SPECIAL REPORT: Race and Black America : Is Affirmative Action Necessary to Level the Playing Field?

If affirmative action in the workplace and higher education are necessary to “level the playing field” to give African-Americans access to jobs and higher education opportunities, how does American society know when these programs are no longer necessary? How will we know, in short, when the “playing field is level?”

This is what The Times has asked me to address.

We should recognize at the outset that many Latinos, Asian-Americans and other minorities of color also have to play on an unlevel economic field. Still, I’ll attempt to answer the question with a focus on African-Americans.

Leveling the playing field would give every person an equal opportunity to realize their individual potential, earn a decent living and contribute to American prosperity, stability and security.

America will know when that moment has arrived when discrimination based on race will have been reduced to a level of insignificance. When that becomes a reality, race as an issue will be reduced to what I call the “so what” factor. For example, picture a qualification schedule with a rating scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the lowest. In this case, race would have the least value. In fact, race would be so insignificant that one wouldn’t even expend the time needed to rate it.

Next, picture an individual who happens to be an African-American and who meets or surpasses all of the essential qualifying standards for admission to an institution of higher learning or a well-paying job. The evaluator also notes that the person being considered is an African-American. And the response from the person doing the hiring is, “So what?” In other words, what difference does race make? What does it have to do with providing an opportunity for a deserving individual, race notwithstanding.

It goes without saying that Americans still have a long way to go before we reach this point. However, the situation isn’t nearly as hopeless as it appears.

During the 1980s, four critical civil-rights bills were introduced in Congress and each passed both Houses by substantial majorities. One extended the life of the Voting Rights Act a full 25 years, the next established a national holiday in honor of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., another re-established the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the fourth overturned the Supreme Court decision in the Grove City discrimination case against women attending institutions of higher learning. In each instance, the legislation passed by veto-proof majorities.

There were two additional civil-rights battles fought out in the Senate in the 1980s. One involved the confirmation of Judge Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. The other, also a confirmation battle, was the nomination of William Lucas, former sheriff of Wayne County, Mich., as associate attorney general in the civil-rights division of the Department of Justice.

In both cases, the struggle pitted the liberal Democrat civil-rights coalition against powerful Republican conservatives. Judge Bork is an American of European descent and Lucas an African-American. In both cases, the civil-rights coalition challenged the nominations and won each with considerable room to spare.

Although the next glimmer of hope is a mixed blessing, it is critical. Therefore, I will cite it as it appeared on the front page of the July 20 issue of the Denver Post under the headline: “37% of Whites Think Black Kids Can’t Learn, Pollster Says.” The pollster, Louis Harris, cited a number of national polls about education issues, the most recent being a survey of 1,520 persons taken between May 9 and 15.

Harris reported dramatic changes in American attitudes. When asked if “blacks have less native intelligence than whites,” only 11% said yes, down from 39% in 1963, 46% in 1968 and 28% in 1976.

Harris said that most whites apparently feel it is in their self-interest to back special efforts for minorities and the disadvantaged. “Contrary to conventional wisdom, the vast majority of Americans are not worried that by letting all kids learn, their own jobs will be in peril,” Harris said.

“To the contrary, they see their own jobs in peril if America’s work force is inferior to that of other nations,” Harris added. “Then we all go down the drain.”

“Getting all kids to learn is not motivated nearly so much out of caring as it is for national or individual self-interest,” He added. “People see us losing out competitively to other countries in a world economy.”

Eighty percent of the poll respondents agreed that if poor and minority children are not well educated, the country will face higher costs for jails, welfare and remedial education.

These observations were not based on goodwill, justice, fair play or the desire to “do the right thing.” Simply put, they were based on pure self-enlightened interest. That, in my view, is the right reason if there ever was one.

When Americans of European descent acknowledge the common ground that all Americans stand on and come to grips with the fact that their security is tied to that of African-Americans, and vice versa, then we can forge a “mutually rewarding coexistence,” one in which we all are winners and America (and its future) is the biggest winner. This last factor is most important because it means that we can indeed “get there from here.”

The passage of those critical civil-rights bills and the polls indicate that a majority of elected representatives in Congress, whom we can assume are representing the voters back home and the special-interest groups that finance their campaigns, are eager to get this debilitating racial dilemma, called America’s tragedy, behind us. They represent the “flickering light at the end of the tunnel.”

Throughout the long and crippling history of the nation’s race relations, as well as its promising civil-rights struggle, the tendency has been to study African-Americans and African-American subculture. I am assuming that the objective has been a search aimed at finding a way to render the latter socially acceptable to citizens of European descent.

If one were to gather all such studies, reports, books, etc., in one location, I doubt if New York’s Yankee Stadium could hold them all. Yet, for the billions of hours consumed and millions of dollars spent to underwrite surveys, scientific observations and research studies about African-Americans, the problem is as bedeviling and insurmountable as ever. And we seem no closer to finding the answer than we were the day the first study was commissioned.

This leads me to conclude that we have been studying the wrong factors. Instead of studying the victims of discrimination, we should commission a huge round of studies, focused on the discriminators. If we could discover what makes them tick, we might be able to design courses of action--commencing at the family level and extending throughout our overall culture, including our institutional subcultures--that would result in reducing the American tragedy to a manageable stage, and thus a level of insignificance.

When that day arrives, that element of the nation’s citizens of European descent will stop discriminating against African-Americans because of their race. And, finally, when that happens, the “playing field” will be level and affirmative action will be a thing of the past.