Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 30, 1995 TAG: 9505040003
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: G-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAMES E. GARCIA and MICHAEL HURD/COX NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: AUSTIN, TEXAS LENGTH: Long
Ignoring close advisers, Johnson said during his first speech to Congress, ``We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights . ... It is time now to write the next chapter.''
Thirty years later, Americans are still talking about equality. Affirmative action was supposed to remedy the oppressive effects of discrimination in public housing, employment and education.
But have programs offering preferential treatment to women and minorities outlived their usefulness? Have these programs become their own form of discrimination? Or is affirmative action still needed to keep prejudice in check?
From the White House to statehouses to city halls, affirmative action is a hot-button issue. Californians are talking about repealing it. As are Republican presidential hopefuls. And in the Texas Legislature, a proposal to bar affirmative action programs prompted a black lawmaker to don a Ku Klux Klan uniform in protest.
Why now?
Society is changing, said David Larson, who teaches courses on workplace discrimination at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb. And that's affecting the way people perceive and define discrimination.
For instance:
The definitions of discrimination and affirmative action have been expanded. Blacks and women were viewed as the main beneficiaries of the original affirmative action programs. Over time, Hispanics, elderly people and others came to benefit. With the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act in 1990, for example, an estimated 40 million disabled Americans were granted broader civil rights protections. Worried they might be sued, some employers have begun setting hiring goals for people with physical and mental disabilities.
Federal judges, once viewed as friends of affirmative action, are beginning to question it at a time when the policy is facing growing legal challenges. ``Affirmative action is getting more scrutiny in the courts today,'' Larson said, partly because such far-reaching initiatives can take decades to wind their way through the legal system. Another reason: more appointed judges today reflect the conservative philosophy of Presidents Reagan and Bush.
A restructuring of the U.S. economy has meant layoffs for millions of workers during the past two decades, many of whom are white and male, say economists. In some instances, the laid-off union worker or middle manager finds himself competing with younger, cheaper applicants for jobs in industries that pay less than their old jobs. All of this is happening as more companies and governments are expanding efforts to meet affirmative action goals in hiring and contracting.
Well-publicized inconsistencies in the administration of affirmative action also are making it an easy target, Larson said. ``There's a lot of misinformation out there. and we tend to focus on the extreme cases.''
Adding to the image of affirmative action as an unfair practice, some employers have begun instituting what amount to de facto quota systems, even though the practice of setting aside specific jobs or contracts was ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.
In one case, the U.S. Forestry Service admitted it was searching for ``unqualified applicants'' to fill several $20,000-a-year jobs and meet its hiring goal of 43 percent females in 1992.
``On its face, this seems bizarre,'' acknowledged Jack Ward Thomas, head of the Forestry Service. But he defended the practice. ``The intent, if not the choice of language, was appropriate to the circumstances.''
And in a U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals case, a white public school teacher in New Jersey is challenging a decision by school board members to lay her off instead of a black teacher with the same seniority and credentials. The School Board wanted to preserve the faculty's racial diversity.
Despite such examples, affirmative action supporters say the system has not spun out of control. Moreover, they say, there continues to be evidence that inequities remain.
For instance:
Black men, white women and Hispanic men still earn less than 75 percent of what white men earn for the same jobs. Black women earn about 60 percent of what white men earn. Hispanic women earn even less.
Blacks and Hispanics combined make up about 10 percent of the college graduates earning four-year degrees, even though they make up about 20 percent of the national population.
Blacks and Hispanics combined are 9 percent of the country's doctors, 6 percent of its lawyers, 7 percent of its scientists and 4 percent of its engineers.
Still, critics say affirmative action, though well meaning, is wrong.
Fredrick Lynch, a California college professor and author of the book ``Invisible Victims: White Males and the Crisis of Affirmative Action, says:
``The argument that you must have a workforce that looks like America is pretty bogus.'' Programs that try to achieve ``proportional representation'' are achieving the opposite of equal opportunity, Lynch believes. To say that white job or college applicants sometimes must be treated unfairly is to say that injustice leads to justice, he said.
Bob Destro, a law professor specializing in affirmative action at Catholic University in Washington D.C., adds another reason for the current debate.
He believes affirmative action bothers many Americans, especially whites, because the government mandate is designed to remedy an injustice it created. Minorities and women, he argues, suffered at the hands of segregation and discrimination because of public policies enforced by the government.
But Destro says affirmative action isn't just a remedy, it's a public apology. White Americans, said Destro, are tired of being ashamed.
Meanwhile, adding to volatility of this public debate is partisan politics.
Prominent Republicans are calling for a ban on affirmative action. Leading the charge are U.S. Sens. Phil Gramm of Texas, and Bob Dole, the Senate majority leader from Kansas. Both are announced Republican candidates for president.
Not to be outdone, leading Democrats, including President Clinton, have begun rethinking their positions on the once-sacrosanct party tenet. Clinton, say analysts, would not have dared propose reviewing affirmative action's effectiveness during his 1992 presidential campaign for fear of angering the traditional Democratic base. In the wake of Dole and Gramm's comments, Clinton now wonders aloud, ``What are the alternatives? That's a discussion we ought to have.''
Capitalizing on a rightward shift in national politics and having identified a key voting bloc during last year's elections - pollsters call them ``angry white males'' - Republicans are revisiting the social battlefields of the 1960s, according to Tyrone Tillery, acting director of African American studies at the University of Houston.
He said Gramm and other conservatives are preying on fear among whites that they're losing ground politically, economically and culturally to minorities, especially in states with racially and ethnically diverse populations like California, Texas, Florida and New York. In California, for instance, a ballot initiative has been proposed that would eliminate ``preferential treatment'' programs for minorities and women. Liberals say the proposal is indirectly linked to broad anti-immigrant sentiment there.
Says Tillery: ``I don't think whites are [all] racist, but they're confused, bewildered, afraid they'll lose what they have.''
Critics of affirmative action vociferously deny that political opportunism or racism is driving the debate. They say they're just fed up with the initiative's intrinsic contradiction - addressing discrimination by discriminating. And some minorities and women agree. Instead of helping them, they say affirmative action stigmatizes them by highlighting their race or gender, rather than their qualifications.
Still, most of those who favor banning affirmative action are white, according to national polls.
Gramm has said that if he is elected president he will repeal all executive orders on affirmative action programs, replacing them with a ``merit system,'' which considers only a person's qualifications.
Critics say merit-based systems are fine in theory, but there is no such thing as a pure merit-based system. Whites, they say, have enjoyed ``affirmative action'' for years, largely based on who they knew, not how qualified they were. And as long as white men continue to represent 95 percent of the top level management positions in private industry, as they do today, affirmative action is one of the few options for keeping them from hiring only people they know.
In college admissions and government contracting, policymakers are considering ``means testing,'' which recruits people based on economic need, not race or sex. But all other things being equal, critics ask, ``What's to keep white college admissions coordinators from favoring poor white high school students over poor minorities?''
Larson, meanwhile, cautions policymakers against knee-jerk reactions.
Both sides agree that, just as Lyndon Johnson admonished the country more than 30 years ago to ``write the next chapter'' in the quest for equal rights, it's time to do it again - that the present program hasn't been perfect and something different needs to be done. But no one today seems as certain as Johnson and King were about how to achieve equal opportunity.
THE EVOLUTION OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION OVER 3 DECADES
1961: President Kennedy issued an order creating the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity. It was charged with recommending ``affirmative steps'' for federal executive agencies to integrate their work force. The order also required federal contractors not to discriminate on the basis of race, creed, color or national origin in fulfilling their contracts.
1964: Congress passed the Civil Rights Act. Title VII of the law makes it illegal for private employers to discriminate against workers. Under this provision, courts can order employers to redress discriminatory employment policies, including reinstating or hiring employees and paying retroactive wages.
1965: President Johnson issued an order requiring federal contractors to take affirmative action against employment discrimination in all business operations, not just in fulfilling federal contracts. The order required ``numerical goals and timetables'' for improvement, but did not mandate specific dates or quotas. Four years later, President Nixon endorsed the same concept.
1972: Congress passed the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, allowing the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to bring civil lawsuits against companies for discriminatory employment practices. The law has been amended to allow the federal government to sue state and local governments.
1978: Bakke vs. University of California was the first major affirmative action case. Allan Bakke, who is white, claimed the medical school's admission policy, which reserved 16 of 100 seats in each year's class for minorities, was reverse discrimination. In his opinion, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell found the program unconstitutional because it established a rigid quota. But he indicated it would not violate the Constitution to pay ``some attention'' to race in deciding which students to admit.
1989: In Richmond, Va., vs. J.A. Croson, the Supreme Court invalidated a Richmond ordinance that earmarked 30 percent of public works funds for minority-owned construction companies. The 6-3 decision said the program violated the constitutional right of white contractors to equal protection under the law.
1991: The Civil Rights Act was amended to make it clear that employers are not required to meet statistical quotas reflecting the available work force. Title VI of the law prohibits discrimination based on race, color or national origin in any program or activity that receives federal financial assistance - grants, loans and contracts.
by CNB