How a poor Chinese boy
By Bill Lann Lee
became a civil rights leaderI am the son of a Chinese laundryman, William Lee. His faith in America has shaped much of my life. My father came to this country during the Depression as a penniless immigrant. He never rose higher than operating his laundry, "Lee's Hand Laundry," in a poor neighborhood in New York City.
My father spoke English badly. But while he did not say much, he tried to carry himself with dignity.
He never taught my brother or me how to iron, although we wanted to learn in order to help out. His reasoning was that the laundry was a stopping place in the journey of our family. He did not want us to follow in the laundry. He figured that if we did not know how to iron, we would not be tempted to succeed him.
To make sure we got the point, he would only let us do the most unpleasant -- sorting the dirty clothes.
What was most remarkable was that he was a fierce patriot. Although over age, he volunteered for the Army during World War II, fought in the Pacific and made sergeant.
He told us that he had felt like an American for the first time in the Army because he had found that he was as good as anybody else. Throughout his life, he held tight to that experience.
He always told us that our place was in this country. He remained deeply grateful his entire life to America, which had taken him in, let him earn a living and raise a family. He held onto his patriotism even though he was often denigrated as a "dumb Chinaman" and taunted with jibes of "no tickee, no washee."
In fact, my father told us that when he was mustered out of the Army at the war's end, he couldn't find a place to live because some landlords didn't want a "Chinaman" tenant.
I confess that I found it difficult for a long time to appreciate his unflinching patriotism in the face of daily indignity. But I now understand the importance to him of the American dream. That vision was so compelling that he could set aside the ugliness of the moment.
His dream of America as it should be, I learned later, was the same as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream of freedom and equality for all. My father's hopes for his children was the same as Dr. King's hope for his children: that they be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
My parents stressed the importance of education. I did well enough in New York's public schools to go to Yale University on a scholarship.
Yale had just put in place programs we now call diversity admissions programs and I was one of the first beneficiaries.
I sometimes felt awkward because of our poverty, but have always been grateful that Yale took a chance on me. Yale taught me what my father had taught me: that I should go as far as my talents permitted. I graduated in 1971, Phi Beta Kappa, with a magna cum laude degree in history.
After studying law at Columbia University Law School, I was fortunate to become a civil rights lawyer at a multiracial law firm founded by the late Justice Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
I have worked as well for the Asian American Legal Defense Fund and the Los Angeles-based Center for Law in the Public Interest.
For the last 22 years, I have brought forth cases to enforce the nation's civil rights laws -- remedial legislation designed to compensate for injustice, to level the playing field and, ultimately, to make good on the promise of equal justice.
I am proud that the victims of discrimination that I have represented -- African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, poor white people and women -- have obtained remedies that gave them opportunities to improve their lives.
I am proud as well that so many of my cases have concluded with practical settlement agreements in which all parties worked to find common ground.
My father was proud of my work. He often did not understand exactly what I was working on. He was perplexed by technical issues. What was important to him was that I was helping people who had no other recourse to vindicate their humanity.
In my mind, the people I have represented in civil rights cases are people very much like my father.
Often the biggest problem with our civil rights laws is that existing protections are not being enforced because too many people are cynical. They doubt that there are actually remedies for denials of civil rights. The most direct means of dealing with that cynicism is vigorous enforcement. Such enforcement has an importance that transcends the results won for the plaintiffs themselves: Vigorous enforcement teaches respect for the law.
Some have tried to pigeon-hole the struggle for equality as special interest or narrow pleading by one group or another. That ignores that our civil rights laws protect a broad coalition of Americans.
Whittling down the rights of one will hurt us all. The breadth of civil rights protections should be a source of strength and evoke wide support.
These laws do not confer charity. Their protections have their roots in prior discrimination and exclusion of those who look different, speak differently, who are disabled, and who were once enslaved.
They are laws designed to overcome relegating minority schoolchildren to segregated schools, the unjust denial of employment opportunities based on ethnicity, the artificial exclusion of women from education opportunities, and the barriers that obstruct the access of the disabled to public buildings.
They are laws designed to penalize those who have used violence against people who sought to exercise their rights.
As Americans, we have much more in common than differences. Moreover, we have a common vision of freedom and justice. We should renew the national consensus to vindicate the pledge of equal justice under law.
Critical to that renewal is the mission of the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, which the attorney general has declared is to "enforce the civil rights law vigorously and faithfully, without fear or favor."
I believe that I can serve the department and our nation in that task.
Bill Lann Lee is President Clinton's nominee
for assistant attorney general for civil rights. These comments
were excerpted from a statement made by Lee in January
after his nomination.