Politics & Power Quote by Dennis Chavez

A question that wears its accusation like a lapel pin. Dennis Chavez isn’t asking for policy clarification; he’s forcing a moral inventory. By addressing “Mr. President” directly and narrowing the frame to “what is wrong,” he flips the usual burden of proof. The fair employment practice bill doesn’t have to justify itself; opposition does. It’s a rhetorical judo move aimed at making hesitation look like prejudice, and procedural foot-dragging look like complicity.

The phrase “fair employment practice” is deliberately plain, almost antiseptic. That’s the point. It denies opponents the comfort of framing civil rights as radicalism. Who, in public, wants to argue against fairness? Chavez’s wording corrals the President into a binary: either endorse the bill or explain why fairness is objectionable. The subtext is sharper: if the White House can’t articulate a principled objection, then the real objection is political cowardice - or an unwillingness to confront segregationist power inside the governing coalition.

Context does the rest of the work. FEPC proposals in the 1940s and early 1950s were lightning rods, tied to wartime labor needs, Black political mobilization, and the Democratic Party’s internal fracture between Northern liberals and Southern segregationists. Chavez, a New Deal Democrat and one of the first Hispanic senators, understood how “states’ rights” rhetoric could launder discrimination into respectability. So he sets a trap: answer candidly and reveal the bargain; evade and confirm it. The question isn’t information-seeking. It’s exposure.