‘There Is No Other Way’

The Reagan Administration is circulating a plan to kill affirmative-action rules under which companies do business with the government. An internal document proposes to repeal the provision that contractors set numerical goals for hiring and promoting minorities and women, barring the Labor Department from using statistics to identify discrimination, and even outlawing voluntary affirmative-action programs.

White House spokesman Larry Speakes says that this proposal is “a month-old draft that has no standing whatsoever.” Let’s keep it that way.

How could government tell whether a federal contractor was discriminating if it couldn’t count employees? A contractor who decided to balance his payroll by hiring more women and minorities would be in violation of the proposal if it ever got beyond draft stage.

Business by no means wants to wipe out affirmative action. James Conway of the National Assn. of Manufacturers said that while his organization opposes quotas and would urge more flexibility in the use of statistics, it believes that affirmative-action programs have helped. He urges the Administration to consult with businesses and civil-rights groups before it gets too far into a 180-degree turn on policy.

Fortunately, the Reagan Administration itself is divided on the issue, which has not yet gone to the President. Labor Secretary William E. Brock III is formally on record in support of affirmative-action programs. Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III disagrees. Brock understands something that his fellow Cabinet officer does not. The programs work.

Another NAM representative told a congressional hearing earlier this summer that affirmative action has yielded a work force with “new ideas, opinions and perspectives in management, product development and marketing.” In short, hiring minorities and women is good for business.

It has also made municipal police and fire departments far more responsive to and representative of the communities that they serve. This is not to say that all of them embrace affirmative action without reservation. But if the Reagan Administration gets its way with federal contractors, cities and states could be next on the line. Many of them have already been asked by the Justice Department to alter their plans.

Ending discrimination is a process that needs encouragement, not discouragement. Promotion ladders still must be made more accessible. Minorities and women still need help in feeling more comfortable in their new surroundings, especially when they are obviously tokens. While it may take time for minorities and women to move upward through organizations that had long kept them out, there are far more who are ready to reach those heights than have so far been admitted.

There have been some failures in affirmative action, but there were bad hires among white males, too. Poor decisions in the early days of affirmative action are tailing off as personnel officers learn where to look for talent among minorities and women just as they have long known where to look among white males.

Many American businesses, cities and states now recognize that, as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun said, “In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way.” That is wise advice that the Reagan Administration would ignore at the risk of serious social and economic setbacks.