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Has Title VI Been Deep-Sixed?

In its Overview of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Department of Justice states:

Title VI, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d et seq., was enacted as part of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. It prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance. As President John F. Kennedy said in 1963:

Simple justice requires that public funds, to which all taxpayers of all races [colors, and national origins] contribute, not be spent in any fashion which encourages, entrenches, subsidizes or results in racial [color or national origin] discrimination.

If a recipient of federal assistance is found to have discriminated and voluntary compliance cannot be achieved, the federal agency providing the assistance should either initiate fund termination proceedings or refer the matter to the Department of Justice for appropriate legal action....

In an interesting article today on the decidedly mixed results that have been achieved by several institutions that announced with great fanfare several decades ago their determination to increase the numbers of minorities on their faculties, the Chronicle of Higher Education noted Duke had cited the ?pipeline? problem ? not enough highly qualified minority candidates in many fields. ?The university,? it said,

is taking small steps to widen the pipeline. Duke has financed two postdoctoral positions for minority candidates each year, with the hope that it will eventually hire some of them for tenure-track faculty positions.

Was Title VI repealed when I wasn?t looking? Is Podberesky v. Kirwan, 38 F.3d (4th Cir. 1994) (discussed here), which barred the University of Maryland from creating an honors scholarship limited to blacks, not still good law in the Fourth Circuit?

Oh, wait. Duke is private. Maybe it?s free to discriminate because it doesn?t receive any public funds.

Nope, that?s not it. A quick check of FedSpending.org reveals that in Fiscal Year 2005 Duke received $454,076,071 in federal assistance.

Has our idea of ?simple justice? so eloquently stated by President Kennedy in 1963 really changed so much since then?

Full post as published by Discriminations on September 22, 2008 (boomark / email).