Okay, let's get to the basics
from the NY Times
'HugeBlack Eye'By WILLIAM SAFIRE
… Apparently this 27-year-old was given too many second chances by editors eager for this ambitious black journalist to succeed. As he moved to more responsible assignments, some editors failed to pass along assessments of his past shortcomings while others felt the need to protect the confidentiality of his troubles. Result: the con artist gamed a system that celebrates diversity and opportunity.
… Then to the affirmative-action angle: See what happens, they taunt, when you treat a minority employee with kid gloves, promoting him when he deserves to be fired? Oh, we know your editors insist that "diversity" had nothing to do with it. But remember what Senator Dale Bumpers said about our impeachment of Clinton: "When you hear somebody say, 'This is not about sex' = it's about sex." This is about diversity backfiring.
… Now about the supposed cost of diversity: A newspaper is free to come down on the side of giving black journalists a break if its owners and editors so choose. What's more, this media world would also benefit from more Hispanics and Asians coming up faster.
It strikes me that Mr. Safire feels he’s speaking on the side of the angels here. If he really wanted to be helpful though, what he’d note is that the pass given Blair by his editors is not affirmative action.
Let me be clear: I don’t give a damn about Jayson Blair’s self-inflicted problems. Plagiarism is a major crime in writing and journalism circles and he knew he was wrong when he did these things. He, like other cheaters, thought he wouldn’t get caught. He was wrong; que sera sera.
The problem I have is the idea of nature of affirmative action programs that is current, and the way it is used to discredit efforts to redress historical and structural racism. To explain my problem, let’s look at what those who established the term "affirmative action" said, and maybe even what they meant.
The first use of the term "affirmative action" was in JFK's executive order no. 11246:
PART II
NONDISCRIMINATION IN EMPLOYMENT BY GOVERNMENT CONTRACTORS AND SUBCONTRACTORS
SUBPART A
DUTIES OF THE SECRETARY OF LABOR
Sec. 201. The Secretary of Labor shall be responsible for the administration of Parts II and III of this Order and shall adopt such rules and regulations and issue such orders as he deems necessary and appropriate to achieve the purposes thereof.
SUBPART B
CONTRACTORS' AGREEMENTS
Sec. 202. Except in contracts exempted in accordance with Section 204 of this Order, all Government contracting agencies shall include in every Government contract hereafter entered into the following provisions:
"During the performance of this contract, the contractor agrees as follows:
"(1) The contractor will not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, creed, color, or national origin. The contractor will take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin. Such action shall include, but not be limited to the following: employment, upgrading, demotion, or transfer; recruitment or recruitment advertising; layoff or termination; rates of pay or other forms of compensation; and selection for training, including apprenticeship. The contractor agrees to post in conspicuous places, available to employees and applicants for employment, notices to be provided by the contracting officer setting forth the provisions of this nondiscrimination clause.
It's pretty clear that "affirmative action" here means, "actively do something that works." The question is have we chosen methods that work? What would ‘working’ mean? In his
speech at Howard University on June 4, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson said:
But freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please.
You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.
Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.
This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.
For the task is to give 20 million Negroes the same chance as every other American to learn and grow, to work and share in society, to develop their abilities--physical, mental and spiritual, and to pursue their individual happiness.
To this end equal opportunity is essential, but not enough, not enough. Men and women of all races are born with the same range of abilities. But ability is not just the product of birth. Ability is stretched or stunted by the family that you live with, and the neighborhood you live in--by the school you go to and the poverty or the richness of your surroundings. It is the product of a hundred unseen forces playing upon the little infant, the child, and finally the man.
This all pretty self-evident (that all men are created equal; their endowment by their creator with certain inalienable right is the nature of that equality). But even the most casual student of history knows that it didn’t go that smoothly. There was an
armed insurrection in response to the first Black students arrival to desegregate high schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, which President Eisenhower responded to by sending in the
101st Airborne Division … far more important than integration was mandating respect for Federal authority. In 1974,
Black students in Boston were assaulted regularly in response to court-ordered busing.
But of course, that was then. This is now.
In that 1965 speech, President Johnson made several compelling observations about the obstacles Black Americans faced. I want to compare these markers to the current state of affairs.
Thirty-five years ago the rate of unemployment for Negroes and
whites was about the same. Tonight the Negro rate is twice as
high.According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rates for the first four months of this year are:
| | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr |
| White | 5.1 | 5.0 | 5.1 | 5.2 |
| Black | 10.3 | 10.5 | 10.2 | 10.9 |
Between 1949 and 1959, the income of Negro men relative to white men declined in every section of this country. From 1952 to 1963 the median income of Negro families compared to white actually dropped from 57 percent to 53 percent.According to the Census Bureau, the income figures for 2001 are:
| Median | Mean |
| Black | 29,470 | 39,248 |
| White | 44,517 | 60,512 |
| Black / White | 66.1% | 64.9% |
Since 1947 the number of white families living in poverty has decreased 27 percent while the number of poorer nonwhite families decreased only 3 percent.
According to the Census Bureau, African American poverty is at 22.7% … and this is an all-time low! Meanwhile non-Hispanic white poverty rose to a startling 7.8%.
And when President Nixon put into place the standard management methods of timetables and goals, those subject to them put into place the standard methods of evading work under those circumstances (look around where you work, see what the lazy bastards are doing and generalize that to a societal level). The easiest way to meet the goals on the specified schedule was to sit a
spook by the door. Create empty jobs.
This was by no means universal. Great numbers of white people took this task as a moral obligation. Others did not. Great numbers of Black people worked their asses off in jobs they were slotted into and pushed their kids through school, college and worked their families into middle class positions they will not be shaken from, while others fell off the path to opportunity. Civil service, almost as much of a command culture as the military, responded to government mandates almost as completely as the military … it is the public sector, not the private sector that has been the gateway to what economic and educational advancement the Black community has achieved. And as the statistics above show, it has been enough to keep us even relative to the mainstream
In the face of these results, one would be hard pressed to assert that
any action, much less effective, affirmative action, has been taken.
Truly, honestly eliminating racial bias in, say, employment means making a critical review of your criteria for employment to eliminate biases that have no impact on the ability of a person to do a job. In higher education it means recognizing that “qualified” is qualified … period. In K-12 education, it means providing up to date material and motivated, qualified teachers equally, across the board and actually supporting the development of the children as opposed to tolerating their presence. All of which goes against the natural human tendency to do as little as necessary to meet externally motivated requirements … but all of which would be necessary for a truly effective, truly affirmative, action plan to eliminate racial disparities in our nation.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/12/2003 08:37:16 PM |
Posted by P6 at May 12, 2003 08:37 PM
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