit Court, he
ignores our nation’s history. Both President Bush and Senator Lott ought to
be ashamed about their hankering for a past where the women stayed home, the
black folks were docile, and the white men and their biases dictated world
affairs. They ought to be ashamed for looking backward while exhorting the
nation to move forward. They ought to understand that Mr. Pickering has
blind spots about race and history, and that those blind spots are the same
ones that cripple our nation. Pickering is no more qualified to move up on
the court than Jim Crow is. The Senate Judiciary Committee sends a “get back
black” signal if votes him nomination out of committee.