PERSPECTIVE ON AFFIRMATIVE ACTION : A Mainstream Future, Not Life on the Margin : Schools and businesses must redefine what it takes to have a productive life, then keep opportunities open.

We hear lots of talk from elected officials these days about contracts, compacts and covenants. About obligation and opportunity. Seldom do we see any discussion of race, any acknowledgment that race remains a searing issue in our society.

This silence stands in stark contrast to the incessant ranting on radio talk shows about angry white males and black separatists, about affirmative action and preferential treatment.

Meanwhile, affirmative action and its supposedly undeserving black beneficiaries are being positioned as the wedge issue of 1996, as were welfare and the unworthy poor in 1994.

Obsessed opponents of affirmative action are mounting assaults on every front. There are court challenges galore--to set-asides in contracts, minority scholarships and legislative redistricting. The new congressional leadership threatens to roll back federal civil-rights rules and water down federal oversight. A threatened ballot referendum, known ironically if misleadingly as the “California civil-rights initiative,” would outlaw racial preference in state law and by public entities.

The crux is whether affirmative action has outlived its constitutional justification. Was it intended as a temporary measure to make amends for past discrimination? Does its continuing use run the risk of transforming racial preferences into a permanent factor in dispensing opportunities, be they contracts, college slots or jobs?

I say, unequivocally, that the job of integrating African Americans, who were isolated generation after generation by official action and unofficial practice, into the American mainstream isn’t done, by any stretch of the imagination. Yes, affirmative action has helped the most prepared among us gain readier access. But it’s not yet time for impatient whites and successful blacks to hoist the gangplank behind them.

The crucial issue in crafting admissions or hiring policies is to define the threshold qualifications or competencies for what it takes to perform satisfactorily in school or on the job. With those baseline criteria in place, the institution or employer could then utilize selection standards and procedures that enable it to fulfill its fundamental mission.

One such perfectly legitimate mission for a public university, for instance, is to serve society by sending well-trained graduates out into all sectors of society--into the private sector, of course, but also into public life, into the nonprofit world and into distressed neighborhoods.

Why shouldn’t public universities serve society more effectively by producing well-prepared future school teachers, principals and superintendents, leaders of community development corporations, heads of urban library systems, local political leaders and so forth, together with the usual output of corporate managers and private entrepreneurs? All are of equal importance to society.

The same applies to corporations, which need employees well-versed in various cultures to penetrate new markets here and abroad. What’s more, diverse student bodies better equip white graduates to function productively and harmoniously in the multicultural economic markets and workplaces that await them.

How reliably do entrance exams and grades predict eventual life success?

To broach this question is not to assail qualifications or meritocracy, but to ponder how we define “qualified” at the outset and predict meritorious achievement years later. If we value diversity and wish to advance inclusion, we need new techniques for identifying potential and nurturing talent.

Conventional schooling tends to focus on developing and rewarding students’ verbal and computational ability. But other forms of intelligence contribute to life success once out in the real world. How else to explain the success of Madonna, a modestly talented singer, or Ronald Reagan, whom no one ever mistook for a summa cum laude ? Yet both have been brilliant in their ways and hugely successful in their fields. If we are to make diversity work, then the mechanisms for apportioning opportunity must somehow take fuller account of the emerging knowledge about identifying intelligence and nurturing potential, and about what it actually takes to lead a productive life that pays dividends personally and to society.

Of course, cognitive ability matters. But so do ambition, industriousness, leadership, curiosity, flexibility and other job-relevant attributes unrelated to intellect per se. Employers who understand these realities and select workers within a broad range of abilities can be both inclusive and competitive. Senior corporate executives who supervise thousands of employees tell me that African Americans are fully competitive when the performance criteria are clearly and quantifiably related to the bottom line.

African Americans want in and always have. For all the trauma experienced by the poorest of our people, millions of us have surged toward the mainstream.

Affirmative action explains much of this progress, which is welcome news for our people and for all Americans. We will continue our relentless march into the mainstream. We have absolutely no intention of turning back--or of being turned back. Our future, like every American’s, lies in the mainstream, not on the margin.