Apartheid. USA 1988

October 20, 1987:

Terrel H Bell, President Reagan's first Secretary of Education, who served in the Cabinet from 1981 to 1984, has written memoires under the title, ‘The Thirteenth Man: A

[p. 129]

Reagan Cabinet Memoir.’ Mr Bell reports extensively on racist jokes and sexist remarks in discussions on civil rights at the White House when he served the Cabinet. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr was usually referred to as ‘Martin Lucifer Coon’ and to ‘Title IX’; the Federal Law that guarantees equal opportunity for women in education was referred to in the White House as the ‘Lesbians Bill of Rights.’ Mr Bell referred to ‘the sick humor and racist clichés’ used by mid-level right-wing staffers at the White House and at the Office of Management and Budget. Heads of civil rights groups in Washington commented, that they were not surprise at the disclosures. ‘I am not surprised to learn that it was a member of the President's inner-circle that has finally revealed the kind of incidents many of us suspected were going on all along,’ said William S Gibson. Chairman of the Board of the NAACP. ‘People tend to pick up the same kind of idiosyncrasies exhibited by their leaders.’^161.

161. The New York Times, from a report by Lena Williams