Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 15, 1995 TAG: 9507170043
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
Although attacks on racial preferences in hiring are increasingly politically popular, Americans are quite divided on the fairness of affirmative action workplace programs, according to a new poll.
In the poll by the Associated Press, 48 percent say affirmative action makes hiring and promotions less fair, compared with 39 percent who say it's more fair. The other 13 percent are not sure.
Belief in the programs' fairness ranges from 53 percent among blacks and 50 percent among Democrats to 37 percent among whites and 28 percent among Republicans.
Among all 1,006 adults in the poll taken July 7-12, 59 percent think laws are necessary to protect minorities from discrimination in hiring and promotion. And 72 percent think affirmative action programs are at least somewhat effective in getting jobs for minorities.
Past polls by the AP and others have found that up to 80 percent of Americans oppose giving blacks and other minorities preference in hiring to make up for past inequalities.
Proposals to eliminate such programs have come both at state levels and from some of the nation's most powerful politicians, including House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., and GOP presidential candidates including Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan.
But President Clinton on Friday briefed female and black leaders on his five-month review of affirmative action programs, indicating he will not retreat from preferences based on sex or race in hiring, education and promotions. Speaking to leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Clinton now appears ready to offer a vigorous defense of affirmative action as a tool to promote equality. He is to make a major statement on the issue Wednesday.
Dole has drafted possible legislation to forbid programs that use ``quotas, set-asides, timetables, goals and other preferences.''
Such language plays an important role in rallying public opinion, according to the poll. Only 16 percent support affirmative action when they understand it to include quotas, but an additional 46 percent favor it without quotas. Twenty-eight percent say they oppose all affirmative action programs.
The poll was taken by ICR Survey Research Group of Media, Pa. and results have a margin of sampling error of 3 percentage points.
Wade Henderson, the NAACP's Washington bureau director, said he was disturbed by the poll's finding that 36 percent don't believe anti-discrimination laws are necessary. He suggested that fewer would have taken that position if the question were turned around and they were asked whether they support workplace discrimination.
Henderson also questioned whether a poll can provide a useful measure of opinion about affirmative action if respondents are not given a full analysis of what the term means. The AP poll defined affirmative action only as ``programs both public and private that are intended to increase opportunities for minority groups that have been discriminated against.''
by CNB