DO WE STILL NEED AFFIRMATIVE ACTION?
BY JULIANNE MALVEAUX
We hardly hear the words affirmative action anymore. Whether the playing
field is level or not, our nation has been more absorbed with our recovery
from September 11th’s terrorism than with race matters. Yet race matters
aren’t far from the surface of our national consciousness. Twenty-five years
ago next month, our nation saw the first televised depiction of slavery with
the special, Roots. And a reported flap between Harvard’s President Larry
Summers and his African American Studies Department superstars Cornel West
and Henry Louis Gates has drawn all kinds of commentary from conservatives
about the need for African American Studies.
Race matters will be discussed more in the next six weeks than they
frequently are, what with the celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s
birthday and celebrations of African American History Month in February.
Though the words "affirmative action” won’t be often spoken, issues of race
and economics will simmer below the surface, just as they have in
conversations about Roots, or about events at Harvard. Whatever happened to
the quest for racial economic justice? What happened to efforts to close
gaps between African Americans and whites? Affirmative action was one of the
ways to close gaps. Is affirmative action still needed?
Most conservatives say “no”. They quote Dr. Martin Luther King who said,
in his “I Have A Dream” speech in August 1963, that he looked forward to the
day when “people would be judged by “the content of their character, not the
color of their skin”. Though affirmative action critics would deny it, Dr.
King also favored affirmative action. He said that “the nation must not only
radically readjust its attitude toward the Negro in the compelling present,
but must incorporate in its planning some compensatory consideration for the
handicaps he has inherited form the past.” Compensatory consideration?
Sounds like affirmative action to me. In his book, “Why We Can’t Wait”, he
wrote, “Whenever this issue of compensatory or preferential treatment for the
Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be
granted equality, they agree; but he should ask nothing more. On the
surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. For it is obvious
that if a man is entered at the starting line in a race three hundred years
after another man, the first would have to perform some impossible feat in
order to catch up with his fellow runner.”
Those who would paint Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as colorblind ignore his
keen sense of history, his understanding of the ways of black folks, and his
sense that African American people are owed a debt. In “Remaining Awake
Through a Great Revolution”, King said, “They never stop to realize that no
other ethnic group has been a slave on American soil . . .never stop to
realize that the nation made the black man’s color a stigma; but beyond this
they never stop to realize the debt that they owe a people who were kept in
slavery 244 years.”
In other words, you can make a case that Dr. King favored race-conscious
remedies to close racial economic gaps. He spoke of the “economic
superhighway” having restricted entry for African Americans. He led boycotts
against corporations that discriminated against African Americans. He died
organizing a Poor People’s Campaign. And he advocated an Economic Bill of
Rights for the Disadvantaged.
If he were to view the economic status of the African American community
today, Dr. King would likely continue to favor affirmative action and other
race-conscious remedies for closing economic gaps. He’d point to the high
black unemployment rate, which at 10.2 percent is twice as high as the white
rate, and suggest a need for employment and training programs. He’d point to
the levels of African American wealth ownership, about 2 percent of our
nation’s total wealth holding, and talk about ways to accelerate black wealth
building. He’d look at differences in the rates of homeownership, 46 percent
for African Americans compared to 71 percent for whites, and wonder about
redlining and this large gap. And, he’d look at upper management, with just
a handful of African Americans in leadership, and suggest that restrictive
hiring might be reversed by affirmative action.
To be sure, things have changed significantly since Dr. King planned the Poor
People’s Campaign. Then, there was not a single African American leading a
Fortune 500 company. Now, a handful of black men, including Dick Parsons at
AOL-Time Warner, Ken Chenault at American Express, and Franklin Raines at
Fannie Mae, hold the reins of corporate leadership. There are more educated
African Americans playing more visible roles in every facet of our society.
There’s a black Secretary of State, a black National Seucrity Advisor, and
nearly forty African Americans in Congress.
Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Wall Street Project celebrates its fifth anniversary
this year with a weeklong networking and wealth-building conference. The
Jackson conference is testimony to how far African Americans have come, as
well as how far we have to go. While young African Americans with corporate
jobs were virtually unheard of a generation ago, many come concerned that
their career advancement is hampered by race. Racial economic gaps remain,
and affirmative action remains one of the ways to close those gaps.