On Affirmative Action, School Is by No Means Out

To understand where we are in American business and society following the U.S. Supreme Court decision last week sharply limiting affirmative action, we should go back to the beginning.

The time was 1969, the Nixon Administration had just taken office, and in Philadelphia black workers were demonstrating at construction sites, demanding a chance at good-paying jobs as electricians and carpenters.

Such demonstrations had been held in many cities throughout the ‘60s, but “father and son” unions--you got into the union if you were related to someone in it--had kept jobs closed to most applicants.

That changed in 1969. Nixon’s new secretary of labor, George Shultz, issued orders that came to be known as the Philadelphia Plan, forcing contractors on projects financed in any way with federal funds to open up hiring or lose the work. Goals were set and timetables fixed for reaching them.

“I’m accused of setting quotas,” says Shultz, “but we were facing a quota, so I hit them with a 2-by-4.”

Shultz, later secretary of state and president of Bechtel Corp., is now at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and an adviser to Gov. Pete Wilson. He agrees with last week’s Supreme Court decision that declared almost all contract awards based on race to be unconstitutional.

“I think it’s important to recognize how changes have taken place since the 1960s,” Shultz says. “The problems we face today are of a different hue.”

“The Fifth and 14th amendments protect persons, not groups,” Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s majority opinion said. It sent back to a lower court for “strict scrutiny” a Colorado highway contract awarded to a Latino contractor over a lower bid by a white contractor, who sued.

The court said that preferential treatment based on race is not the way to go, although a helping hand for the underdog could be OK. The contractor might deserve special consideration if he was “socially and economically disadvantaged,” the decision said, but not simply because his ancestry was Latino.

In so ruling, as the old saying goes, “the Supreme Court followed the election returns.” Most voters oppose preferential treatment based on race, pollster Lou Harris reports, although a majority of voters supports affirmative action, by which they mean programs that help women and minorities achieve equal opportunities in education and employment.

So where does this leave the fight against discrimination? Right where it has been since the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Business and public facilities cannot discriminate on the basis of race, gender, creed or national origin.

That’s bedrock for a pluralistic society, but a trickier code to live by in today’s diverse America. In the 1960s, discrimination responded to group remedies because “45% of the U.S. economy was controlled by big companies and big unions,” says David Lewin, professor of human resources at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management.

Today less than 15% of the economy is controlled by big groups, says Lewin. There are more kinds of businesses and opportunities--and there have been gains in employment and status.

Still, as measured by average wages, gains can seem disappointing. Women have come up to 76% of men’s average wages, from 66% a dozen years ago. But average wages for black men, at 71% of white men’s wages today, have fallen from 76% a dozen years ago. Median earnings for Latino workers are below those of black and white workers.

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We tend to explain such differentials in our own economy in terms of a shift from manufacturing to service jobs and other reasons. But when we see such results in other countries--South Africa, say, or Mexico--we ascribe them to injustice. Perhaps, as the Bible says, we need to see the beam in our own eye.

What can be done? Affirmative action, for all the controversy, hasn’t been all that productive. “Affirmative action increased minority employment 1% more than it would otherwise have been,” says Jonathan Leonard of UC Berkeley, who has done extensive research on the question. “Businesses promised to increase minority hiring by 10% but didn’t deliver,” Leonard explains.

Yet for women, affirmative action has opened doors, says Linda Griego, entrepreneur, public official and now head of RLA, formerly Rebuild L.A. She recalls going into a company as “foreman of a telephone installment crew” and having women in the typing pool come up and ask how do you get a job like that. “Affirmative action helped me get that job and changed conditions for many women,” Griego says.

But by far the biggest differentials in wages are accounted for by education. A high school dropout earns $306 a week on average, while high school graduates earn $426 a week and college graduates $704 a week. If the college person gets a graduate degree, he or she can look for $1,200 to $1,900 a week.

So what does the Supreme Court’s ruling mean for schools and colleges? Very little, say experts. All colleges typically have preferences for as much as 40% of their enrollees--preferences for athletes, musicians, students with extracurricular activities. Colleges can continue to extend helping hands.

But it’s at the elementary and high school level that U.S. society has a special obligation to its disadvantaged members. If they’re not going to get preferences later, then give them a fair chance early by ensuring that schools in poor neighborhoods have the same computer training, solid curricula and good facilities as schools in wealthier areas.

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Achieving that “fair chance” in education is a complex challenge, but nothing short of a moral obligation.

And to understand how moral obligations change society, go back again to 1969. Why, after years of job demonstrations at construction sites, did government move to break discrimination? Well, there was also the Vietnam War, in which black citizens made up 20% of the troops on the front line and Latinos citizens were also “over-represented” in combat. The nation owed them something.

What it paid them with was affirmative action. Still, it would have been better if, like returning World War II and Korean War veterans, Vietnam vets had been given a GI Bill of Rights, with money for education or to start a business or buy a home.

If it’s essential for American society to be fair, it’s even better to be smart and fair.