THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 4, 1995 TAG: 9506040069
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A2 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK
SOURCE: Cole C. Campbell, Editor
LENGTH: Medium: 64 lines
Affirmative action is in the news in 1995 for several reasons.
It's the 30th anniversary of the first federal programs designed to encourage economic advancement of women and minorities. The new, conservative majority in Congress is restive about the hand of government in employment, education and contracting decisions. And the candidates exploring presidential bids are testing how the issue will play in 1996.
Today through Wednesday, The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star will explore the issues of affirmative action through specific experiences of individuals and organizations, expert observations, employment and economic data, a public-opinion poll and a community conversation with citizens like you.
We will look at how people, businesses, schools and the military have addressed the many issues involved in trying to strengthen equal opportunity for all without sacrificing it for some.
We hope you can use these reports to test your own thinking and to converse with friends and family, and neighbors and co-workers, about how this might be done.
Affirmative action can be a polarizing topic. The most provoked reaction I've gotten to these editor's notebooks came in response to one devoted to the newsroom's efforts to ensure that reporters, editors, designers, photographers and graphic artists reflect our readership by the year 2000. Some readers took that as an endorsement for quotas, while others inferred that white male journalists would be ousted from their jobs. Neither is going to happen.
This reaction, however, is anecdotal. A more scientifically valid measure of public opinion is the poll we commissioned from Mason-Dixon Political/Media Research Inc. That poll, reported on pages A1 and A7, shows that half of the respondents in Hampton Roads want affirmative action programs to remain the same or be enlarged, while 37 percent want them to be eliminated or reduced.
Removing ``affirmative action'' from poll questions increases the positive response to hiring an equally qualified minority or woman over a white or male, with about 60 percent approving this idea. The difference shows one of the limitations of polling. Polls elicit top-of-the-head reactions, which can be shaped by phrases that carry considerable political baggage.
That's one reason we are learning how to conduct and report community conversations, gatherings of citizens who talk in detail about issues and who listen carefully to each other, learning from each other and sometimes rethinking their own positions.
These conversations are not intended to instruct you in citizenship. In fact, they work the other way around. Citizens who talk to each other in a deliberative setting reflect the insight and good faith that make democracy work. We journalists are learning from these conversations about how citizens connect to public issues and how we might aid that connection rather than impede it with reporting focused too much on who's winning and who's losing any given dispute.
The community conversation on affirmative action shows how tough it can be for citizens to sort through the values underlying a public policy question.
We all can learn - if we attend to all the pertinent information and listen carefully to each other. by CNB