ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, December 6, 1995 TAG: 9512060074
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: DONNA ST. GEORGE KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
THOSE WHO LIVED THROUGH the civil rights battles of the 1960s - and racial discrimination even before that - stand firmest against doing away with affirmative action.
The way William Lewis figures it, his son Michael hasn't experienced the worst of racial discrimination. What else could explain a black man in America having doubts about the need for affirmative action?
``I think a lot of people in their 20s don't know what it was like before,'' says Lewis, 50, a Louisiana schoolteacher.
William Lewis is a strong believer in affirmative action. In the same way that all Americans of a certain age are shaped by the Depression, he is shaped by memories of Jim Crow segregation - those days when blacks were excluded from decent jobs and good schools and even restaurants and hospitals.
Affirmative action opened doors for many blacks - at college, in careers, in small business - after two centuries of discrimination, Lewis points out.
But on this deeply felt and complicated question, the black community is not of one mind. And at least part of the dissension comes from a younger generation that has no firsthand experience with the horrors of segregation.
``Twenty years ago, blacks would have by and large been unanimously supportive of affirmative action,'' says Tyrone Tillery, a civil rights historian at the University of Houston. ``Now there are a lot more voices.''
Affirmative action is expected to emerge as a central issue in 1996 in the presidential race and in many state legislatures. Some analysts suggest a significant part of the discord comes from a younger, better-off generation. Not as bonded to the battles of the 1960s, their reality is how affirmative action works - successes and pitfalls.
``Most young blacks support affirmative action, but they support it less than their elders, and that's largely because of the stigma attached to it,'' said Ronald Walters, a political scientist at Howard University in Washington, D.C.
Gwen Daye Richardson, editor of National Minority Politics, a conservative political magazine, puts it another way:
``Younger people, because they have participated in it, see affirmative action more as a mixed bag,'' she said. ``On one hand you might get an opportunity, and on the other hand it might be tainted because people don't think you got it fairly.''
``I think older people are much more adamant about it,'' she said. ``They were right in the middle of the fight for all these rights, and they remember what it was like before.''
To conclude this, Richardson needs to look no further than home, where there is a gulf between generations.
At 37, Richardson is a successful businesswoman and writer. When she was in college, affirmative action meant people questioned her credentials, she said: ``I was smart my whole life, and then when I went to college I was only there because I was black.''
In business, she looked into programs for minorities but found them demeaning and intrusive.
Her mother, Daisy R. Daye, 65, sees affirmative action with similar conviction - but an opposing view. The director of a day-care center in Newport News, Va., Daye remembers segregated lunch counters and water fountains, sitting in the back of the bus and being sent to schools that didn't get equal funding.
``I think a lot of people don't understand affirmative action and the purpose for what it was originated,'' she said. ``We were qualified, and we didn't get the job because we were black. Or we had the grades to go to that school, but we couldn't afford it because we were black.
``People talk about how we should live in a colorblind society. But we don't.'' A large part of getting any job depends on knowing someone - and ``the other race has more connections,'' she said.
Even today, ``society does not willingly hire blacks if they can hire other people,'' she said. Her daughter's attitudes, she concludes, are shaped by age and a less harsh experience.
But age is only one possible cause for such opposition, said Tillery, the civil rights historian.
There's simple ideology - be it Republican politics or Nation of Islam beliefs. And then there's the issue of effectiveness. Some scholars suggest affirmative action helps white women much more than blacks. Others say it has failed those at the bottom - people who lack the schooling or job skills to be in the running for colleges or good jobs.
``While some blacks have benefited from it, there really is no evidence that it has improved black people as a whole,'' Tillery said. ``People wonder whether it's worth all the grief.''
LENGTH: Medium: 87 linesby CNB