Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 3, 1991 TAG: 9104030262
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: ATLANTA LENGTH: Medium
Heads of traditional civil rights organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference are increasingly concerned that, for many whites, "civil rights" now means preferential treatment for minorities rather than equality under the law.
And even some supporters of the movement worry that to focus on the civil rights bill, with its legalistic tangles, is to distract attention from the more urgent issues of poverty and despair afflicting minorities and the poor.
Supporters of the measure bitterly dispute that it is a "quota bill," as Bush said when he vetoed a nearly identical bill last year.
The current bill, meant to overturn six Supreme Court rulings that made it harder for workers to win employment discrimination suits, expressly outlaws quotas. But critics say the only way for employers to avoid lawsuits would be to use de facto race and sex quotas.
The current argument over the civil rights bill - and the defensive posture of its supporters - symbolizes the difficulties the civil rights movement has faced since the 1970s in enunciating a clear, compelling moral message able to mobilize minorities without alienating whites.
"The power of the civil rights movement under Martin Luther King was its universalism," said Cornel West, head of the African-American studies program at Princeton University. "Now, instead of the civil rights movement being viewed as a moral crusade for freedom, it's become an expression of a particular interest group. Once you lose that moral high ground, all you have is a power struggle, and that has never been a persuasive means for the weaker to deal with the stronger."
There is ample evidence that quotas have become less popular with Americans.
Ralph Neas, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, said polling for his group indicates strong support for the traditional civil rights agenda, including affirmative action, - as long as it does not include quotas.
New York Times polls indicate significant slippage in support for any preferential employment practices. When respondents were asked in May 1985 if they favored preference in hiring or promotion for blacks in areas where there had been discrimination in the past, 42 percent said "yes" and 46 percent said "no." Asked the same question in December 1990, 32 percent said "yes" and 52 percent said "no."
As many civil rights veterans prepare to meet here Thursday to mark the 23rd anniversary of King's death and to plot strategy for the future, there is widespread recognition that the movement has image problems, particularly among whites.
"I think we're at a crucial juncture in terms of how we think about civil rights as a country," said Geoffrey Garin, a Washington poll-taker who recently did research for the leadership conference. "If civil rights is defined as quotas, it's a losing hand. It it's defined as protection against discrimination and efforts to promote opportunity, then it will remain a mainstream value in American life."
This question has received increasing attention over the past year because of Bush's veto and the prominence of quotas and racial preferences as issues in the political races of state Rep. David Duke in Louisiana and U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms in North Carolina.
"I don't think America was ready to end segregation," said Benjamin Hooks, executive director of the NAACP. "I don't think it has ever been ready to extend full equality. I can't think of anything we've gained as black people that has not come without a struggle."
But many in the movement acknowledge it now faces daunting obstacles. It faces a White House and a Supreme Court hostile to much of its agenda. It faces a tough economic climate in which many whites feel gains by minorities may come at their expense.
Perhaps most important, it faces problems that are national, not regional. And they are problems that lack the clear solutions and obvious villains faced by the civil rights movement 30 or 35 years ago in the South.
"The issues in the 1950s were very simple - whether you sit in a restaurant or whether you can vote," said the Rev. Joseph Lowery, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which spearheaded the civil rights movement under King. "And the opposition was defending the indefensible and doing it by very offensive means. Now we have to find a way to simplify very complicated issues, and we haven't been able to do it yet."
by CNB