taking a stand on civil rights

8/6/2019 Taking a Stand on Civil Rights

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Taking a Stand on Civil Rights

A Dialogue

The author has chosen to use a question-answer format in order to makethe often complex subject matter, easier and more enjoyable to read. Qand A is not a dialogue between real people. The author has provided thedialogue 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 manyareas that would be true. Opportunities for women, the disabled, theelderly and those of various ethnic and religious backgrounds haveexpanded so that more individuals in each category have access toeducational and career opportunities than ever before.

However, I think we made a wrong turn along the road towards justiceand harmonious race relations in this country. Everyone is seeing theresults now in the unrest on campuses and the return of so-called hatecrimes. 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 nottrampling the so-called rights of the more powerful majority.

Unfortunately, we have managed to make all parties concerned feel theyhave been unjustly treated at the hands of government. I would say thishas happened because, as a nation we were impatient, proceeded tooquickly and used force.

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Q -That defines the problem. A brief look at where we are currentlyshould 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 two and a half million Black males agesixteen to twenty-five. According to the 1990 census, 647,000 are in highschool, 351,000 are in college, 163,000 are in the military and a millionare gainfully employed.

Q -But what about all the young Black males that arent gainfullyemployed; those that want to be working and can't find jobs?

A-I refer you to the arguments used to fight the minimum wage laws.Unfortunately the high unemployment rates among young and entry levelworkers, Black and White, are proof of their validity.

Q -Hasnt unemployment gotten worse among Black males?

A-Youre right if you consider that in 1962, almost sixty percent of young Black males were employed, but by 1985 this figure had fallen toforty-four percent. But there are estimates that more than twenty-five

percent of Black males in this age group derive their income from illegalactivities. If you figure in illegal activities, the employment rate reallydidnt declined that much over those twenty-three years.

Q -In other words, legitimate employment is down but illegitimate is up.

A-That wasnt my point 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 even if racism were eradicatedtomorrow.

Q -I asked a group to assign the following numbers to Blacks, Hispanicsand Whites in their twenties and in prison. One in four, one in ten andone in sixteen.

A-That was a no brainerhighest was Blacks, lowest was Whitesleaving one in ten to the Hispanics. I knew that in 1990, just last year, thehighest cause of death among Black males ages fifteen to twenty-four was violence.

Q With drug pushers as role models so what do you expect? Fifty-one percent of Black families with children under age eighteen are headed bysingle mothers..

A-Are you familiar with William Raspberry?

Q- Yeah. Hes a columnist.

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A-I heard him admonish members of his race with the same type rhetoricclaiming Blacks blame their shortcomings on racism whereas AsianAmericans believe their own efforts can make the difference and theyapproach society with the attitude that they are going to succeed nomatter what White people think.

Q -There is no doubt that deterioration in the Black family has picked upspeed lately.

A-The poverty rate of children in Black single-headed families is almostfifty percentin Black two-parent homes it's 10.6 percent compared tosimilar White families where the child poverty rate is 6.4 percent. Morethan forty-two percent of Black families with children are headed bysingle mothers compared with thirteen percent among Whites.

Q -I remember a passage in one of your books on the deficit where youwrote that there is no such thing as child poverty. I don't recall the exactwording but the idea you conveyed was that all children by themselvesare poor; that when we talk about child poverty we are talking about theeconomic circumstances of the family where the child resides.

A- Yeah but child poverty appeals to the emotions of the listener better than speaking of family poverty . Also its easier to use the terms thatsurveys 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 heavilyon 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 certainlyhaven't softened my opinion regarding statistics, which I think are far toooften misleading, nor of stereotyped groupings, which I abhor. No onewill ever convince me of anything merely by using statisticsyou canget sets of numbers to show whatever you want. I much prefer to weighthings on broad philosophical principles.

Q -Such as?

A-In weighing an issue I first ask if this course of action offersindividuals more freedom, flexibility and opportunity.

Q -At least our civil rights legislation guarantees representation even if ithasnt completely eliminated discrimination.

A-John Bunzel spoke of an Israeli socialist who found that, Thosenations that have put freedom ahead of equality have ended up doing

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better by equality than those that put equality ahead of freedom. I believe it!

Q-Who is John Bunzel?

A- Hes a fellow at the Hoover Institution and a former college presidentand member of the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights. I heard him speak

before the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on April 19, 1991 and Imemorized that line. Have you heard of George Gilder?

Q -Sure. While researching his 1982 book Wealth and Poverty, GeorgeGilder found that college educated and professional Black women earnedtwenty-five percent as much as their White counterparts.

A- In other words they earned seventy-five percent less.

Q-There was also a study by Bennet Harrison of MIT and consultant

Lucy Gorham claiming that almost fifty percent of Black female collegegrads earned poverty-level wages

A-There are many reasons these women are earning poverty-levelincomes. Black women experience divorce, separation, illegitimacy,uncontrollable children and an extreme shortage of loving and supportinghusbands. Nevertheless, Gilder found between 1957 -1977 Black womenimproved 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 -For a guy who doesnt believe in statistics you sure recite them a lot.

A- Numbers don't shed much light unless you take the time to look in,around, behind and under them. From a historical perspective GeorgeGilder did uncovered an interesting set:

Beginning with incomes around fifty percent of the incomes of Black men and fifty-seven percent of the incomes of White women, Black women ended the period by earning more than eighty percent of Black male incomes and ninety-nine percent of theWhite female level...by 1969 there were sixteen percent more Black women than men in professional and managerial positions in theU.S. economy and these women were earning three-fourths asmuch as Black men .

Q -When it comes down to it the fact that the Black population is aboutseven years younger than the White population and lives more

predominantly in the South, the lowest-income region in the country, hasa lot to do with the disparity between Black and White incomes. In factMr. Gilder reported that if both age and location were the same betweenthe two races, Blacks would be found to have earnings about eighty

percent that of Whites

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A-The fact that in 1980 Blacks in New York City were earning almosttwo and a half times what Blacks were earning in Mississippi lendscredence to the geographic proposition. And he backed up his theoryabout age by pointing out in 1980 that families headed by twenty-twoyear old, White and Black, had median incomes about $5,000 less thanfamilies headed by thirty-three year olds.

Q -Still everyone points to the disproportionate amount of Blacks in thecriminal system as evidence of racism. What do you say?

A-I realize racism still exists in this country but that doesn't mean it isautomatically the cause of a disproportionate prison population. Thereare other reasons for the high number of Black criminals.

Q -Such as?

A-The ones we just discussed; the disintegration of the Black family,lack of good Black role models, demographics and geography.

Q -What do you mean, demographics ?

A-The difference that age makes. We just said the median age of WhiteAmericans is thirty-two and its twenty-two for Blacks. Young people aremore inclined to commit criminal acts.

Q -Got it! Ill change the subject if you dont mind.

A- Be my guest.

Q-It is understandable that Blacks initially joined the party of Lincolnand were for a long time Republicans.

A-I suppose you mean understandable in that the Republican party wasin firm control during and immediately following the Civil War and wasdetermined that individual rights should be protected as promised in theConstitution. They felt that with the abolishment of slavery those

promises could and would be kept.

Q - Right. 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 attemptto keep the emancipated slaves from doing well economically.Republicans responded with the Civil Rights Act of 1866 which was an

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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-Correrct, but the Congress over rode the veto. Because many politicians feared the Civil Rights Act might later be overturned, the 14thamendment was proposed as a permanent addition to the Constitutionand was finally ratified in July 1868.

If Lincoln had lived the story of Blacks and civil rights might have beendifferent but as it was, both the Johnson and Grant administrations hadmore than their share of incompetence and corruption and the civil rightsof Blacks never got much of a chance.

However, the greatest and most enduring tragedy of those hard post-civilwar years was the abdication by the Supreme Court of its duty to protectthe 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 theSlaughter-House cases which were decided in 1873, well after the CivilRights Bill and the 14th Amendment. The Supreme Court upheld aLouisiana state law which closed certain slaughterhouses in New Orleansand granted a monopoly to others, in effect barring employment tonewcomers the code word for racial minorities.

Q -I suppose that made it a civil rights issue.

A-The real significance of the Slaughter-House decision was theinterpretation given to the equal protection clause in the U. S.Constitution. It recognized that citizens had two sets of rights; onefederal and the other state.

Q -I get it. This allowed states to make their own laws denying Blacksrights 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 resultof the better known 1896 case, Plessy v Ferguson which has had longlasting implications and bears some responsibility for the racial problemswe are facing today. Plessy justified government's reliance on specialracial facts as a basis for legislation and allowed the classification of

people by race as long as the classifications were reasonable.

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That was bad enough, but the earlier 1873 ruling went beyond race tofavoritism 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-Yes. Slaughter-House has stood as a precedent undermining the abilityof individual citizens to pursue their best economic advantage in a freemarket environment under the protection of the national government.There are people today working to overturn Slaughter-House as thesurest 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 immunitiesof citizenship the courts would no longer automatically defer to thelegislative 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 individualempowerment.

Q - So you might say Slaughter-House stands in direct opposition tofundamental individual rights?

A- I would. Our greatest hope for protecting fundamental individualrights in the future is to concentrate on restoring the privileges andimmunities clause and expanding the due process clause of the 14thAmendment so that they once again encompass economic liberty as the

framers of that Amendment intended. As far as I'm concerned, the mosturgent, unfinished business of our democracy is economic injustice.

Q -What about the case that made Thurgood Marshall the most successfulcivil rights lawyer in history?

A- Brown v Board of Education (1954) was definitely a landmark decision. Interestingly Thurgood Marshall invoked the ideas of Lockeand natural rights as the foundation on which this country was founded inknocking down the separate but equal doctrine. He based his attack onthe belief that the Constitution is color-blind.

Q - Martin Luther King recognized that our Declaration of Independencewas based on Locke's insights that there are certain basic rights that areneither conferred by nor derived from the state and that this principle isthe distinguishing characteristic of the United States of America, settingher apart from systems of government which make the state an endwithin itself.

A-Marshall was definitely influenced by Martin Luther King but he alsohad another hero at that time. He liked to quote the lone dissenter in

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Plessy v Ferguson , Justice John Harlan who wrote that, The law regardsman 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 areinvolved.

Justice Harlan was dismayed that the majority in the court reached theconclusion that it is competent for a state to regulate the enjoyment bycitizens of their civil rights solely upon the basis of race.

Q -But I thought as a Justice on the Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshallchampioned racial classifications?

A-That's true, in the eighties he trivialized his old hero pointing out thatthe idea that the U.S. Constitution is color-blind was held by only oneJustice in 1894.

Q -I've heard Justice Harry Blackmun referred to as an OrwellianJustice. What does that mean?

A-I haven't heard that but it was Justice Harry Blackmun who said, inorder to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race And inorder to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently Thatsure reminds me of Orwell's War is Peace, Love is Hate, Ignorance isTruth! Could that be it?

Q - Yeahthats it. I guess I really want to know how the Democratscaptured the Black vote since I would think they would owe theRepublicans since they were the ones, under Lincoln, who freed them.

A-Allegiances switched over time. FDR provided jobs and governmentrelief payments to the unemployed, and that included most Blacks. Thenwith President Truman's integration of the armed forces in 1948 andPresident Johnson's push for civil-rights and his War-On-Poverty, theDemocrats built up an impressive record of doing something about theissues that were of most interest to Blacks. It is not that Republicanswere against the gains made in increasing opportunities for Black people,

but the Democrats got credit for the gains because they so often occurredon their watch.

Q -Don't you think that as people become producing and contributingmembers 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 shouldexpect to attract more Blacks because the Black middle class has grown

by nearly a third since 1980and is now for the first time ever, thedominant income group in Black America.

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A survey published in 1986 by the Joint Center for Political Studies, aBlack 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 notwidely broadcast. More Blacks were working in the eighties and athigher wages than ever before. Black family incomes were at an all-timehigh having increased by roughly six percent in real terms over an eightyear period. The number of Black professionals has increased anamazing sixty-three percent since 1980. Black managers and officers incorporate America increased in number by thirty percent over the sametime span.

In 1990 Fortune magazine polled one thousand Americans nationwideand found that seventy percent of the Blacks and sixty-two percent of theWhites 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 onlyseventy-seven percent of Whites felt that way.

Q -It is widely believed that Blacks have been losing ground in all theseareas. How can that be?

A-We could compare statistics all day. According to that 1990 poll mostBlacks 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 fifty thousand or more rose from 212,000 to 764,000a three hundred and sixty percentincrease, having doubled between 1982 and 1987the Reagan years!The total income of America's twenty-eight million Blacks was twohundred and thirty-seven billion dollars, 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 andwomen gained relative to White men in terms of median income,earnings, hourly wage rates and occupational status were based on datacollected from people already attached to the labor force.

A-As far as I know the main source of information on annual changes inBlack earnings excludes individuals who are out of the labor force

altogether or who have only marginal attachment to the labor force.

Q -Thats the unemployed.

A-So what's your point? There are plenty of statistics focusingspecifically on employed and unemployed. In 1960 Black maleemployment was about equal to that of White males. By 1982 twelve

percent of prime-age Black males were unemployed compared to only

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five percent of White males. That was definitely a slip backwards interms of Black unemployment rates.

Q -I still don't understand why we hear so much about poverty andghettos and so little about positive gains?

A-Blacks tend to identify their overall status by those Blacks that are thevery worst off. Even though the majority may have made progress duringthe 1980s, they continue to focus on the fortunes of their poorestmembers. Among Black voters, civil-rights is the number one issue, with

poverty a close second and upward mobility holding third place. Surveyshave determined that self-help, drug problems, welfare reform and evenfamily values are all subordinate to the top three issues.

Q -I noticed that a lot of middle class Blacks are likely to feel they owetheir new status to opportunities created by the federal government.

A-I think you're right. It seems like the well-educated Blacks who usedfederal and state grants and loans to finance their schooling, sometimesend up feeling like they owe their jobs to affirmative action and thereforethey 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 nothear 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, leads back to thedisintegration of the family. According to Martin Peretz, editor of the

New Republic , the central problem of race relations is one of social andeconomic differences. Sixty percent of babies born to unwed mothers are born to Black mothers. In the last twenty years the number of Black households headed by married couples has fallen almost twenty

percentage points. It dropped from fifty-five percent to thirty-six percent.

Prior to 1960 the Black family was largely composed of married-couplefamilies. There are proportionately twice as many Black as White singlemen. 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 contributedto the collapse of the Black family?

A-Senator Moynihan of New York, over twenty-five years ago, was thefirst to point out the connection between the curve of unemployment andfamily dissolution, between family instability and welfare dependency.

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The welfare system has expanded its services and eligibilityrequirements even further since then. For many in the lower half of theincome distribution, welfare has been too tempting to pass up. Theguaranteed income coupled with food stamps, WIC program food

benefits, Medicaid, subsidized housing and other benefits has beenirresistible. Mothers with illegitimate babies have had no reason to marryand 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 andhousing supplements, are taken away as welfare beneficiaries attempt tohelp themselves kick the habit of welfare by making money. Although

payments-in-kind are not counted as income, they have contributedgreatly 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 hardwork. The desire to get ahead is often quelled when a person findsgovernment is willing to provide (as long as she doesn't work) what sheis still not capable of providing on her own.

That's a real disincentive to work! A better way might be to expand theearned-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 rightwhich frees men from having to get the same money through hard work.

A-I agree. Generation after generation of men have conquered poverty inthis mobile society of ours, by working hard and using their wits as wellas their brawn. Unfortunately our government antipoverty programstothe extent they make the mother's situation bettertend to make thefather's situation worse. Who needs a low-income earning male aroundwhen Uncle Sam is there to provide?

Q -But almost all immigrant males were low income providers at onetime 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 loveand necessity. The fact that they have dependent wives and childrenallows them to embrace hardships and make sacrifices that they wouldnever consider out of pure selfish ambition. Their families provideincentive and so even though it is not politically correct to admit it, most

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men have ambivalent feelings about working wives, and when wivesearn more, most males lose all incentives.

Q -I suppose it would follow that when wives earn less, the men tend towork 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 theresponsibility of a family are obstacles to economic success. You seem tothink 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 lowunemployment among Black males is not a simple straight forward

problem. Unfortunately they have some historical baggage that is notcarried 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 theFreedmen's Bureau used federal funds to provide education, housing, andhealth 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 subsequentlegislation, did more harm than it did good, keeping the Blacks in achildlike role different from immigrant groups that came to this countryand were expected to make their own way.

For instance, Jews and Asians brought traditions of cooperation withthem, which made it easier to set up enterprises in this country.

Q -I've heard that slavery destroyed the natural culture and tribal patternsof mutual aid.

A-The spirit of cooperation was tantamount in the economicdevelopment of each wave of immigrants. Charity began with immediatefamilies, expanded to the enlarged family, moved into churches andassociated 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 asthose 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 asa group because it discouraged work.

A-Additionally, Black males were not absorbed into manufacturing theway White males were when they left the farms after the Second WorldWar.

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Q -Why not?

A-They were kept out of unions and the Davis-Bacon legislationrequiring that prevailing, generally meaning union wages, had to be paidto all government contractors pretty well kept them from working for thegovernment. But as teenagers in the late forties their unemployment rateswere lower than those of their White contemporaries. In the fifties manyBlacks left high school to work.

The participants in the dialogue have been discussing the many factorscontributing to the high proportion of Blacks in poverty. Are there anyways to help Blacks overcome such situations?

Q -Have you ever heard of William Haskins? He proposed a nationalclearinghouse for mentors, so successful Blacks could attempt to smooththe way and break ground for newcomers, as in any good 'ol boynetwork.

A-I heard Mr. Haskins, who by the way, is vice president of the NationalUrban League; speak at a conference dealing with Alternatives to theCriminal Justice System. I give him high marks for the proposedmentoring program but not for what I heard him say at that conference inMay of 1991.

He acted like an articulate scare monger, trying to put fear into theBlacks in the audience by telling them Whites wanted to keep them in

jail. He said that having a competency certificate 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 toldhis audience that Orientals are killing the SAT; these kids get 1400 onSAT scores and get the scholarships for minorities that should be goingto Black kids. The federal government isn't going to rescue you[audience]. He said the gains that were made in the sixties and seventiesare now beat back... If you ain't got ityou ain't going to get it;affirmative action has been kicked in the face. He called for a domesticMarshall Plan to provide jobs for the inner city.

Q -I've heard the real problem today is not discrimination as much as it isthe attitude that wealth can be taken for granted rather than produced byhard work. Everyone who isn't getting ahead blames it on bad breaks or

prejudice, somehow never getting the message that even affluent wellconnected White males often don't make it if they fail to put in the timeand energy required to succeed

A-And even if they do do everything right theres no promise of successin any one endeavor. As the license plate says: Stuff Happens. One thingour present society does a good job of is avoiding the double-t words.

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Q -Let me guess. Total taxes? Terrible taxes? Trendy taxes? TerrificTaxes? On that last one I'll give up, but I know double Ts must havesomething to do with taxes.

A-I wasn't trying to make you guess, but you are proof that no one evenconsiders 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 thatlife 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 goodintentions are enough and degrees and diplomas should confer immediaterespect, prestige and power without the necessity of productive work. If they are forced to compete or struggle they figure something must bewrong 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 theworld and therefore it follows that health care, child care, housing,education, the elimination of homelessness and poverty, good highwaysand bridges, job training, jobs for everybody, higher minimum wages,

better pensions all should be available to everybody at no cost toanybody. I sometimes think Americans think these things grow on treesin Uncle Sam's personal orchard.

A-I tend to agree. Our political leaders do a disservice to the entire nation

when they entertain this sort of nonsense.

Q -Powerful Congressmen have been compared to old plantation ownerswho 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. Justas the plantation owners thought they were doing good for the people intheir charge so do these Congressmen who encourage dependency andexhibit so little faith in the people's ability to care for themselves. Isuspect it makes them feel superior to think that regular citizens couldntsurvive without their 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 theBlack Caucus to vote against a law requiring that only union labor behired to do work on public-housing projects.

Ron Dellums, my old Congressman from Berkeley, along with the entireBlack Caucus, voted with labor and against the low-income Blacks toretain bureaucratic pork-barreling. Bruce Morrison of Connecticut wasthe most visible backer of this unfortunate legislation.

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Congressmen Jim Kolbe of Arizona and Dick Armey of Texas argued infavor of allowing public housing managers to hire low-income, hard-coreunemployed inner-city residents to perform on-site maintenance in their own housing projects. Representative Armey said that public-housingtenants should be permitted to fix up their own apartments to put sweatequity into their own homes, just as you and I do. He assured fellowmembers that private home owners quickly learn how to become parttime handy persons.

Then Bruce Vento of Minnesota used the following argument:

We have plumbing problems. We have electrical problems. We havecarpentry problems that need to be addressed. Are the tenants that are living in assisted housing, are they the skilled mechanics that cantake on these tasks of doing the electrical rewiring of a multi-complex housing unit? Are they the glaziers that will hang out thereand put a piece of glass into a window? I think on its face it is obvious that they cannot do that .

National Review June 1990

Q -Some Blacks have compared liberal White Democrats to missionaries.Mike Holt, editor of the Milwaukee Community Journal has writtenthat they, meaning the federal government

Control people of color with a smile, keep them impoverished,enslaved by welfare programs and unwilling or unable to make a decision without our approval.

A-I wonder what he would say about Ron Dellums, Bruce Morrison andthe entire Black Caucus?

Q -I wonder what you would say about the idea that Black students needBlack role models; that Black youths are disadvantaged unless taught byBlacks?

A-I think you can tell by my opening comments that I believe people cancommunicate with one another even if they don't share identicalexperiences. I don't buy the idea that since Black academics are shaped

by life experiences unknown to Whites, White professors are inadequateto the role of imparting information to Black students. I realize there areBlack academic set-aside programs.

Q -In 1973 a federal court ordered HEW (Department of HousingEducation and Welfare) to force the states to set goals for raisingminority enrollments at predominantly White public colleges anduniversities.

A-If a school failed to meet goals in its state plan; the order stipulatedthat the federal government could cut off financial support.

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Q -Some people think affirmative action programs on campuses do moreharm than good. How do you feel about this?

A-Only about one third of Black students graduate from the colleges thatrecruit them. The trouble is, minorities were recruited to satisfy federalmandates with no follow up support system so drop out rates are high.

Q -I think there was a 1985 study which showed that only thirty-two percent of Penn State's Black students graduated after five years,compared with about sixty percent of its White students.

A-People catch on and resent being used. When Craig Thomas was asenior in high school, he was told by Penn State University recruiters thathe would be admitted and would receive a scholarship that would payseventy-five percent of his tuition for four years. Still he decided to go tothe 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'sracial quotas.

Q -Isn't that the school that gives Black students a .5 grade-pointadvantage over other students?

A-I'm not certain but the idea isn't surprising considering the prevailingattitude in academia in general at the moment. Another university paysBlack students $550 for maintaining a C average, and $1,100 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 racialor sexual discrimination will work against an individual because he is amember of a minority group.

Q -Treating students differently because of their race used to be calleddiscrimination. A 1985 survey in Public Opinion magazine found thatmore than seventy-five 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 introducedlegislation that urges all publicly supported colleges and universities tohave, 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 wereconsidered inadequate and not enough minority students weregraduating?

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A-That's absurd. Minorities aren't the only ones that don't like racialquotas. These policies are just as likely to cause resentment by membersof other races. In March, 1990, a state institution in Florida offered freetuition to every qualified Black freshman. It was an effort to increase itslow Black enrollment. Floridians rose up in anger.

Q -Q-Do you remember the flap about the Fiesta Bowl and race-exclusivescholarships in 1990?

A-Oh boy. First the Bush administration said race-exclusive scholarshipswere illegally discriminatory and the civil-rights lobbies went ballistic.Then the administration regrouped and said schools can award raciallyexclusive scholarships that are funded privately. This of course ignoredTitle VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1987 Grove City ruling whichstipulates that all parts of a university are subject to civil-rights laws if any part receives federal funds and ignored the Constitution's guaranteeof equal protection.

Q - I think Carl Rowan wrote a column at the end of 1990 on this subject.

A-You mean the one denouncing the Bush Administration's outrageousattempt to outlaw affirmative action scholarships which he felt wereonly just and fair?

Q -That's what I meant.

A- In a splendid example of double-speak Rowan claimed scholarshipsfor Whites only would be a perpetuation of the pernicious racism somehave practiced for generations, but for a college to set aside some

scholarships for Blacks, Hispanics or others, is a non-malicious effort toright three hundred years of wrongs.

Q -George Will pointed out in one of his columns written during thatsame time period, that the only remaining rationale for any civil rightslobby today is to expand the racial-spoils system. He claimed that equal had come to mean preferential .

A-Just weeks after the scholarship flap the Supreme Court dealt civilrights another severe blow.

Q -You mean the Oklahoma City case?

A-Yes. That was a five to three decision in January, 1990 to allowfederal courts to end supervision of desegregation plans if school boardshave complied in good faith and eliminated the vestiges of pastdiscrimination to the extent practicable. The ruling means school boardswill have to prove in a court of law that they have met the standards.

Q -Does that mean schools that become populated by primarily one racewill have to be resegregated?

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A-That's what the three dissenting Justices would have like to have seenhappen but that is not what the court decision said. Chief JusticeRhenquist wrote Federal supervision of local school systems wasintended as a temporary measure to remedy past discrimination. Hedidn't take into consideration present or future discrimination when hewrote that decrees are not intended to operate in perpetuity.

Q -All this concern about schools just goes to show how importanteducation is, and I suppose always has been, to social and economicmobility.

A-There have been ill conceived policies to get minorities into collegeand ill conceived policies to get them out. Remember the 1986 incidentat Howard University?

Q -I remember. The University granted degrees to nine students whofailed to meet graduation requirements and back then columnist CarlRowan agreed that this was a disservice to Blacks and to Americanseverywhere 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 begraduated at the same rate as Whites. Already they were given preferencein admission to the state's colleges and universities, but apparently thatwas enough.

Q -Oh yeahthat was Speaker Brown's response to statistics that cameout that year showing that graduation rates for Blacks and Hispanicsnationwide were fifty percent less than for Whites.

A-Surely there is a better way to encourage minorities without resortingto paternalistic policies which assume they cannot achieve withoutoutside help?

Q -Heres another aspect to consider: What would you do about thecolleges and universities that punish students for making remarks oncampus that are considered disparaging to racial and ethnic groups?

A-I think restricting free speech where speech should be perhaps themost 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 itthey just call it harassment so nobody elsewill believe it. Its the essence of double speak. They try to claim thatspeaking ill of someone is not speech; it is conduct.

Q -I've heard the University of Wisconsin is one of more than a hundredcolleges that have what is known as a hate speech code on all twenty-six

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of its campuses. But the Wisconsin code and a similar one at Stanford arenot in violation of the first amendment because only speech directed atan individual is actionable and not the idea expressed. Because of thisthey aren't effective in controlling hate at any level.

A-At Oberlin College in Ohio students have divided into minute groupsthat have little interaction. There are separate residences and clubs for Asians, Jews, Latinos, Blacks, feminists, gays, lesbians and subdivisionsin 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 themintrinsically racist. During a visit to the Oberlin campus Jacob Weisberg,an editor of The New Republic , reported that a group of White studentsresponded to his question Are you racist? in the affirmative. Evidentlythey considered it part and parcel of their White skin privilege and feltthat those students who didn't see it that way were simply in denial .

Q -I read that report by Jacob Weisberg too and was most bothered by hisaccount of the trouble caused by two Black women who were asked toleave the outdoor tables of a restaurant where they sat eating food theyhad purchased at a rival restaurant.

A-That bothered me too. I found their indignation hard to believe. Theystarted boycotts and finally had the restaurant owner apologizing to all Blacks over something that had nothing whatsoever to do with race. Ifeel so badly that young people, who should be getting an education andenjoying the company of fellow students of diverse backgrounds, wereinstead squabbling among themselves and diverting their energies withdivisive and destructive nonsense.

Q -Apparently the campus administrations only make matters worse.

A-I definitely agree. A good example was that anti-racism seminar required for some upperclassmen where the adult leader had everyonereciting things like all Whites are racist and only they can be racist.Students were not encouraged to be color-blind but rather they wereurged to heighten their consciousness of race and take on the task that isrequired of every White person shedding throughout his or her entirelife an attributed inherited racism .

Q -I would imagine such nonsense could do a great deal of damage to asensitive White student. While racism among Whites has not completelydisappeared, all Whites are not racist. How is something like that anti-racism seminar tolerated at an American institution of higher learning?

A-Worse things than that are being tolerated. There is pressure to see thatonly Blacks teach Black subjects and Hispanics teach about Hispanics.

No White should be audacious enough to tell a Black or Hispanic studentabout his/her own history. This has been described as a form of apartheid

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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 aterritorial attitude .

Q -Such expectations limit the choices of minority students rather thanexpand 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 incontrast to the White ice people .

Q- Youve got to be kidding. Ive never heard of ice people .

A. I kid you not, oh unworthy Ice Person. But even worse; on the samefaculty is a philosophy professor who believes Blacks are intellectuallyinferior and have an inherent propensity for crime.

Q -Okay. Ive got one for you. Have you heard the term uniculturalism ?

A-Yeah.

Q- But what does it mean?

A-It was coined to represent the opposite of multicultural equality whichmeans the equality of various racial groups. Uniculturalism would be theholding of the various groups to one standard and it is a no-no on mostcampuses. Many multiculturalists see the slightest attempt to drawsegregated groups together into a common American culture as a form of

racism. They view differences as absolute, irreducible and intractableand abhor assimilation.

Q -What do you think about the trend to dump western civilizationcourses from university curriculums as the irrelevant history of dead

European White males ?

A-The ideas upon which this country was founded and from which thewriters of our Constitution drew their inspiration happened to be WesternEuropean ideasthese ideas are the foundation of the United States of America. To find them irrelevant is to judge them on the basis of the raceand sex of their originators rather than on their merit as ideas.

Q -I must admit the idea is scary. Do you think President Bush'seducational-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 privateschools if they choose to do so, thanks to the choice concept. They will

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benefit from the Bush administration's proposal far more than richfamilies will.

Q -So what about the trend towards all Black schools? Isn't that re-segregation ? How can that be tolerated?

A-In Milwaukee in 1990 tests in that citys integrated schools showedWhite students averaged sixty on a reading test and Blacks averagedtwenty-five. A task force figured the schools were at fault andrecommended an all-Black school as an experiment. After all, the ideafor integrating the schools was to bring Black children up to par.

Since the test showed that plan was not working something else has to betried. The Black schools were to emphasize values and a sense of community; something young Black males especially, were missing intheir splintered home lives.

Q -Fine, but they also emphasize African militancy. I guess there is no protection for Whites, a majority group, against discrimination becausesurely by closing their door to White children, these schools arediscriminating on the basis of race.

A-I hope you won't think I'm suggesting that higher education isn'timportant 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 theexpense of other hindrances to economic success. 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 the racist Whiteestablishment?

With the best of intentions millions of dollars are lavished on anti-dropout campaigns that emphasize the hopelessness of life withoutschool credentials when in truth so-called unqualified employees often

perform better than their credentialed co-workers. Every close study hasshown that diligence, determination, and the drive to get ahead are mostimportant to productivity.

Q -All that Horatio Alger stuff may sound good but when less educatedminorities are hired they are bound to run into the problem sooner or later in the form of a promotion barrier. Whether you believe it or not,credentials generally determine who moves ahead. A credentialed

woman is often chosen over an aggressive and ambitious young man.Without advancement these academic drop-outs understandably becomediscouraged and withdraw from the work force altogether.

A-What really hurts is when an energetic and ambitious employee seesindifferent and lazy competitors gain promotions on the basis of credentials. This down-plays performance on the job and exalts effort ontests, resulting in, according to that prolific author, George Gilder, the

protection of any schooled but shiftless members of the middle class

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from the competition of unschooled but aggressively hardworking poor people.

Q -What if education required for a specific position was givenselectively to motivated workers right on the job or on the employer'stime at another location?

A-Many companies have extensive training programs already because ascertain jobs become more refined and specialized they must be learnedon the work site with the equipment involved. Despite all the clamor tothe contrary, the fact is the employment value of academic learning

beyond the three Rshas increased very little.

Q -I see your point; otherwise how could American companies go off shore and make use of foreign unskilled labor? Uneducated peasantshave done just fine at assembling automobiles, semiconductor chips, TVsets and all sorts of electronic equipment.

A-Unfortunately it's not a simple choice of using foreign unskilled labor or American unskilled labor. The U.S. Government puts barriers in theway of production in this country whereas foreign countries that want the

jobs for their citizens lay out the welcome mat.

Q- That shows the importance of incentives and disincentives once again

A-Well heres and example of a disincentive: Our Government isconstantly expanding licensing and other regulatory devices, sometimes

pension and health mandated benefits, increases in the size and coverageof the minimum wage and generally making it harder and less profitable

to do business in the United States.

When employers are forced to pay high wages for low-productivity jobs,they attract so many applicants that credentials, although they may beunnecessary for the job, become a convenient way to thin out theapplicants. Street-sweepers, toll-booth personnel, construction workers,and truck drivers might be required to have high-school diplomas.

Q -True. Because most government jobs are grossly overpaid, thecredentials are definitely overemphasized in federal bureaucracies.Everyone knows the tests for most civil service jobs are irrelevant to theactual job. But this is what happens when employers and employees are

not permitted to function in a free market.

A-Exactly right. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of applicants for every fire fighter job that becomes available. Like any commodity thewages and benefits should be adjusted until there is only an adequateapplicant pool. The glut in applicants wastes the time of countless peoplein testing and interviewing and takes the applicants away from other

productive jobs. When such shenanigans are repeated daily all across the

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country it is bound to reduce the productivity of the nationall in aneffort to weed out even those who could do the job easily.

Q -Many Blacks have found a haven in government work.

A-And many Whites have found a haven in community work. There'sone paternalistic policy which I would like to see abolished; that's thelegal-aid programs which effectively pay White, middle-class lawyers toset up shop in poor ethnic neighborhoods and take clients away from theminority lawyers in the area. Such programs give the impression that

because minority lawyers charge for their services, they are takingadvantage of their own people . Own peopleI hate that concept. Iremember when we were all Americans.

Q- Some people have suggested that it might be better to give the clientsvouchers, good for legal services provided by the attorney of their choicerather than subsidize the attorneys directly. Proponents of this plan claimit would encourage minority non-government attorneys to take acommunity leadership role.

A-I like the idea. In fact I think all voucher programs are meritorious inthan they give low income people a chance to choose what they wantrather than what affluent paternalistic Whites think would be good for them. Already vouchers are used in education and housing programs legal services would be a natural expansion.

Q -Did anybody seriously believe quotas would solve the problem of racial integration into society?

A-I don't think so. Even strong advocates, I believe, viewed affirmativeaction programs as merely a jump starta temporary charge whichwould only be sustained by individuals within the group succeeding andtaking on leadership roles within the community. As with immigrantgroups that gathered in ghettos in the past, the success of the groupdepends on the successful individuals investing in the old communityand providing jobs and economic opportunities for others.

Q -That's what we were saying earlier about the need to encourage strongleaders within the minority communities instead of encouraging them torely on government subsidies and the goodwill of patrons?

A- Did you know the first Black graduate of the Harvard BusinessSchool was a guest on the June 7, 1985 Phil Donahue Show ? The pointwas made that Blacks are entering but not going anywhere within thelarge corporations. It was agreed that preferential treatment is not asubstitute for competency. Someone suggested that affirmative actionwas a free deal . Blacks in the audience believed that in general Blacksare better qualified for opportunities than are Whites. They said theyhave to be in order to compete.

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Q -That was six years ago. I heard that on the faculties of lots of universities and colleges Blacks out-earn comparable Whites. Do youthink this is true?

A-It may be true outside the South for those with top credentials.Earnings-capacity-utilization studies have shown, however, thatacademics and doctoral scientists and engineers who earn slightly morethan Whites, tend to work as hard if not harder than their Whitecounterparts.

Q - Earnings-capacity-utilization studies ? You sound like a recording!

A-Sorry. But by the terms of most affirmative action programs,qualifications are incidental.

Q -It's little wonder that many of those who see these programs as freerides want to share in the benefits and even go as far as to fraudulentlyclaim minority status to do so.

A-Unfortunately the affirmative action programs have become one moregovernment enticement to dishonesty. Cheating and lying to qualify for government benefits has become all too common. Someone was said tohave traced his ancestry back to the time of the Inquisition in Spain toshow that he was descended from expelled Jews and therefore a Hispanicentitled to special favors in the United States of America in the 1990s.

Q -It has been suggested, in jest of course, that the way to implode thesystem is for everyone to fill out their forms with an incorrect ethnicgroup.

Q -Forget the jestI know a White male who was trying to break into thecommercial aviation field and said he always checked that he was anAmerican Indian so the EOD (Equal Opportunity Department) would beflagged and go to bat for him. He saw it as a harmless push for anotherwise honest and deserving person who simply wanted to get ahead.

A-In today's world of spin doctors and phony baloney, if quotas arereferred to as quotas they are considered to be illegal, but if they arecalled goals, they pass muster.

Q -It looks like the same politicians who substituted harassment for

speech are now giving you goals instead of quotas.

A-Double-speak is something that most politicians have mastered. Theyknow they can confuse and sway opinion by prefacing their remarks with

phrases such as Honest Americans know, Americans of all politicalstripes still care for justice, or We shouldn't be going around narrowingin a mean-spirited way.

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Q -Well, that's one side of the equation, but many Blacks maintain theyare not given the same flexibility to mess up as Whites.

A-Wouldn't you agree that if racial discrimination were the determiningfactor in the low rate of upward mobility of Black Americans, then WestIndians should have the same high unemployment rates, school-dropoutrates and teenage pregnancy rates that other Blacks experience.?

Q -What are you getting at?

A-Unemployment among West Indians is lower than the nationalaverage and percentages of them who are successful in business and the

professions surpass the percentages of many White ethnic groups. Their success contradicts the claim that the dismal situation of Black Americans is largely due to racial discrimination.

Q -It's interesting that Jews and Asians are minorities that are not given breaks when it comes to job and educational opportunities because as agroup they have already achieved success.

A-I find the suggestion by Eldridge Yehuda, chairman of Afro-Americans for Reparations, that the U.S. government owes Blacks aboutfour trillion dollars and Blacks should withhold tax payments until thegovernment pays up, even more interesting.

Congressman John Conyers Jr. of Michigan has introduced legislationsimilar to the bill which resulted in reparations payments to Japanese for their interment in camps during World War II. His legislation calls for anexamination of slavery and its impact on present day descendants of

slaves and compensation for injustices.

Q -If you look back you can make a case for paying damages to everyethnic group in the nation. Discrimination and hardships have been thelot of every race at one time or another. The solution is to look to thefuture rather than trying to blame and make someone pay for circumstances that are unalterable.

A-Traditional Black politicians rallied supporters by concentrating onemotional concerns such as racism, police brutality and inadequatehousing and health care. The cry was to soak the rich and thecorporations via new taxes and social programs.

However so-called protest politics have become too polarizing if a Black hopes to attract White voters. The new themes are fiscal prudence,managerial competence and law and order.

Seattle's Black mayor, Norman Rice has involved himself in Whiteissues like slow growth vs. developer problems instead of gang violence,drugs and homelessness which matter to his relatively small Black constituency.

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A-Soon this may not be possible even in areas like Seattle because by2020 the number of nonWhite U.S. residents will have more thandoubled to nearly one hundred and fifty million, while the White

population will not be increasing at all. Once this country was amicrocosm of Europe; it is fast becoming a microcosm of the world.

By 2056 the average U.S. resident will trace his or her lineage to theHispanic world, the Pacific Islands, Asia, Africa, Arabia or almostanywhere except Europe. Indians began coming here in considerablenumbers in 1965 and their population has increased by over one hundredand eighty percent in the last ten years. However, most Indians are highlyeducated when they immigrate to this country.

Already in the state of New York forty percent of public school studentsare ethnic minorities, whereas in California White students are alreadythe minority.

Q -Isn't that because many White children are enrolled in private schoolsin California?

A-True, but that doesn't change the fact that Whites of all ages now makeup only fifty-eight percent of California's population.

Between 1980 and 1989 the Hispanic population grew by thirty-nine percent compared to the growth in the total population of 9.4 percent.Less than one quarter of Hispanic three and four year olds were enrolledin preschool. Los Angeles offers salaries as high as $33,000 for first-year

bilingual Hispanic teachers which is several thousand dollars more thanAnglo teachers make. Hispanics account for 31.4 percent of publicschool students, Blacks amount to 8.9 percent with Asians and otherstotaling eleven percent making a nonWhite population of 51.3 percent.As affirmative action has broadened to include other groups, Blacks seethat it offers less value for them.

Q -I thought I read somewhere that the drop out rates for Hispanics wasreally high.

A-That's right. In 1989 the average dropout rate for all U.S. students wasabout twelve percent, but for Hispanics it was closer to thirty-two

percent. A report based on the most recent census found that 78.7 percentof Hispanics sixteen-seventeen years old were in school compared to

91.6 percent of the total population. School completion dropped for thoseages eighteen-twenty-four from 62.9 percent in 1985 to 55.9 percent in1989.

Q -I guess the parents don't reinforce the importance of education the waystereotypical Asian and Jewish parents do.

A-In 1988 twenty-five thousand Ph.D.s were awarded to Americans butonly three hundred and fifty-eight went to Blacks. We need to get Black

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and Hispanic kids to take math and science courses rather than social or ethnic studies.

Q -Some Hispanics understand that education is a way to escape povertyand despair but even so they are often intimidated by the system andhave other priorities.

A-That's very true. In the eighties Hispanic families began breakingdown at a fast rate. The old stereotype of Hispanic families as close-knitand headed by hard-working parents devoted to their children is nolonger universal. About one third of Hispanic youths between the ages of twelve and seventeen live in single-parent households, according tocensus figures, and some are themselves heads of households.

Q -Besides those problems, legalized aliens began moving onto welfarein distressing numbers. Hispanics were increasingly adopting a postureof confrontation with the government seeking help in the form of subsidies and minority status.

A-During his commencement address at West Point in June, 1990President Bush spoke about the need for citizens to think of ourselvesnot as colors or numbers but as Americans, as bearers of sacred values.

Q -The original civil rights movement was based on the notion that inAmerica everyone should get a fair shake. The ideal has been twisted inthe nineties to require preferential treatment for people who fall intocertain classifications, based on conditions unrelated to merit.

A-I agree with Senator Paul Simon who argued from the Senate floor on

July 10, 1990 that, The great division in our society is between people who have hope and people who do not have hope. I do not agreethat reversing court decisions gives hope.

Q -I do. What do you think gives hope?

A-Education, protection against crime, strong families, good role models,encouragement and honest accomplishment through hard work. As wehave seen, too many Black Americans are concerned about the breakupof the family, about jobs, schools and crime; they feel locked out and thatis why civil rights legislation is, if nothing else, a symbol of hope, a signthat the nation cares.

Q -SureI agree with all that. So why do you think President Bushvetoed the 1990 Civil Rights Act?

A-President Bush is definitely for civil rights but couldnt signlegislation that would punish businessmen for unintentional and hard todefine discriminatory employment practices. The 1990 legislationsponsored by Senator Edward Kennedy and Congressman AugustusHawkins would have made businesses justify the validity of virtually all

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of their employment practices in its attempt to make it easier for womenand minorities to bring suit.

Q -Wasn't a cap put on damages in a discrimination lawsuit?

A-Shortly before President Bush vetoed the 1990 Civil Rights Bill,Representative Hawkins enumerated a list of changes made in thelegislation at the last minute in an attempt to save it.

One of the changes was an agreement to limit punitive damages awardsagainst employers with fewer than one hundred employees to onehundred and fifty thousand or the sum of compensatory damages andother equitable monetary relief, whichever is greater. Hawkins lamentedthe loss of hundreds of meritorious employment discrimination cases[which] have been dismissed in the past year as a consequence of theSupreme Court's decisions. He referred to the Supreme Court's recentmisinterpretations of federal civil rights laws.

Q -I remember the women were pressing some issue in one of theseattempts at legislation.

A-Under the amended 1991 civil rights law, H.R.1, racial minorities whoare victims of discrimination can sue to recover damages for medical andemotional injuries or to punish offenders. However, women are onlyallowed to sue for back pay and reinstatement to a job, and they have noright to a jury trial. Most of the Congresswomen attempted to pass anamendment to H.R.1 which would have allowed women the same rightto compensatory damages as the final proposal allowed minorities. Theyargued that companies need to be hit hard in the pocket book or theywon't change.

Q -But if women were allowed to sue for compensatory and punitivedamages wouldn't there be more lawsuits?

A-Many think so. Victor Schachter, a San Francisco business attorneycites California's experience after compensatory and punitive damages

became available in 1980 in wrongful discharge cases. The average juryverdict in such cases in 1987 before the state Supreme Court limited suchdamages was $482,697. Quite a burden to get businesses to behave in anice manner.

Q -Someone said comparable worth with a bureaucracy to establishwages was part of the recent proposed civil rights legislation. Is thattrue?

A-Several comparable worth, also known as pay equity bills were passedin the House during the ninety-eighth, ninety-ninth and one hundredthCongresses but that is as far as they got on their journey towards

becoming binding law. In fact Section twenty-two of the civil rightslegislation that was passed by the House in June of 1991 had a

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comparable worth or pay equity provision slipped in to attract women, but no provision for a bureaucracy to establish wages even though it wascalled the Civil Rights and Women's Equity in the Workplace Act.

Q -What prompted the 1991 bill anyway?

A-A series of Supreme Court decisions culminating in 1989, made itharder for workers to prove they were victims of job discrimination.Documented disparities between employment patterns and the make upof local populations were once considered sufficient to create a

presumption against the legality of employment practices that have adisparate impact on various groups. Then the court changed the burdenof proof so that mere statistical imbalance would not automatically meanthat plaintiffs would prevail.

Q -This meant that hiring practices could be invalidated only for discriminatory motives or for statistical consequences that could not beexplained by legitimate business considerations such as hiring or

promotion by merit.

A-Right. But since this is difficult to prove, proponents of the newlegislation argue it is wrong. They would love to be able to offer

plaintiffs' successes as the proof of justice.

Q -And I guess they would be happy if employers started practicing alittle reverse discrimination as insurance against ruinous litigation.

A-But one good thing, they want to shift the burden to make employers prove a disparate impact is related to effective job performance.

Originally the burden was to prove it was essential to effective job performance.

Q -Either way employers are forced to protect themselves, and as we'vesaid over and over, the best way to do that is to hire by the numberswhich is essentially adopting quotas.

A-From where I sit, litigation is a game of chance that costs theemployees little to find out if they are winners and leaves the employer with the responsibility of paying off perhaps by liquidating his life'swork.

Q -What do you say to claims by the bill's sponsors, that neutralemployment practices work to create a statistically unbalanced workplace in terms of race, sex and religious orientation?

A-Hoover Institution fellow Thomas Sowell counters that nonsense tomy satisfaction in a piece he did for the Wall Street Journal publishedMarch 6, 1990 : The fatal fallacy of affirmative action policies is toassume as a norm a condition of even or random distribution of groupsthat is seldom if ever found on the planet.

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The assumption that different racial or ethnic groups would be evenly or randomly represented in institutions but for discrimination isunsupported by evidence. Sowell uses an abundance of statistics to back up his contention that imbalances are common all around the world. Heclaims disparate impact occurs whenever racial, sex or other statistics failto meet the preconceptions of policy makers.

Q -It looks like disparate impact is one more example of double-speak.

A-And there's no doubt disparate impact is at the heart of the legislation.The 1990 Civil Rights Act would have penalized employment practicesthat have a disparate impact upon Blacks as compared with Whites.

Opponents argued, successfully I thought, that disparities are bound toexist unless at some time in the future occupational slots are assigned at

birth by sex, race and religion. The disparate impact tests would forceemployers to make certain their employees were balanced by religioussects. It would have been dangerous to require workers to have highschool diplomas and in general made it more difficult for employers toset high standards in this competitive world.

Q -Didn't the Court's ruling hinge on how applicant testing and jobqualifications related to the actual work required by the job?

A-The court ruled that such requirements must be significantly related tosuccessful job performance, must fulfill a genuine business need andhave a manifest relationship to the employment in questionbusinessnecessity was the key.

Q -That's what I was talking about. The term business necessity wasvaguely defined so that employers, in order to protect themselves fromlitigation, would be forced to hire anyone who could do a successful jobas opposed to hiring the best possible worker.

A-On top of all that, the Act was said to be a bonanza for lawyers as ittended to encourage litigation.

Q -How did it encourage litigation?

A-The legislation was too ambiguous and set aside past precedents. Eventhe lawmakers themselves couldn't agree. Senator Kassebaum admitted it

was unclear whether or not it would actually lead to a quota system andSenator Jeffords said there was disagreement on the degree of discrimination to be permitted regarding business necessity.

Opponents claimed that employers would hire by the numbers, whichipso facto amounts to a quota bill, because of the fear of being sued.Senator Jeffords asked, What should business be allowed to get awaywith under the guise of business necessity?

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Q -Did the parties disagree on who should have the burden of proof incivil rights cases?

A-Both sides want to shift the burden of proving business necessity to theowner. The Administration would like to define business necessity asshowing a manifest relationship to employment or practices which havelegitimate goals, whereas the majority of Democrats want to see proof of a significant relationship. The administration is afraid employers won't

be able to hire to achieve optimal performance and the Democrats areafraid all sorts of things could be justified as legitimate goals.

Q -Do you prefer one point of view to the other here?

A-I think both the Republicans and the Democrats are completely off base.

Q -Why?

A-Neither advocate a color-blind society, which I see as the only way toachieve harmonious relations among various groups in this country.

Q -That would be on base in your view?

A-Absolutely. The 1990 and 1991 proposed amendments to the 1964Civil Rights Act would amount to quota bills because a prudentemployer would favor minorities in order to avoid costly lawsuits.

Q -What can you say about the Senate version of the 1991 Civil RightsBilll?

A-The Senate bill is not that different from the House bill. It too is anattempt to strengthen civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination inemployment by negating several 1989 Supreme Court decisions.

The participants in our dialogue have been discussing recent civil rightslegislation. You may be wondering about the origins of some of these

proposals. They discuss origins next .

Q -Is there some way you could give a very brief rundown of the casesthe new legislation hopes to overturn and why?

A-Very briefly I'll mention the reason politicians want to overturn eachof the following cases:

The Patterson case dealt with businesses with less than fifteenemployees and didn't ban racial harassment on the job nor preventdiscrimination after a contract was made.

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Wards Cove said it was up to the employee, not the employer, to provediscriminatory business practices are not significantly related to alegitimate business objective.

Hopkins ruled it was okay if prejudice enters into employment decisionsas long as the decisions would have been the same withoutdiscrimination.

Wilks said a potential plaintiff who sits on the sidelines could later challenge a consent decree settling a job discrimination suit in a separatelawsuit later.

The Lorance case held plaintiffs have to challenge discriminatory practices when they occur not when the harm begins.

Crawford and Zipes cut back on fees available to prevailing parties.

Q -The ruling in the Wards Cove case, the case I'm most familiar with,was five to four in favor of imposing tougher standards on employees intheir use of statistics to prove discrimination. The Court in essence saidworkers must bear the burden of discrediting the employer's justificationfor hiring practices.

Senator Gorton saw the same relevance you see in the Wards Cove rulingand asked regarding business necessity , Should courts penalizeemployers who have no intention whatsoever to discriminate as in theWards Cove case? He claimed the bill was not about whether peoplewill get jobs, but rather on what basis shall people get jobs. On the basisof race, religion, sex?

A-In the 1971 Griggs ruling, the Supreme Court said if some hiring practices have a disparate impact on minoritiesthat is if they result instatistical underrepresentation of minorities, including womentheymust be justified by business necessity .

Q -And how is business necessity defined by the law?

A-According to the proposed 1991 amendments, it must be a hiring practice which bears a significant and manifest relationship to therequirements for effective job performance.

Q -Well then, how is significant and manifest determined and whatconstitutes effective performance?

A-I think these are the same questions we tried to answer earlier and thisdiscussion proves the point that opponents of the legislation make, thatthis legislation is a lawyer's dreamall these terms are open tointerpretation and must be proven. As Charles Stenholm, DemocraticCongressman from Texas, argued in his opposition to the Brooks-Fish

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amendment to the 1991 Civil Rights Act, manifest and significant will become big things.

Q -I guess the degree of difference in those two terms relates to thedegree of difficulty an employer would have in proving he was not

practicing discrimination.

A-Politicians of both parties rely on Griggs and want to overturn, bylegislation, the Supreme Court decision reached in the Wards Cove case.

Q -That ruling made it more difficult for workers to prove racialdiscrimination simply by citing statistics that show that a group isunderrepresented in a work force and put the burden of that proof on the

plaintiff employee.

A-In our society, an individual's worth has a higher moral claim than hiscolor, religion, gender or origins. The goal of the 1964 Civil Rights Actwas to ensure that employment decisions would be made on the basis of qualifications rather than on criteria such as race and sexthe1991proposed amendments ensure just the opposite. If the 1991 civilrights amendments are passed sex and race will be part of everyemployment decision.

Q -Is it possible to favor affirmative action and oppose reversediscrimination?

A-Poll after poll shows that is what the American public does, althoughin actual effect, affirmative action leads to reverse discrimination.

Q -Does Wards Cove lead to a color-blind society?

A-Not at all. Color-blind demands that race, sex, age, ethnicity, religionand disability not be considered in decisions about the suitability of

people but that they be judged by their qualifications and the content of their character.

Q -Former Secretary of Health and Human Services, Joseph Califanoclaims former President Jimmy Carter asked staff members to review thework of subordinates, and get rid of all who [were] incompetent, exceptminorities and women. What do you think about that?

A-That's proof that Jimmy Carter was definitely not a color-blind president but there's ample proof that George Bush is not color-blindeither. In the spring of 1991 President Bush reportedly wrote to Senator Bob Dole asking him to make a special effort to find female, Black andHispanic candidates for federal judgeships.

Q -Didn't a Texas Congressman propose the winning amendment to the1991 Civil Rights Billthe one that took effect out of the three

presented in June?

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A-It didn't take effect; it just became part of the legislation. Probably no part of the 1991 civil rights legislation that passed the House will takeeffect because President Bush has threatened a veto and it takes 277votes to over ride that veto and the bill only received 273 votes.

Q -Who was the Texas sponsor? There was something special about him.

A-Jack Brooks. Do you consider it special that he was starting histwentieth term in Congress? He actually proposed the Civil Rights Bill asH.R.1 on the opening day of the 100th Congress as well as theamendment later on. He introduced his amendment saying,

Civil rights is important in the Americanexperience because it is this society's most visiblereaffirmation of our continuing commitment to the

Bill of Rights. The debate over the nature and extent of that commitment is a valid and necessaryone if we're going to pursue the twin pillars

guaranteed by our Constitution; that of individual opportunity and individual liberty; neither can be

permitted at the others expense.

Q -Those are high sounding words.

A-As long as you don't look behind them to the legislation that curtailsindividual liberty for employers and decreases individual opportunity for employees. I wanted to share the words with you after you've heard whatthe legislation is all about.

Q -If lawmakers can't agree on whether it is or isn't a quota bill, how canthe average citizen be expected to know the truth?

A-In debating the 1991 Civil Rights legislation on the floor of the House,a New York Congressman pointed out that he was not an attorney andsince the legislation specifically denied being a quota bill, he said, I'vegot to believe it. I was shocked. To think you must believe somethingyou are told without further investigation simply because youre not anattorney is mind boggling. Not only that, this Congressman went on tosuggest that all small business persons across the nation who are notattorneys must become believers.

Q -That sounds like the old snake oil salesmen who were so found of saying, Take my word for it.

A-I would advise New Yorkers in that Congressman's district to first of all realize themselves what practical effect the law would have in society,and that requires some knowledge of human nature, and then to get aCongressman that knows something about how people act.

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If theres one thing that I know, it is that people act in their own self interest. No matter the denials in the civil rights legislation debated in thefirst week of June, 1991, the fact is employers would find it in their bestinterest to hire employees by the number (quotas) in order to have adefense to present if and when charged of violating the legislation.

This law placed the burden of the proof on the employerguilty until proven innocentscary in itself. The best proof of an employer'sinnocence is primae facie evidence; that is on the face of it the evidenceshows he has the correct number of representatives of each race, sex,age, and handicapped segment of the population in his employ. The latter is in the employers best interest.

Q -Everyone says there are too many lawyers in Congress, but the non-lawyer in this instance deferred to those colleagues who were membersof the bar. I don't get it!

A-Lawyers are trained in logical thinking but unfortunately logic is notevident in most Congressional debates. Perhaps it would be a good ideato compel some continuing education for members of Congress. Just asreal estate professionals, accountants, doctors and lawyers themselvesmust show proof of courses keeping them current in their field, howwould it be if we were to require Congress persons to show evidence of having attended a psychology, or history course twice a year so theywould take into consideration the effect legislation is going to have onconstituents and to realize they are often encouraging citizens to cheatand steal to get around unjust and oppressive legislation.

Q -I remember in your book on Social Security that you said aCongressman in the early 1980s had carried on about the changes in cost-of-living-adjustments (colas) over the past twenty years, apparentlyunaware that colas didn't take effect until 1975.

Q -Did you happen to see Bob Dole's appearance on Meet the Press onJune 6, 1991? He admitted the Danforth Bill gave employees the right tosue but put the burden to prove their case back on the employees where it

belonged. He seemed to think it was a good compromise and it lookedlike he might vote for it.

A-As minority leader, Senator Dole was in a tight spot. He felt PresidentBush's proposal would fail in the Senate as it did in the House and that

Senator Danforth's bill might be an alternative.Q -It sounds like you were convinced the 1990 Civil Rights Act was aquota bill.

A-I'm absolutely convinced it would have affected business as if it werea quota bill. The legislation was written so that a disgruntled employeewould not need to prove that any specific practice by the employer resulted in dismissal due to discrimination. The burden was shifted by

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separate the country by making specific classes of people into permanentwards of the government.

Q -How did this quota idea start anyway?

A-It can be traced back to 1965 and President Johnson's executive order #11246 which expanded upon a 1941 executive order prohibitingdiscrimination by defense contractors during the second world war.Executive order #11246 prohibited discrimination by any federalcontractor and required contractors receiving federal monies to keeprecords on minority employment and to adhere to goals and timetablesshowing that the contractor was eliminating imbalances in hiring and toshow good faith efforts were being made to meet those goals.

Q - That's interesting. First it covered defense contractors and then it wasexpanded to federal contractors and finally any contractor receivingfede

taking a stand on civil rights

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