As racism
declines as a social force in America,
blacks confront a new problem -- rational discrimination.
What, if anything, should be done about this?
Mr. D'Souza, who is John M. Olin Scholar at the American
Enterprise Institute, is the author of The End of Racism, just published by the
Free Press.
A
generation after the civil-rights movement, Americans are once again
engaged in a radical rethinking of their attitudes toward race. Racial
preferences are now opposed by the vast majority of Americans; even among
blacks, there is a new and vibrant diversity of opinion on the subject. Yet so
far no one has questioned the very premises of the discussion. The basic
assumption of our current racial debate is still that racism is the theory and
discrimination is the practice. Racism is said to be based on ``prejudices,''
which constitute judgments made in the absence of evidence, and
``stereotypes,'' which are grossly misleading generalizations about groups. The
obvious solutions, promoted by Martin Luther King and other activists, were
twofold: statutes intended to outlaw racial discrimination, and social and
educational programs to increase interaction between groups. As whites
regularly lived and worked with blacks, their attitudes and actions toward them
were expected to undergo a transformation, as ignorant prejudices gave way to
enlightened acceptance.
As a result of these policies, state-sponsored
segregation is dead; overt and arbitrary racial discrimination has greatly
abated; white attitudes have undergone a revolutionary transformation in favor
of equal rights in employment, housing, voting, and education; and there is a
large and thriving black middle class. Yet, at the same time, the prevailing
civil-rights model, and the laws and policies based on it, now seem irrelevant
to contemporary problems, such as the lurid sufferings of the underclass, which
have worsened over the past few decades. Consequently the debate seems to have
been polarized and stalled by the crosscurrents of white backlash, black rage,
and liberal despair. African American scholar Derrick Bell conveys some of the
regnant frustration: ``We have made progress in everything, yet nothing has
changed.''
Perhaps one way to gain an enlarged perspective
on our current situation is to step back and turn our assumptions into
questions. Are there circumstances in which discrimination actually makes
sense? Are people who discriminate against people of other races by definition racist?
Might prejudices reflect not ignorant predisposition but prudent judgment?
THE problems with the
prevailing civil-rights paradigm become evident when we examine the most widely
cited contemporary example of racial discrimination -- the refusal of many
taxidrivers to pick up young African-American males. In a recent article,
Gregory Wright commented in the Washington Post:
As an African American, I am
fed up with having to flag down five cabs before finding one that will take me
home, fed up with feeling anger, embarrassment, and frustration when cabdrivers
swear they are off-duty and then pick up a white customer before I can get
around the corner. Taxidrivers, many of whom come from Africa, the Caribbean,
and the Middle East, say they don't want to pick up African-American passengers
because they are afraid of being robbed, assaulted, or murdered. One Nigerian
cabdriver told me he only picks up African Americans who are well dressed and
look like businessmen. For African Americans, this discrimination can be
inconvenient and downright humiliating.
It is easy to sympathize with the indignation
expressed at such flagrant acts of racial discrimination. Yet according to
Wright's own account, many of the cabdrivers who are reluctant to pick up young
African-American males are themselves African, Caribbean, or Middle Eastern.
Moreover, the Nigerian cited by Wright says explicitly that he will pick up
blacks who are suitably dressed. His discrimination seems to be based not
simply on skin color but on other aspects of appearance.
During my travels I took up the issue with a
number of taxidrivers in New York, Washington, Chicago, and other cities. Most
of them denied that they refuse to pick up every black male, and all ridiculed
the notion that cabdrivers pass up black women. But many groused that
African-American passengers frequently leave no tip and sometimes beat the
fare, and virtually all acknowledged that as a consequence of previous threats,
robberies, and assaults they employ a kind of heightened scrutiny before they
will stop for a young black man.
``This racism stuff is all bull -- -- ,'' one
African student who was driving to put himself through school, told me. ``I'm
not going to pass up a fare, which is money in my pocket. But I don't want to get
robbed. You know what the black crime rate is in New York? Do you want me to
risk a gun to my head, man? What's wrong with you?''
A white driver in Chicago told me, ``No
exceptions, pal. I never pick up niggers.''
``You don't like blacks?'' I asked.
``Not blacks. Niggers.''
``That sounds like racism to me.''
``Hey, that's c---- . I pick up older blacks all
the time. I have no problem with giving black women a ride. My black buddies
won't pick up no niggers. I ain't no more racist than they are.''
These concerns seem to be borne out by cabdriver
muggings and killings. In August 1994, Keith Moore, a 38-year-old cabdriver and
single father, was found with the keys in the ignition and two bullet wounds in
his head. His friends told the Washington Post that he never worried
about picking up passengers in questionable neighborhoods no matter what the
time of day. If Moore had exercised prudence, his colleague Louis Richardson
said, he probably would be alive today. The U.S. Labor Department recently reported
that driving a cab is the riskiest job in America, with occupational homicide
rates higher than those for bartenders, gas-station attendants, and policemen.
These facts suggest how hollow it sounds to
accuse cabdrivers of ``prejudice'' and ``stereotypes.'' While we can be sure
that racist taxidrivers would discriminate, not all taxidrivers who
discriminate are racist.
MICHELLE Joo, an
Asian-American shopkeeper in Washington, D.C., acknowledges that she
discriminates based on race. When deciding whether to let people into her
jewelry and cosmetics store, she tells the Washington Post, ``I look at
the face.'' She won't open the door ``if he looks ugly, if he's holding a
bottle in a paper bag, if he's dirty. . . . If some guy looks kind, I let him
in.'' Young black men are kept out if they seem rowdy, Miss Joo says. Usually
they react by banging on her glass windows. One may say that Michelle Joo has
no fixed policy of keeping blacks out. Nor does she have a quota about the
number she will admit. Rather, she seems to be a prudent statistician. She
employs race as one factor, but not the only factor, in her decision-making. As
a means to ensure her security and business survival, she is practicing what
may be termed rational discrimination.
Thousands of other store owners in major cities
make similar decisions every day. So do countless women -- black, white,
Hispanic, and Asian -- who come across black males in circumstances they
consider not entirely safe. Regardless of their general attitudes about civil rights,
they do what they feel is necessary in each particular case. Shopkeepers scurry
to the front of the store where they can monitor the exit. Female pedestrians
may clutch their purse more tightly or cross the street if approached by one or
more young black men. Sometimes people snap the locks on their car doors as
African-American youths walk by.
The psychological toll of such reactions is high.
If you are black, columnist William Raspberry says, it is unusual to find
yourself treated as an individual, and to receive the kind of consideration
that whites expect. In The Rage of a Privileged Class, Ellis Cose
describes a typical justification for black rage: ``Why am I constantly treated
as if I were a drug addict, a thief, or a thug?'' Many who echo these
sentiments also question the basis for group judgments about blacks. Legal
scholar Charles Ogletree argues that ``99 per cent of black people don't commit
crimes.''
Blacks make up approximately 12 per cent of the
nation's population. Yet according to Uniform Crime Reports, published annually
by the FBI, blacks account for 39 per cent of those arrested for aggravated
assault, 42 per cent of those arrested for weapons possession, 43 per cent of
those arrested for rape, 55 per cent of those arrested for murder, and 61 per
cent of those arrested for robbery. Even discounting for the possibility of
some racial bias in criminal arrests, it seems clear that the average black
person is between three and six times as likely to be arrested for a crime as
the average white person.
Young black males are arrested and convicted of
crimes at an astonishingly high rate. According to the Sentencing Project, a
liberal advocacy group, about 25 per cent of young black men in America are in
prison, on probation, or on parole on any given day. For whites, the figure is
6 per cent. In major cities, the figures for young black men are even higher.
Jesse Jackson acknowledged the cultural pathology
of violence among inner-city blacks when he said, ``There is nothing more
painful for me than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start to
think about robbery, and then see it's somebody white and feel relieved.''
Faced with immediate criticism from other black activists, Jackson hurried to
``clarify'' his views and deny that he meant what he said. But several
African-American scholars have made the same point. Johnnetta Cole writes that
among black women ``one of the most painful admissions I hear is: I am afraid
of my own people.'' Given black crime rates, Howard University education
professor Kenneth Tollett says, ``The statements we have called stereotypes in
the past have become true.''
Personally I would be angry and upset if, as a
law-abiding person, I were routinely treated as a criminal by taxidrivers,
storekeepers, or pedestrians. Yet, equally predictably, taxidrivers,
storekeepers, and women who clutch their purses or cross the street will attach
little significance to such personal and historical sensitivities. Such people
are unlikely to be intimidated by accusations of prejudice. For them, the
charges are meaningless, because the prejudice is warranted. In this context, a
bigot is simply a sociologist without credentials.
IT IS now time to examine
with fresh eyes the meaning of familiar terms such as prejudice and stereotype,
which underlie the conventional liberal understanding of racism.
African-American scholar Henry Louis Gates writes: ``Racism exists when one
generalizes about attributes of an individual, and treats him or her
accordingly.'' Gates offers some specific examples: ``You people sure can
dance,'' and ``Black people play basketball so remarkably well.'' He concludes,
``These are racist statements.'' But are they?
In his classic work, The Nature of Prejudice,
published in 1954, Gordon Allport drew on modern social-science theories to
explicate the paradigm of liberal anti-racism. Allport argued that prejudices
and stereotypes reveal less about their objects than their subjects. Applying
such concepts as displacement and frustration-aggression theory, Allport
maintained that when people feel hostility and anger which they have difficulty
coping with, they project it onto others, who thus become sacrificial victims
or ``scapegoats.'' Allport helped to establish a premise that many social
scientists continue to hold today: prejudices and stereotypes endure because of
the principle of self-selection. From the distorted perspective of the racist,
blacks who do not conform to preconceived notions simply do not exist; they
are, in Ralph Ellison's term, invisible men.
For the better part of a generation, this liberal
understanding of racism worked fairly well. The reason was that both whites and
blacks had indeed developed many erroneous views about each other as a
consequence of the social isolation produced by Southern segregation. During
slavery the races stayed in regular, even intimate, contact, but after
emancipation the forced separation of the races created a divided society in
which dubious and even absurd generalizations could endure, unchecked by contrary
experience. The civil-rights movement's assault on prejudices and stereotypes,
as well as the experience of desegregation, helped to topple many such group
generalizations that could not withstand empirical examination.
The problem with the liberal paradigm is its
premise that all group perceptions are misperceptions. Paradoxically it
is desegregation and integration which have called the liberal view into
question. One of the risks of increased exposure to blacks is that it has
placed whites in a position to discover which of their preconceived views are
true.
In fact ethnic groups which have had little
history of oppressing each other now seem to be formulating clear and often
critical images of other groups. In one of the more remarkable surveys of
recent years, the National Conference of Christians and Jews reports that many
minority groups harbor much more hostile attitudes toward other minority groups
than whites do. For example, 49 per cent of blacks and 68 per cent of Asians
said that Hispanics ``tend to have bigger families than they can support.''
Forty-six per cent of Hispanics and 42 per cent of blacks agreed that Asian
Americans are ``unscrupulous, crafty, and devious in business.'' And 53 per
cent of Asians and 51 per cent of Hispanics affirmed that blacks ``are more
likely to commit crimes and violence.''
It is, of course, possible that these minority
perceptions reveal that, by a kind of social osmosis, everyone is learning
racism from whites. But if so, why would minority perceptions be stronger than
those of whites who are the alleged racists par excellence? More likely, these
intergroup minority perceptions are the product of experience. Most people
today have fairly regular contact with others of different races, and have many
opportunities to verify their collective judgments about other groups.
During my speaking trips to college campuses, I
decided, as a journalistic exercise, to test people's perception of group
traits by raising the question of whether stereotypes may be true and
prejudices based on them therefore legitimate. Inevitably, I encountered strong
emotional opposition. Educated people today have been taught to despise group
generalizations. In a sense, we have been raised to be prejudiced against
prejudice.
Recently on a West Coast campus, I raised the
question of whether, as a group, ``blacks have rhythm.'' A professor of
Afro-American Studies insisted, ``Absolutely not,'' and a number of white
students readily agreed. Instinctively, they raised the familiar defenses, ``I
know a black man who can't dance.'' ``How can you generalize about a group that
is so diverse?'' ``What about Elvis? He had rhythm, and he wasn't black,'' and
so on. I pointed out that these were poor refutations of a proposition that was
being offered as true on average, or compared with the experience of other
groups. One cannot rebut the statistically irrefutable statement that men on
average are taller than women by producing a six-foot woman and a four-foot
man. Those individuals would merely constitute exceptions to a general pattern
that has persisted across cultures for most of recorded history.
Incidentally, the view that blacks tend to be
more rhythmic than whites is no whimsical recent invention but is supported by
observation and experience in several cultures over two millennia. In ancient
Greece and Rome, which held no negative view of black skin color, Ethiopians
and other blacks were celebrated for a perceived natural inclination to music
and dance. This is a central theme of that segment of Greek and Roman art which
focuses on blacks. Moreover, the same perception of blacks is evident in many
Arab descriptions of African blacks written in the late Middle Ages. Ibn
Butlan, for example, writes that if a black man was dropped from heaven ``he
would beat time as he goes down.'' The Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun attributed
the black African proclivity for music to the relaxing influence of the sun's
heat.
On one point the liberal paradigm about group
generalizations is sound: people's perceptions of others are always filtered
through the lens of their own prior experience. But the liberal understanding
cannot explain how particular traits come to be identified with particular
groups. Only because group traits have an empirical basis in shared experience
can we invoke them without fear of serious contradiction. Think how people
would react if someone said, ``Koreans are lazy,'' or ``Hispanics are
constantly trying to find ways to make money.'' Despite the prevalence of
anti-Semitism, Jews are rarely accused of stupidity. Blacks are never accused
of being tight with a dollar, or of conspiring to take over the world. By
reversing stereotypes we can see how their persistence relies, not simply on
the assumptions of the viewer, but also on the characteristics of the group
being described.
This is no case for group traits having a
biological foundation. Probably the vast majority of group traits are entirely
cultural, the distilled product of many years of shared experience. Yet
prejudices and stereotypes are not intended to explain the origins of group
traits, only to take into account their existence. Nor is this an argument to
emphasize negative traits. Stereotypes can be negative or positive. Indeed the
same stereotype can be interpreted favorably or unfavorably. One can deplore
Roman machismo or admire Roman manliness; deride Spanish superstition or exalt
Spanish piety; ridicule English severity or cherish English self-control. In
each of these interpretations, we see a single set of facts, a different set of
values.
William Helmreich, in The Things They Say
Behind Your Back, takes up the issue of whether there is a rational basis
for group stereotypes. Helmreich finds some stereotypes that are clearly false.
During the Middle Ages, for example, apparently many Christians took religious
polemic literally and came to believe that Jews have horns. Clearly this was
not a perception destined to last: one has only to encounter a few Jews to
discover that they do not, in fact, possess horns.
Helmreich takes up other stereotypes, however,
such as the view that many Nobel laureates are Jewish, or that the Mafia is
largely made up of Italians, or that the Japanese tend to be xenophobic and
nationalistic, or that many Irishmen and American Indians drink enormous
quantities of alcohol. Basically Helmreich finds that these perceptions are
confirmed by the data. Of all the stereotypes he considers, Helmreich concludes
that ``almost half the stereotypes have a strong factual basis.''
Thus the liberal assumptions that groups do not
differ and that group generalizations are irrational turn out to be wrong.
Indeed they generate a civil-rights paradigm which is at variance with most
people's direct observation of the world. We would do better to acknowledge the
reality of group traits and ask how we should act on it.
RATIONAL discrimination is
not limited to the exasperating but relatively inconsequential actions of
taxidrivers and storekeepers; it is also quite pervasive in other areas,
notably hiring.
In one of the most famous demonstrations of the
persistence of hiring discrimination, in 1991 the Urban Institute sent ten
black and ten white testers to apply for a range of private-sector jobs in
Chicago and Washington, D.C. The testers were matched in pairs with very similar
appearances, deportments, and credentials. The Institute found that in 67 per
cent of cases neither candidate received a job offer; in 13 per cent, both did;
in 15 per cent, only the white tester received an offer; and in 5 per cent,
only the black tester did.
Although these results hardly prove, as the
Institute concluded, that racial discrimination against blacks is ``widespread
and entrenched,'' they do suggest that it continues to exist. Curiously,
however, the Institute study found that white and black employers were equally
likely to discriminate. This suggests the possibility that discrimination
persists because in some cases it is efficient; it makes economic sense.
Conventional economic theory holds that arbitrary
racial discrimination is economically costly. The reason was explained years
ago by economist Gary Becker: employers who refuse to hire the best person for
the job are likely to suffer relative to their competition. Even discrimination
based on arbitrary features such as race can be profitable, however, when the
cost of discrimination is lower than the transaction cost of evaluating
candidates individually.
Consider the case of a chain of stores seeking to
hire entry-level workers recruited mainly from the local high-school. Let us
assume, further, that African Americans as a group have substantially higher
crime rates than whites, Hispanics, or Asians. Employers could disregard this
fact and carefully scrutinize the individual history and character of each
applicant. This would certainly be the ideal course of action. But employers,
who are in business to make a profit, may reason that entry-level jobs do not
warrant the expenditure of time and effort to investigate every applicant's
personal history. The employer may save transaction costs by simply keeping the
number of blacks hired to a minimum.
That the discrimination unearthed by the Urban
Institute study was probably rational is suggested by its finding that the race
of the interviewer showed no correlation with the likelihood of engaging in
discrimination. Discrimination practiced equally by white and black employers
is likely to be discrimination that does not depend on racist intentions, but
rather applies the logic of predictive evaluation, discriminating against
people in high-risk categories. Race is not being singled out here: employers
may have similar rational reasons for their reluctance to hire women, who may
get pregnant and leave, or the elderly, who are more likely to fall ill, or
young people, who may prove less reliable as employees.
In Chicago, one of the sites of the Urban
Institute study, Joleen Kirschenman and Kathryn Neckerman interviewed employers
about their motives for hiring and found support for the
rational-discrimination hypothesis.
-- In general, one construction-company owner said, for urban blacks ``the
quality of education is not as great as white folk from the suburbs, and it
shows.''
-- Another employer remarked, ``The Polish immigrants that I know are more
highly motivated than the Hispanics.''
-- One manufacturer said, ``We are not shutting out any black specifically, but
I will say that our experience has been bad.''
The authors conclude that employers are using
race as a proxy for ``aspects of productivity that are relatively expensive or
impossible to measure.'' Many employers do seem to recognize diversity among
blacks, often describing a particular individual as a good prospect, ``the
exception to the rule.'' Nevertheless, employers do use group generalizations,
so that in Kirschenman and Neckerman's view, ``black job applicants, unlike
their white counterparts, must indicate to employers that the stereotypes do
not apply to them.''
Rational discrimination may be difficult to
understand in hiring, yet its economic justification is obvious in other areas.
Insurance companies, for example, have no special dislike for teenage boys, but
they charge them higher rates than female and older drivers. This is very
unfair to an individual teenage boy who is a skilled and cautious driver,
because he is penalized on account of the statistical habits of a group he did
not voluntarily join. Yet even with reasonably thorough personal information,
companies are not in a good position to predict individual behavior.
IS discrimination based on
race necessarily racist? Not if you define racism as a doctrine of intrinsic
superiority and inferiority, which leads to judgments against a group on
grounds of biology rather than conduct. Indeed, the existence of rational
discrimination compels us to revise the liberal paradigm which holds that
racism is the theory and discrimination is the practice. The two may be
unconnected. It is possible to be a racist and not discriminate: this would be
true of many poor and marginalized whites who might hate blacks and consider them
inferior, but who are not in a position to enforce their convictions. So too it
is possible to discriminate and not be a racist: this would constitute rational
discrimination.
Just because discrimination can be rational,
however, does not mean that it is always moral. When individuals and companies
make decisions not to go to great lengths to ensure that they are not
misjudging any particular person, they are sacrificing the just treatment of
individuals at the altar of security, convenience, or profits. Even though such
judgments may be prudent and realistic, they are not, strictly speaking, fair.
Rational discrimination based on unalterable traits is problematic in a way
that discrimination against high-school dropouts and convicted felons is not.
Thus the question of whether rational
discrimination should be legal is a real one. The new public-policy dilemma is
based on the recognition that discrimination sometimes makes practical sense,
and that such discrimination forces a choice in which the claims of morality
are on one side, and the claims of rationality and productivity are on the
other.
We have, in fact, three models of how to deal
with the persistence of discrimination. The first is affirmative action. Some
advocates, such as legal scholar David Strauss, argue that racial preferences
are an essential remedy for rational discrimination. Yet this argument is
specious. After all, rational discrimination is objectionable because it treats
competent individuals as incompetent on account of their involuntary membership
in a disfavored group. This is hardly remedied by racial preferences which
treat comparatively incompetent individuals as competent on account of their
membership in a favored group.
The second approach is to make all
discrimination, including rational discrimination, illegal in the public and
private sector. This was Martin Luther King's solution, and it remains
attractive to most Americans. Yet such a solution, although a vast improvement
over the current system of racial preferences, would require massive state
intervention in the private sector to unmask and punish discriminators,
including minority firms which prefer to hire members of their own group, and
other employers whose only sin amounts to engaging in rational behavior.
Then there is a third, and venerable option which
was once considered liberal, but which has been virtually forgotten. In a free
society, which maintains a distinction between the private and public sphere,
rational discrimination is far more problematic when perpetrated by
institutions of government than by private individuals and institutions. The
reason is that in a democracy the government is responsible to all its
citizens, who have a right to demand that they be treated as individuals
equally under the law. Thus a new option emerges: the government should be
strictly race-neutral, but private actors would be free to discriminate. In
this scenario, rational discrimination would be legal, and so would
private-sector affirmative action.
I can already hear the gasps of civil-rights
activists, who are so wedded to the paradigm of old struggles that they cannot
see what is obvious to the generation born after the civil-rights movement:
Bull Connor is dead, and the ancien ré is finished. True, there will be
employers who will refuse to hire blacks, and some may even post signs that say
``No African Americans Need Apply.'' So what? Irrational discrimination of this
sort is harmful only when it is comprehensive in scope -- when everyone
discriminates. On the other hand, if only some employers discriminate, then
competitive markets impose the main financial cost of discrimination on the
discriminator, where it belongs.
Thus we arrive at a supreme irony: perhaps the
best way to save affirmative action is to abolish the civil-rights laws, or
rather, to limit their employment provisions to government conduct. This would
be not a repudiation of the civil-rights movement but its natural fulfillment.
Only such a bold strategy establishes a framework of state-neutrality and
personal freedom that permits citizens of all backgrounds to pursue their
competing utopias, and offers a realistic way out of our current thicket.
Return
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The author has chosen to use a question-answer
format in order to make the often complex subject matter, easier and more
enjoyable to read. Q and A is not a dialogue between real people -- the author
has provided the dialogue for both Q, standing for Quaero, which is Latin means
"I search for" and A, Auctor, which in Latin means "person
responsible."
Q- How do
you view civil rights in the United States today?
A-I would
like to say that things have never been better, and in many areas that would be
true. Opportunities for women, the disabled, the elderly and those of various
ethnic and religious backgrounds have expanded so that more individuals in each
category have access to educational and career opportunities than ever before.
However, I think we made a wrong turn along the
road towards justice and harmonious race relations in this country. Everyone is
seeing the results now in the unrest on campuses and the return of so-called
hate crimes. Some predict even greater troubles in the future.
Q-What do
you suggest?
A-First,
we have to define the problem .
Second, see where we are and how we got here.
Third, determine our real goal.
Fourth, decide how to reach it.
Q-That
sounds like a large order for a short discussion.
A-In
condensed form:
I see our problem as trying to provide equal
economic, social and political opportunities to relatively powerless minorities
while not trampling the so-called rights of the more powerful majority.
Unfortunately, we have managed to make all
parties concerned feel they have been unjustly treated at the hands of
government. I would say this has happened because, as a nation we were
impatient, proceeded too quickly and used force.
Q-That
defines the problem. Now for a brief look at where we are now, which should
reveal the extent of the problem.
A-Let's
look at some statistics: About one percent of the entire population is made up
of about 2.5 million black males age 16 to 25. 647,000 are in high school and
351,000 are in college according to the 1990 census. Another million are
gainfully employed and 163,000 are in the military.
Statistics show annual wage and salary income for
25-34 year old black men increased from forty-seven percent to sixty percent of
that of white men between 1940-1960 and from sixty percent to seventy-five
percent between 1960-1980!
Q-But what
about all the young black males that want to be working and can't find jobs?
A-I refer
you to all the arguments that were brought up to fight the minimum wage laws.
Unfortunately the high unemployment rates among young and entry level
workers---black and white---are proof of the validity of those argument against
a minimum wage.
Q-Has
unemployment gotten worse among black males?
A-In 1962,
almost sixty percent of young black males were employed, but by 1985 this
figure had fallen to forty-four percent. But there are estimates that more than
25 percent of black males in this age group derive their income from illegal
activities---so if you want to figure in illegal activities, the employment
rate has not declined that much.
Q-In other
words, legitimate employment is down but illegitimate is up.
A-But
there are those who claim the high rates of unemployment, illiteracy, drugs,
alcohol, AIDS and violent crime among the black underclass would not disappear
if racism were eradicated tomorrow.
Q-Doug
Wilder, Governor of Virginia delivered a speech at the end of March, 1991 in
which he recited statistics: one in four black males ages 20 to 29 are in the
wrong end of the criminal justice system as opposed to one in sixteen whites
and one in ten Hispanic males. The leading cause of death for black males ages
15 to 24 is violence. They have drug pushers as role models so what do you
expect? Fifty-one percent of black families with children under age 18 are
headed by single mothers. "These young men and women want to have a
future, it is imperative that they embrace the ultimate precaution:
abstinence.", he said.
A-Columnist,
William Raspberry admonished members of his race with the same type rhetoric
claiming blacks blame their shortcomings on racism whereas Asian Americans
believe their own efforts can make the difference and they approach society
with the attitude that they are going to succeed "no matter what white
people think".
Q-There is
no doubt that deterioration in the black family has picked up speed.
A-The
poverty rate of children in black single-headed families is almost fifty
percent--in black two-parent homes it's 10.6 percent compared to similar white
families where the child poverty rate is 6.4 percent. More than forty-two
percent of black families with children are headed by single mothers compared
with thirteen percent among whites.
Q-I
remember a passage in one of your books on the deficit where you wrote that
there is no such thing as "child poverty". I don't recall the exact
wording but the idea you conveyed was that all children by themselves are poor;
that when we talk about child poverty we are talking about the economic
circumstances of the family where the child resides---child poverty appeals to
the emotions of the listener better than speaking of family poverty.
A-I still
believe that. It is just easier to use the terms that surveys and polls use
when reporting their results.
Q-For
someone who doesn't like statistics and advocates looking at people as whole
individuals and not members of a group, don't you think you might be conveying
a hypocritical image when you focus so heavily on black this and that?
A-You may
be right about the image, but again I plead ease of communication. Statistics
are reported using groups and I detest the practice even though I find myself
using it out of necessity. I certainly haven't softened my opinion regarding
statistics, which I think are far too often misleading, nor of stereotyped
groupings, which I abhor. No one will ever convince me of anything merely by
using statistics---you can get sets of numbers to show whatever you want. I
much prefer to weigh things on broad philosophical principles.
Q-Such as?
A-In weighing
an issue I always ask, "Does this course of action offer individuals more
freedom, flexibility and opportunity?"
Q-Civil
rights, instead of eliminating discrimination wherever it exists now seeks to
guarantee representation of groups.
A-John Bunzel,
a fellow at the Hoover Institution and former college president and member of
the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights in a speech before the Commonwealth Club
on April 19, 1991 told of an Israeli socialist who found that "those
nations that have put freedom ahead of equality have ended up doing better by
equality than those that put equality ahead of freedom." I believe it!
Q-What do
you say to a study by Bennet Harrison of MIT and consultant Lucy Gorham that
found that one out of three black male college graduates earned wages in 1987
that fell below the poverty line of about $12,000 for a family of four compared
with one out of six for white male college grads?
They found the number of college-educated black
men earning $36,000 or more (in 1987 dollars) actually fell by about 28,000
from 1979 to 1987---a time when black male college enrollment was declining.
A-On the
other hand, George Gilder found, in researching his 1982 book Wealth and
Poverty, that college educated and professional black women earned 125 percent
as much as their white counterparts.
Q-That's
hard to reconcile with Harrison's findings that the number of college-educated
black women earning at least $36,000 rose by only seven percent or 1,500 while
almost fifty percent of black female college grads earned poverty-level wages
A-There
are many reasons these women are earning poverty-level incomes. Black women
experience divorce, separation, illegitimacy, uncontrollable children and an
extreme shortage of loving and supporting husbands. Nevertheless, Gilder found
between 1957-1977 black women improved their median incomes, occupational
status and entry into high-level positions at a rate more than three times as
fast as black men did.
Q-And I
suppose here you would be wise to research what was happening in the lives of
black men to account for their slow advancement?
A-You've
got it! Numbers don't enlighten much unless you take the time to look in,
around, behind and under them. From a historical perspective George Gilder
uncovered an interesting set though :
"Beginning with incomes around 50 percent of
the incomes of black men and 57 percent of the incomes of white women, black
women ended the period by earning more than 80 percent of black male incomes
and 99 percent of the white female level...by 1969 there were 16 percent more
black women than men in professional and managerial positions in the U.S.
economy and these women were earning three-fourths as much as black men."
Q-When it
comes down to it the fact that the black population is about seven years
younger than the white population and lives more predominantly in the South,
the lowest-income region in the country, has a lot to do with the disparity
between black and white incomes.
A-I've
heard that also. In fact Mr. Gilder reported that if both age and location were
the same between the two races, blacks would be found to have earnings about 80
percent that of whites. He found in 1980 that families headed by 22 year old,
white and black, had median incomes about $5,000 less than families headed by
33 year olds. Blacks in New York City were earning almost two and a half times
what blacks were earning in Mississippi.
Q-People
point to the disproportionate amount of blacks in the criminal system as
evidence of racism. What do you say?
A-I
realize racism still exists in this country but that doesn't mean it is
automatically the cause of a disproportionate prison population. There are
other reasons for the high number of black criminals.
Q-Such as?
A-Such as
the disintegration of the black family, as we discussed earlier, lack of good
black role models and demographics.
Q-What do
you mean, "demographics"?
A-The
median age of white Americans is 32 and for blacks it is 22 years. Young people
are more inclined to commit criminal acts.
Q-It is
understandable that blacks initially joined the party of Lincoln and were for a
long time Republicans.
A-I
suppose you mean "understandable" in that the Republican party was in
firm control during and immediately following the civil war and was determined
that individual rights should be protected as promised in the Constitution.
They felt that with the abolishment of slavery those promises could and would
be kept.
Q-So what
happened?
A-The
so-called "black codes" reared their ugly head following the war,
especially in the South.
Q-What
were the "black codes"?
A-They
were regulations on employment and labor contracts; an attempt to keep the
emancipated slaves from "making it" economically. Republicans
responded with the civil rights act of 1866 which was an effort to protect
individual rights, with an emphasis on economic rights, from infringement by
state government.
Q-Wasn't
that legislation vetoed by President Andrew Johnson?
A-You're
right, but the congress overrode the veto. Because many politicians feared the
civil rights act might later be overturned, the 14th amendment was proposed as
a permanent addition to the Constitution and was finally ratified in July 1868.
If Lincoln had lived the story of blacks and
civil rights might have been different but as it was, both the Johnson and
Grant administrations had more than their share of incompetence and corruption
and the civil rights of blacks never got much of a chance.
However, the greatest and most enduring tragedy
of those hard post-civil war years was the abdication by the Supreme Court of
its duty to protect the individual civil rights of all people.
Q-You mean
the civil rights legislation was challenged?
A-No. I'm
referring to the far reaching decision in what is known as the Slaughter-House
cases which were decided in 1873, well after the civil rights bill and the 14th
amendment. The Supreme Court upheld a Louisiana state law which closed certain
slaughterhouses in New Orleans and granted a monopoly to others, in effect
barring employment to "newcomers" ---the code word for racial
minorities.
Q-That
made it a "civil rights" issue?
A-The real
significance of the Slaughter-House decision was the interpretation given to
the equal protection clause in the U. S. Constitution. It recognized that
citizens had two sets of rights; one federal and the other state.
Q-I get
it. This allowed states to make their own laws denying blacks rights to public
places without the federal government stepping in.
A-Blacks
weren't denied rights to public places, they just had separate public places.
Q-Separate
but equal!
A-You're
jumping the gun. The "separate but equal" doctrine was the result of
the better known 1896 case, Plessy v Ferguson which has had long lasting
implications and bears some responsibility for the racial problems we are
facing today. Plessy justified government's reliance on special "racial
facts" as a basis for legislation and allowed the classification of people
by race as long as the classifications were reasonable.
That was bad enough but the earlier 1873 ruling
went beyond race to favoritism in general. It allows government to continue its
damaging policy of granting favors to one group of people at the expense of
others.
Q-It
sounds like equal protection was undermined by Slaughter-House and turned into
a joke.
A-You're
right, Slaughter-House has stood as a precedent undermining the ability of
individual citizens to pursue their best economic advantage in a free market
environment under the protection of the national government. There are people
today working to overturn Slaughter-House as the surest way to ensure equal
protection for all Americans.
Q- What
would reversing Slaughter-House mean?
A- It
would mean that in matters affecting the privileges and immunities of citizenship
the courts would no longer automatically defer to the legislative branch, but
would find a constitutional presumption in favor of individual liberty.
Individual and especially economic liberty is our most precious civil right;
economic liberty leads to individual empowerment.
Q- So you
might say Slaughter-House stands in direct opposition to fundamental individual
rights?
A- I
would. Our greatest hope for protecting fundamental individual rights in the
future is to concentrate on restoring the privileges and immunities clause and
expanding the due process clause of the 14th amendment so that they once again
encompass economic liberty as the framers of that amendment intended. As far as
I'm concerned, the most urgent, unfinished business of our democracy is
economic injustice.
Q-What
about the case that made Thurgood Marshall the most successful civil rights
lawyer in history?
A-Brown v
Board of Education (1954) was definitely a landmark decision. Interestingly
Thurgood Marshall invoked the ideas of Locke and natural rights as the
foundation on which this country was founded in knocking down the separate but
equal doctrine. He based his attack on the belief that the "Constitution
is color-blind".
Q- Martin
Luther King recognized that our Declaration of Independence was based on
Locke's insights "that there are certain basic rights that are neither
conferred by nor derived from the state ". . . and that this principle is
the distinguishing characteristic of the United States of America, setting her
apart "from systems of government which make the state an end within
itself."
A-Marshall
was definitely influenced by Martin Luther King but he also had another hero at
that time. He liked to quote the lone dissenter in Plessy v Ferguson, Justice
John Harlan who wrote that, "The law regards man as man, and takes no
account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed
by the supreme law of the land are involved."
Justice Harlan was dismayed that the majority in
the court "reached the conclusion that it is competent for a state to
regulate the enjoyment by citizens of their civil rights solely upon the basis
of race."
Q-But I
thought as a Justice on the Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall championed racial
classifications?
A-That's
true, in the eighties he trivialized his old hero pointing out that the idea
that the U.S. Constitution is color-blind was held by only one Justice in 1894.
Q-I've
heard Justice Harry Blackmun referred to as an "Orwellian Justice".
What does that mean?
A-I
haven't heard that but it was Justice Harry Blackmun who said, ". . .in
order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. . . .And in
order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently" That
sure reminds me of Orwell's "War is Peace, Love is Hate, Ignorance is
Truth!" Could that be it?
Q- I've
been wondering how the Democrats captured the black vote?
A-FDR
provided jobs and government relief payments to the unemployed, and that
included most blacks. Then with President Truman's integration of the armed
forces in 1948 and President Johnson's push for civil-rights and his
War-On-Poverty, the Democrats built up an impressive record of doing something
about the issues that were of most interest to blacks. It is not that Republicans
were against the gains made in increasing opportunities for black people, but
the Democrats got credit for the gains because they so often occurred on their
watch.
Q-Don't
you think that as people become producing and contributing members of society ---givers
rather than takers--- the ties to the party whose goal it is to redistribute
income is bound to lessen?
A-Those
far more knowledgeable about voting trends than I, claim that people vote their
pocket books. In that case the Republican party should expect to attract more
blacks because the black middle class has grown by nearly a third since 1980
and is now for the first time ever, the dominant income group in black America.
A survey published in 1986 by the Joint Center
for Political Studies, a black political DC think tank, two-thirds of blacks
said they had kept pace economically or moved ahead during the Reagan years.
These perceptions are backed up by government
statistics but are not widely broadcast. More blacks were working in the
eighties and at higher wages than ever before. Black family incomes were at an
all-time high having increased by roughly six percent in real terms over an
eight year period. The number of black professionals has increased an amazing
sixty-three percent since 1980. Black managers and officers in corporate
America increased in number by thirty percent over the same time span.
In 1990 Fortune magazine polled 1,000 Americans
nationwide and found that seventy percent of the blacks and sixty-two percent
of the whites thought they had a good chance for advancement in the future.
Eighty-eight percent of blacks thought their generation's chances were better
for success than their parents chances had been, whereas only seventy-seven
percent of whites felt that way.
Q-It is widely
believed that blacks have been losing ground in all these areas. How can that
be?
A-We could
compare statistics all day. According to that 1990 poll most blacks thought
they were moving forward, not slipping back as we hear and read so often in the
popular press.
In fact from 1967 to 1987 black households
earning $50,000 or more rose from 212,000 to 764,000--a 360 percent increase,
having doubled between 1982 and 1987--the Reagan years! The total income of
America's 28 million blacks was $237 billion just in 1988 which is larger than
the gross domestic product of all but ten nations in the world!
Q-But I
heard that the set of statistics showing that black men and women gained
relative to white men in terms of median income, earnings, hourly wage rates
and occupational status were based on data collected from people already
attached to the labor force.
A-As far
as I know the main source of information on annual changes in black earnings
excludes individuals who are out of the labor force altogether or who have only
marginal attachment to the labor force.
Q-The
unemployed.
A-So
what's your point? There are plenty of statistics focusing specifically on
employed and unemployed. In 1960 black male employment was about equal to that
of white males. By 1982 12 percent of prime-age black males were unemployed
compared to only 5 percent of white males. That was definitely a slip backwards
in terms of black unemployment rates.
Q-I still
don't understand why we hear so much about poverty and ghettos and so little
about positive gains?
A-Blacks
tend to identify their overall status by those blacks that are the very worst
off. Even though the majority may have made progress during the 1980s, they
continue to focus on the fortunes of their poorest members. Among black voters,
civil-rights is the number one issue, with poor blacks a close second and
upward mobility holding third place. Surveys have determined that self-help,
drug problems, welfare reform and even family values are all subordinate to the
top three issues.
Q-I
noticed that a lot of middle class blacks are likely to feel they owe their new
status to opportunities created by the federal government.
A-I think
you're right. It seems like the well-educated blacks who used federal and state
grants and loans to finance their schooling, sometimes end up feeling like they
owe their jobs to affirmative action and therefore they are likely to take any
threat to these programs as a personal affront. As long as one-third of all
blacks are mired in poverty, the rest will not hear of scraping any of the
programs they believe was their ticket out of poverty.
Q-So why
is there so much poverty in the black community?
A-I
believe the real cause of poverty, black and white, is disintegration of the
family. According to Martin Peretz, editor of the New Republic, the central
problem of race relations is one of social and economic differences. Sixty
percent of babies born to unwed mothers are born to black mothers. The number
of black households headed by married couples has fallen almost 20 percentage
points from 20 years ago, from fifty-five percent to thirty-six percent.
Prior to 1960 the black family was largely
composed of married-couple families. There are proportionately twice as many
black as white single men. If the differences between blacks and whites are
corrected for marital status, the gap between the earnings of black and white
males of truly comparable family background and credentials completely
disappears.
Q-Are you
agreeing with those that believe the welfare state contributed to the collapse
of the black family?
A-Senator
Moynihan of New York, over twenty-five years ago, was the first to point out
the connection between the curve of unemployment and family dissolution,
between family instability and welfare dependency.
The welfare system has expanded its services and
eligibility requirements even further since then. For many in the lower half of
the income distribution, welfare has been too tempting to pass up. The
guaranteed income coupled with food stamps, WIC program food benefits,
Medicaid, subsidized housing and other benefits has been irresistible. Mothers
with illegitimate babies have had no reason to marry and young men faced with
low paying jobs have had no reason to work. The current welfare system is
structured primarily to assist non-employed single mothers. It has strong
disincentives for work.
Q-Such as?
A-So-called
payments-in-kind, including medical benefits and food and housing supplements,
are taken away as welfare beneficiaries attempt to help themselves kick the
habit of welfare by making money. Although payments-in-kind are not counted as
income, they have contributed greatly to the economic attractiveness of the
welfare alternative.
A welfare recipient becomes ineligible for these
benefits before he or she (generally she) is able to replace them from earnings
produced by hard work. The desire to get ahead is often quelled when a person
finds government is willing to provide (as long as she doesn't work) what she
is still not capable of providing on her own.
That's a real disincentive to work! A better way
might be to expand the earned-income tax credit for families in the
$10,000-$20,000 range.
Q-It seems
like women are given money in our welfare culture as a right which frees men
from having to get the same money through hard work.
A-I agree.
Generation after generation of men have conquered poverty in this mobile
society of ours, by working hard and using their wits as well as their brawn.
Unfortunately our government antipoverty programs--to the extent they make the
mother's situation better--tend to make the father's situation worse. Who needs
a low-income earning male around when Uncle Sam is there to provide?
Q-But
almost all immigrant males were low income providers at one time or another!
A-Forget
"immigrant"--most males are still low income earners when they start
out. Why are so many unemployed or why do they advance in their professions or
jobs so slowly?
A-Most
men, black or white, work hard out of a combination of love and necessity. The
fact that they have dependent wives and children allows them to embrace
hardships and make sacrifices that they would never consider out of pure
selfish ambition. Their families provide incentive and so even though it is not
"politically correct" to admit it, most men have ambivalent feelings
about working wives, and when wives earn more, most males lose all incentives.
Q-I
suppose it would follow that when wives earn less, the men tend to work harder
and are far more likely to excel. That is a far cry from the popular perception
that the strain of having insufficient resources and the responsibility of a
family are obstacles to economic success. You seem to think they are the
springboards that provide motivation. Am I right?
A-As far
as you go. But it should be no surprise to find that low unemployment among
black males is not a simple straight forward problem. Unfortunately they have
some historical baggage that is not carried by males of other races or ethnic
backgrounds.
Q-What do
you mean?
A-There is
ample evidence that without discrimination, present and past, blacks would
achieve earnings comparable to whites. In 1864 the Freedmen's Bureau used
federal funds to provide education, housing, health care and employment
opportunities for blacks, regardless of their status before the Civil War as
slaves or free men.
However, this so-called protection, like
well-meaning subsequent legislation, did more harm than it did good, keeping
the blacks in a childlike role different from immigrant groups that came to
this country and were expected to make their own way.
For instance, Jews and Asians brought traditions
of cooperation with them, which made it easier to set up enterprises in this
country.
Q-I've
heard that slavery destroyed the natural culture and tribal patterns of mutual
aid.
A-The
spirit of cooperation was tantamount in the economic development of each wave
of immigrants. Charity began with immediate families, expanded to the enlarged
family, moved into churches and associated benevolent groups, mutual aid
societies, paternalistic businesses, unions, insurance corporations and finally
settled on the state. In some ways, blacks in the nineties are facing the same
problems as those new immigrants faced on their arrival; how to make up by dint
of effort and ambition for a lack of family background and educational
qualifications.
Q-I guess
their cradling by the welfare state for so long has hurt them as a group
because it discouraged work.
A-Additionally,
black males were not absorbed into manufacturing the way white males were when
they left the farms after the second world war.
Q-Why not?
A-They
were kept out of unions and the Davis-Bacon legislation requiring that
prevailing, generally meaning union wages, had to be paid to all government
contractors pretty well kept them from working for the government. But as
teenagers in the late forties their unemployment rates were lower than those of
their white contemporaries. In the fifties many blacks left high school to
work.
The participants in the dialogue have been
discussing the many factors contributing the high proportion of blacks in
poverty. Are there any ways to helps blacks overcome such situations ...?
Q-Have you
ever heard of William Haskins? He proposed a national clearinghouse for
mentors, so successful blacks could attempt to smooth the way and break ground
for newcomers, as in any "good 'ol boy" network.
A-I heard
Mr. Haskins, who by the way, is vice president of the National Urban League,
speak at a conference dealing with "Alternatives to the Criminal Justice
System". I give him high marks for the proposed mentoring program but not
for what I heard him say at that conference in May of 1991.
He acted like an articulate scare monger, trying
to put fear into the blacks in the audience by telling them whites wanted to
keep them in jail. He said that "competency certificates" means you
can get a job. "But who won't have them? African Americans!".
He said the SAT is weighed against the African
American male. He told his audience that "Orientals are killing the SAT;
these kids get 1400 on SAT scores and get the scholarships for minorities that
should be going to black kids.
The federal government isn't going to rescue you
(audience)." He said the gains that were made in the sixties and seventies
are now "beat back". . ."If you ain't got it---you ain't going
to get it, affirmative action has been kicked in the face." He called for
a Domestic Marshall Plan to provide jobs for the inner city.
Q-I've
heard the real problem today is not discrimination as much as it is the
attitude that wealth can be taken for granted rather than produced by hard
work. Everyone who isn't getting ahead blames it on bad breaks or prejudice,
somehow never getting the message that even affluent well connected white males
often don't make it if they fail to put in the time and energy required to
succeed.
A-Our
present society does a good job of avoiding the "double-t" words.
Q-Total
taxes? Terrible taxes? Trendy taxes? Terrific Taxes? On that last one I'll give
up, but I know they have something to do with taxes.
A-I wasn't
trying to make you guess, but you are proof that no one even considers these
"t-words" anymore-----toil and thrift.
Q-That is
a novel pair.
A-Somehow
the message has gotten out through the movies or TV that life is supposed to be
easy and carefree; that it's inevitable tough times, setbacks, and frustrations
are society's fault.
Too many people of all races, ages and genders
have the idea that good intentions are enough and degrees and diplomas should
confer immediate respect, prestige and power without the necessity of
productive work. If they are forced to compete or struggle they figure
something must be wrong with the system and that policymakers must be compelled
to "fix it".
Q-Of
course politicians don't help when arguing for spending for social programs
they constantly proclaim that "This is the richest country in the
world" and therefore it follows that health care, child care, housing,
education, the elimination of homelessness and poverty, good highways and
bridges, job training, jobs for everybody, higher minimum wages, better
pensions all should be available to everybody at no cost to anybody. I
sometimes think Americans think these things grow on trees in Uncle Sam's personal
orchard.
A-When our
political leaders, who should know better, indulge in this sort of nonsense, it
is a disservice to the entire nation .
Q-Powerful
congressmen have been compared to old plantation owners who are not ready to
give up their power and the hold they have over their dependents. It will not
be easy to emancipate those on welfare. Just as the plantation owners thought
they were doing good for the people in their charge so do these congressmen who
encourage dependency and exhibit so little faith in the people's ability to
care for themselves and survive without government programs.
A-A
perfect example of what you're saying occurred in the spring of 1991 when a
delegation of black public-housing residents asked the Black Caucus to vote against
a law requiring that only union labor be hired to do work on public-housing
projects.
Ron Dellums, my old congressman from Berkeley,
and all the Black Caucus voted with labor and against the low-income blacks to
retain the bureaucratic pork-barreling Bruce Morrison of Connecticut was
responsible for putting into the law.
Congressmen Jim Kolbe of Arizona and Dick Armey
of Texas argued in favor of allowing public housing managers to hire
low-income, hard-core unemployed inner-city residents to perform on-site
maintenance in their own housing projects. Representative Armey said that
public-housing tenants should be permitted to fix up their own apartments
"to put sweat equity into their own homes, just as you and I do." He
assured fellow members that private home owners quickly learn how to become
part time handy persons.
Then Bruce Vento of Minnesota used the following
argument in refuting Armey: (As reported in National Review June '90) "We
have plumbing problems. We have electrical problems. We have carpentry problems
that need to be addressed. Are the tenants that are living in assisted housing,
are they the skilled mechanics that can take on these tasks of doing the
electrical rewiring of a multi-complex housing unit? Are they the glaziers that
will hang out there and put a piece of glass into a window? I think on its face
it is obvious that they cannot do that."
Q-Some
blacks have compared liberal white Democrats to missionaries. Mike Holt, editor
of the Milwaukee Community Journal has written that they, "Control people
of color with a smile, keep them impoverished, enslaved by welfare programs
(which are run by other missionaries) and unwilling or unable to make a
decision without our approval."
A-I wonder
what he would say about Ron Dellums, Bruce Morrison and the entire Black
Caucus?
Q-I wonder
what you would say about the idea that black students need black role models;
that black youths are disadvantaged unless taught by blacks?
A-I think
you can tell by my opening comments that I believe people can communicate with
one another even if they don't share identical experiences. I don't buy the
idea that since black academics are shaped by life experiences unknown to
whites, white professors are inadequate to the role of imparting information to
black students. I realize there are black academic set-aside programs.
Q-In 1973
a federal court ordered HEW (Department of Housing Education and Welfare) to
force the states to set goals for raising minority enrollments at predominantly
white public colleges and universities.
A-If a
school failed to meet goals in its state plan, the order stipulated that the
federal government could cut off financial support.
Q-Some
people think affirmative action programs on campuses do more harm than good .
How do you feel about this?
A-Only
about one third of black students graduate from the colleges that recruit them.
The trouble is, minorities were recruited to satisfy federal mandates with no
follow up support system to keep them from flunking out, so drop out rates were
high.
Q-I think
there was a 1985 study which showed that only 32 percent of Penn State's black
students graduated after five years, compared with about 60 percent of its
white students.
A-People
catch on and resent being used. When Craig Thomas was a senior in high school,
he was told by Penn State University recruiters that he would be admitted and
would receive a scholarship that would pay 75 percent of his tuition for four
years. Still he decided to go to the University of Houston because he felt Penn
State accepted him only because he was black. He didn't like being used to
fulfill Penn State's racial quotas.
Q-Isn't
that the school that gives black students a .5 grade-point advantage over other
students?
A-I'm not
certain but the idea isn't surprising considering the prevailing attitude in
academia in general at the moment. Another university pays black students $550
for maintaining a C average, and $1100 for anything above a C+ average.
On campuses affirmative action began as an ending
of the preference for white males but took a wrong turn and became an exclusion
of white males on the bases of their color and race. It should mean that no
racial or sexual discrimination will work against an individual because he is a
member of a minority group.
Q-Treating
students differently because of their race used to be called discrimination. A
1985 survey in Public Opinion magazine found that more than 75 percent of black
Americans were opposed to preferential treatment for blacks in hiring and
college admissions.
A-Tell it
to California Assemblyman, Tom Hayden who introduced legislation that urges all
publicly supported colleges and universities to have, by the year 2000, a
student body that is proportionately representative of the ethnic composition
of recent high school graduates. This imposes a ceiling on every other ethnic
group.
Q-Did you
hear that the accreditation of Baruch College in New York was held up because
the number of minorities on the faculty were considered inadequate and not
enough minority students were graduating?
A-That's
absurd. Minorities aren't the only ones that don't like racial quotas. These
policies are just as likely to cause resentment by members of other races. In
March, 1990, a state institution in Florida, in an effort to increase its low
black enrollment, offered free tuition to every qualified black freshman. .
Non-black Floridians rose up in anger.
Q-Q-Do you
recall the flap about the Fiesta Bowl and race-exclusive scholarships in 1990?
A-Oh boy.
First the Bush administration said race-exclusive scholarships were illegally
discriminatory and the civil-rights lobbies went ballistic. Then the
administration regrouped and said schools can award racially exclusive
scholarships that are funded privately. This of course ignored Title VI of the
1964 civil Rights Act, the 1987 Grove City ruling which stipulates that all
parts of a university are subject to civil-rights laws if any part receives
federal funds and ignored the Constitution's guarantee of "equal protection".
Q-Did you
read Carl Rowan's December, 1990 columns?
A-You mean
the ones denouncing the Bush administration's "outrageous attempt to
outlaw affirmative action scholarships" which he felt were only just and
fair?
Q-That's
what I meant.
A- In a
splendid example of double-speak Rowan claimed scholarships for whites only
would be a perpetuation of the pernicious racism some have practiced for
generations, but for a college to set aside some scholarships for blacks,
Hispanics or others, is a non-malicious effort to right 300 years of wrongs.
Q-George
Will pointed out in a one of his columns written during that same time period,
that the only remaining rationale for any civil rights lobby today is to expand
the racial-spoils system. Equal has come to mean "preferential".
A-Just
weeks after the scholarship flap the Supreme Court dealt civil rights what Mr.
Rowan would consider to be another severe blow.
Q-You mean
the Oklahoma City case?
A-Yes.
That was a 5 to 3 decision in January, 1991 to allow federal courts to end
supervision of desegregation plans if school boards have complied in good faith
and eliminated the vestiges of past discrimination to the extent practicable.
The ruling means school boards will have to prove in a court of law that they
have met the standards.
Q-Does
that mean schools that have once again become populated by primarily one race
will have to be resegregated?
A-That's
what the three dissenting Justices would have like to have seen happen but that
is not what the court decision said. Chief Justice Rhenquist wrote
"Federal supervision of local school systems was intended as a temporary
measure to remedy past discrimination." He didn't take into consideration
present or future discrimination which is bound to occur when he wrote that decrees
are not intended to operate in perpetuity.
Q-All this
concern about schools just goes to show how important education is, and I
suppose always has been, to social and economic mobility.
A-There
have been ill conceived policies to get minorities into college and ill
conceived policies to get them out. Remember the 1986 incident at Howard
University?
Q-I
remember. The University granted degrees to nine students who failed to meet
graduation requirements and even columnist Carl Rowan agreed that this was a
disservice to blacks and ". . .to Americans everywhere who are fighting
for opportunities based on achievement, potential and character."
A-In the
California legislature during the summer of 1990, Speaker Willie Brown backed
legislation that would require that minorities be graduated at the same rate as
whites. Already they were given preference in admission to the state's colleges
and universities, but apparently that was enough.
Q-That was
Speaker Brown's response to statistics that came out in 1990 showing that
graduation rates for blacks and Hispanics nationwide were fifty percent less
than for whites.
A-Surely
there is a better way to encourage minorities without resorting to
paternalistic policies which assume they cannot achieve without outside help?
Q-What
would you do about the college and universities that punish students for making
remarks that are considered disparaging to racial and ethnic groups on campus?
A-I think
restricting free speech where speech should be perhaps the most free, that is
on college campuses, is a terrible mistake.
Q-The
college administrations don't believe they are restricting speech.
A-Of
course they believe it---they just call it "harassment" so nobody
else will believe it. It is the essence of double speak. They try to claim that
speaking ill of someone is not speech, it is conduct.
Q-I've
heard the University of Wisconsin is one of more than a hundred colleges that
has what is known as a "hate speech" code on all twenty-six of its
campuses. But the Wisconsin code, and a similar one at Stanford are not in
violation of the first amendment because only speech directed at an individual
is actionable and not the idea expressed. Because of this they aren't effective
in controlling "hate" at any rate.
A-At
Oberlin College in Ohio students have divided into minute groups that have
little interaction. There are separate residences and clubs for Asians, Jews,
Latinos, blacks, feminists, gays, lesbians and subdivisions in each of these.
A-It is
widely held that people of color cannot be racist because they lack power, but
because whites supposedly have power that makes them intrinsically racist.
Jacob Weisberg, an editor of The New Republic, during a visit to the Oberlin
campus, reported that a group of white students responded to his question
"Are you racist?" in the affirmative. Apparently they considered it
part and parcel of their "white skin privilege" and felt that those
students who didn't see it that way were simply "in denial".
Q-I read
that report by Jacob Weisberg and was most bothered by his account of the
trouble caused by two black women who were asked to leave the outdoor tables of
a restaurant where they sat eating food they had purchased at a rival
restaurant.
A-I found
their indignation hard to believe also. They started boycotts and finally had
the restaurant owner apologizing to all blacks over something that had nothing
whatsoever to do with race. I feel so badly that young people, who should be
getting an education and enjoying the company of fellow students of diverse
backgrounds are instead squabbling among themselves and diverting their
energies with divisive and destructive nonsense.
Q-Apparently
the administration only makes matters worse.
A-I would
agree. I was disturbed by the report of an anti-racism seminar required for
some upperclassmen where the adult leader had everyone reciting things like
"all whites are racist and only they can be racist." Students were
not encouraged to be color-blind but rather they were urged to heighten their
consciousness of race and take on the task that is required of every white
person--- shedding throughout his or her entire life an "inherited
racism."
Q-I would
imagine such nonsense could do a great deal of damage to a sensitive white
student. While white racism has not disappeared, all whites are not racist. How
is such a thing tolerated at an American institution of higher learning?
A-Worse
things than that are being tolerated. There is pressure to see that only blacks
teach black subjects, Hispanics teach about Hispanics that no white should be
audacious enough to tell a black or Hispanic student about his own history.
This has been described as a form of apartheid or the idea that only a member
of a particular race can think like or understand another member of that race.
It has also been referred to as a "territorial attitude".
Q-Such
expectations limit the choices of minority students rather than expand them.
A-The
chairman of the African Studies Department at City College of the City
University of New York teaches that the melanin in the skins of people of color
make them more compassionate and communal in contrast to the white "ice
people". On the same faculty is a philosophy professor who believes blacks
are intellectually inferior and have an inherent propensity for crime.
Q-Have you
heard the term "uniculturalism"? What does it mean?
A-It was
coined to represent the opposite of "multicultural equality" which
means the equality of various racial groups. Uniculturalism would be the
holding of the various groups to one standard and it is a "no-no" on
most campuses. Many multiculturalists see the slightest attempt to draw
segregated groups together into a common American culture as a form of racism.
They view differences as absolute, irreducible and intractable and abhor
assimilation.
Q-What do
you think about the trend to dump western civilization courses from university
curriculums as irrelevant history of "dead European white males"?
A-The
ideas upon which this country was founded and from which the writers of our
Constitution drew their inspiration happened to be Western European
ideas----they are the foundation of the United States of America. To find them
irrelevant is to judge them on the basis of the race and sex of their
originators rather than on their merit as ideas.
Q-I must
admit the idea is scary. Do you think President Bush's educational-choice plan
will promote racism? Many people believe that because white kids will be able
to afford private schools more easily, the public schools will be left to the
blacks and Hispanic children.
A-It is
the poor and middle class kids that will be able to attend private schools if
they choose to do so, thanks to "choice". They will benefit from the
Bush administration's proposal far more than rich families will.
Q-What do
you think of the trend towards all black schools? Isn't that resegregation ?
How can it be tolerated?
A-In
Milwaukee in 1990 tests in the cities integrated schools showed white students
averaged 60 on a reading test and blacks averaged 25. A task force figured the
schools were at fault and recommended an all-black school as an experiment.
After all the idea for integrating the schools was to bring black children up
to par.
Since that's not working something else has to be
tried. The black schools are emphasizing values and a sense of community,
something young black males especially are missing in their splintered home
lives.
Q-They
also emphasize African militancy. I guess there is no protection for whites, a
majority group, against discrimination because surely by closing their door to
white children, these schools are discriminating on the basis of race.
A-I hope
you won't think I'm suggesting that higher education isn't important or
necessary for the future of our country when I say I think there has been too
much attention given to getting college degrees at the expense of others.
What's the difference between telling a minority dropout he can't get a job
without a high-school diploma or he can't get a job because of a racist white
establishment?
With the best of intentions millions of dollars
are lavished on anti-dropout campaigns that emphasize the hopelessness of life
without school credentials when in truth so-called unqualified employees often
perform better than their credentialed co-workers. Every close study has shown
that diligence, determination, and the drive to get ahead are most important to
productivity.
Q-All that
Horatio Alger stuff may sound good but when less educated minorities are hired
they often run into the problem later in the form of a promotion barrier as
credentials generally determine who is to move ahead. A credentialed woman is
often chosen over an aggressive and ambitious young man. Without advancement
these academic drop-outs understandably become discouraged and withdraw from
the work force altogether.
A-What
really hurts is when an energetic and ambitious employee sees indifferent and
lazy competitors gain promotions on the basis of credentials. This down-plays
performance on the job and exalts effort on tests, resulting in, according to
George Gilder, the protection of "any schooled but shiftless members of
the middle class from the competition of unschooled but aggressively
hardworking poor people."
Q-Couldn't
education that is required for a specific position be given selectively to
motivated workers right on the job or on the employer's time at another
location?
A-Many
companies have extensive training programs already because as certain jobs
become more refined and specialized they must be learned on the work site with
the equipment involved. Despite all the clamor to the contrary, the fact is the
employment value of academic learning--beyond the three Rs--has increased very
little.
Q-I
believe that, because otherwise how could American companies go off shore and
make use foreign unskilled labor? Uneducated peasants have done just fine at
assembling automobiles, semiconductor chips, TV sets and all sorts of
electronic equipment.
A-Unfortunately it's not a simple choice of