Miscellaneous Clippings (Folder)

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OCTOBER 5.1980

THE BUCK PLIGHT

RAGE
OR CUSS?

A Debate Between Kenneth B. Clarii and Gershnun

M
ore than a decade 
has passed since the 
nation estabhshed 
new laws aimed at 
correcting the civil 
wrongs that held 
most of black Amer­
ica in thrall. Yet de­
spite these legal 
gains, and a significant change in 

pubhc attitudes that made it easier 
for blacks to enter society’s main­
stream, a disheartening number of 
black men, women and children re­
main in the closed world of poverty 
and despair. This condition, untd 
recently, has most often been ex­
plained as the direct result of 
white prejudice. However, new 
voices —  including some black 
ones —  now argue that the old ex­
planation is simphstic. Their view 
is that the problem of black pov­

erty today is better understood in 
terms of class factors and eco­
nomic trends than only in terms of 
racial discrimination. It is a hotly 
contested argument that many 
blacks view as part of a larger 
trend in American society to re- 
^eat^from new initiatives to heal 
the open wound of the nation’s 
ghettos.
Carl Gershman, author and for­

mer civil-rights activist, who is 
white, has written an article that 
analyzes the problem of racial in­
equality in the hght of these new 
ideas. The Times Magazine has in­
vited Dr. Kenneth B. Clark, the 
prominent black psychologist and 
authority on black culture, to ad­
dress the same issue. Each man’s 
work was shown to the other for 
comment and rebuttal. The debate 
begins on the following pages.



unable to find jobs, merely in 
order to support a candidate 
for office on the basis of race. I 
think we have to find a more 
constructive solution than 
that.”

There may be some who be­
lieve that it is unrealistic even 
to attempt to solve the prob­
lem o f the underclass. One sus­
pects here an insidious conver­
gence between left and right, 
the one maintaining that the 
society is too racist to solve the 
problem, the other that the un­
derclass is too mired in its own 
pathology to uplift itself, even . 
if properly assisted. Certainly 
nothing said here is meant to 
suggest that there is a magic 
answer to the problem of the 
underclass. But to date, the 
problem has not been seri­
ously discussed, much less ac­
knowledged to be the core 
question for which an answer 
must be found. Instead, all at­
tention has been focused on the 
divisive and diversionary 
issue of racial entitlements, 
while the Government has pro­
vided for the subsistence of the 
underclass with antipoverty 
allowances that have become 
increasingly expensive yet are 
inevitably branded as “ inade­
quate.”

One cannot escape the con­
clusion that the crisis within 
the black movement is related 
to the failure of this whole ap­
proach, which has benefited 
those least in need and has 
perpetuated the dependency o f 
the underclass. If  the current 
black leadership has lost cred­
ibility in the eyes of many 
Americans, this is certainly in 
part the consequence of its 
failure to address the real 
issue — the condition of the un­
derclass —  in a way that clari­
fies our understanding of the 
problem and promotes a com­
mon effort to solve it.

Whether society would re­
spond to a different approach 
— one that looked toward the 
elimination of the ghetto and 
the achievement by the black 
underclass of genuine self-reli­
ance — cannot now be known. 
In any event, it should not be 
necessary to arouse the con­
science of the nation on this 
issue as the old civil-rights 
leadership did in the fight 
against Jim Crow. It should be 
enough merely to appeal to the 
self-interest of the country. 
The existence of a permanent 
underclass in all of the major 
American cities is not, after 
all, just a black issue. It is an 
issue that affects the future of 
America as a viable urban 
i 'ivilization. ■



. the country has not changed to 
an extent that racism is no 
longer the central problem. 
Whatever the explanation, ra­
cial politics of the kind that 
dominated the Richmond con­
ference has gone unchallenged 
within the black leadership.

One result is that much of 
the black movement has been 
drawn inexorably into the uni­
verse of third-world radical­
ism, a trend that has rein­
forced the ideology of racial 
victimization. In the short run, 
this trend affects mainly the 
moderate black leaders, who 
have been increasingly 
pressed to take stands — on an 
issue like supporting the 
Palestine Liberation Organi­
zation, for example —  that 
alienate political allies and 
isolate the black movement 
from the American main­
stream. In the long run, how­
ever, it affects the whole soci­
ety, since a black leadership 
given over to such racial poli­
tics enormously complicates 
any effort to deal with the 
problem o f the black under­
class —  a problem that re­
mains, as it was in 1965, the 
most formidable and explosive 
social issue the society faces.

It is hard to see, for exam­
ple, how the underclass can be

brought into the economic 
mainstream outside the 
framework o f a strategy that 
looks ultimately toward the 
dissolution of the ghetto. Yet 
this is precisely what the Rich­
mond conference opposed tmd 
what has been stricken from 
the civil-rights agenda since 
the pivotal controversy over 
the Moynihan report.

The degree to which retain­
ing the ghetto has come to be 
viewed as an actual advantage 
for blacks was well illustrated 
several years ago at a hearing 
on urban policy conducted by 
the House Committee on Bank­
ing, Currency and Housing. In 
response to a proposal by Paul 
R. Porter, an urban specialist, 
that poor blacks wishing to 
relocate to areas of industrial 
growth and job opportunities 
be assisted in doing so by Gov­
ernment training and other 
support. Representative Par- 
ren J. Mitchell (Democrat of 
Maryland) asked: “ Will not 
the relocation of blacks — 
moving them out of cities — 
destroy the political base that 
we blacks have begun to de­
velop in this country?”  Porter 
replied, “ I think it might, but I 
don’t know of any way we can 
tell people that they ought to 
stay in a city where they are



Continued fr^m Page 99

and whose access to the nor­
mal channels o f economic 
mobility and opportunity is 
blocked.”  But today, when far- 
reaching structural changes in 
the economy have helped 
make the ghetto an even more 
confining, desolate and patho­
logical wasteland, the black 
leaders gathered at Richmond 
opposed “ policies which en­
courage spatial deconcentra­
tion.”  Instead, they called for 
more "d irect funding of black 
community-based organiza­
tions”  for the purpose of “ revi­
talizing existing black com­
munities.”

This preference for keeping 
the ghetto was not an inciden­
tal aspect of the “ black agen­
da”  adopted at Richmond but 
an integral part of the whole 
strategy for “ independence.”  
One is naturally tempted to 
draw the parallel between the 
orientation toward "self-reli­
ance”  promoted at the Rich­
mond conference and the 
traditional tendency of the 
“ black bourgeoisie,”  as ana­
lyzed so brilliantly many 
years ago by the great black 
sociologist E. Franklin Fra­
zier, to prefer a segregated 
situation within which it could 
“ monopolize the Negro mar­
ket”  and “ enjoy a sheltered 
and relatively secure position 
in relation to the lower eco­
nomic classes.”  But the new 
black-leadership class repre­
sented at Richmond is in many 
important respects an entirely 
i*ew phenomenon.

For one thing, it speaks — Or 
at least claims to speak —  for 
a considerably enlarged black 
professional class. Moreover, 
it is not a conservative, in­
ward-looking group that re­
treats behind racial myths, as 
Frazier described the earlier 
black middle class. Rather, ith 
is a politically dynamic lead-/ 
ership group, with a global! 
“ third-world”  perspective,! 
that uses racial myths ideolog-i 
ically in the pursuit of real and \ 
important Interests. In this re -; 
spect, the myth that all blacks 
are equally the victims of rac­
ism serves a dual purpose, jus­
tifying the claims of the most 
successful blacks to racial en­
titlements and, by allowing 
such claims to be made in the 
name of all blacks, concealing 
the specific class interest that i 
is served. —-— ^

To be sure, not all black 
leaders either consciously or 
unconsciously use racial 
myths in this way. Some may 
emphasize race because they 
believe it to be the only way to 
call attention to black prob­
lems, and they may also fear 
that, without this emphasis, 
black organizations would lose 
their raison d’etre. And some, 
of course, may simply feel that



The issues raised by Wilson 
have far-reaching political im­
plications because the “ my­
thology”  he has sought to ex­
pose is ascendant today within' 
the black leadership. The ex­
tent to which racial politics 
has distorted the perspective 
of the black leadership was 
made abundantly clear at the 
Richmond conference last 
February.

Thus, according to Jesse 
Jackson, the starting point of 
any analysis of the black situa­
tion had to be the recognition 
that “ race is the most perva­
sive fact in the Afro-American 
experience.”  Richard Hatcher 
took the view that racism ac­
counted for the worsening 
condition of blacks. In spite of 
all the efforts made over the 
years “ to lift the American 
nightmare,”  he said, “ insensi­
tive”  politicians “ continue to 
this ̂ a y  to mistreat us, mis­
represent us and to insult us.”  
And now, he added, the coun­
try is “ falling victim to a ruse 
of anti-Russian hysteria in­

tended to make us forget 
about”  domestic injustices. As 
a result, Hatcher concluded, 
“ We are poorer, sicker and 
hungrier than we were just 10 
years ago.”  Cardiss Collins of 
the Congressional Black Cau­
cus added that, because none 
of the Presidential candidates, 
in her view, had demonstrated 
any real concern about black 
problems, there was “ no point 
in arguing who the slave mas­
ter is going to be. ”

The only solution for blacks, 
then, was to look to themselves 
and to seek “ self-reliance”  as 
a unified and independent en­
tity within American society. 
This independence strategy, 
as the “ black agenda”  
adopted at the conference 
made clear, places great em­
phasis on demands for special 
Government assistance to 
black businesses and pro­
grams —  demands that both 
Jackson and Hatcher justified 
as “ reparations”  owed blacks 
for past and present injus­
tices. It also stresses the need

for blacks to become, as one 
speaker put it, “ intermedi­
aries”  in relations between the 
United States and the third 
world, a role, he said, that 
would strengthen the black 
“ negotiation position”  in this 
country and also create new 
opportunities for black busi­
nesses in the field of foreign 
trade.

While this strategy is based 
on the concept o f racial soli­
darity — both within the 
American black population 
and between it and the third 
world —  the distinguishing 
feature of this approach is its 
overwhelming orientation to­
ward the interests of one com­
ponent of the black population, 
the middle class, to the exclu­
sion of any meaningful empha­
sis on the problems of the 
black underclass.

There were some token 
references at the conference to 
the need for full employment, 
and a resolution was passed 
that encouraged community 
leaders “ to find ways of organ­

izing the grass-roots, problem- 
ridden blacks by focusing on 
specific, concrete issues to 
which they can relate.”  But to 
the extent that the black lead­
ers, themselves, addressed 
these issues at Richmond, they 
did so in every case by denying 
the real problem facing the un­
derclass and recasting the 
question in terms consistent 
with their own racial perspec­
tive and class interests.

Thus, while violent crime is 
one of the most destructive 
symptoms of ghetto pathology, 
victimizing chiefly the black 
poor, the Richmond confer­
ence focused on the issue of 
“ criminal justice”  and its 
denial to blacks in general. 
The first priority, according to 
the resolution adopted at the 
conference, was the necessity 
for blacks “ to be employed at 
every level of the criminal-jus­
tice system, particularly at 
the policy-making level”  —  a 
proposal more likely to en­
hance employment opportuni­
ties for black professionals

than to reduce ghetto crime. 
The resolution also decried the 
death penalty, police brutal­
ity, new prison construction 
and the “ unequal application 
of the law at all levels.”  But 
nowhere was any serious at­
tention paid to the problem of 
violent crime in the ghetto.

The question of the black fe­
male-headed family was also 
virtually ignored. It was al­
luded to only once, in the 
course of a resolution on the 
Equal Rights Amendment. 
And here again, the “ prob­
lem”  was not the alarming dis­
integration of the family struc­
ture of the black poor, but the 
absence of “ quality develop­
mental child care”  for “ the 
significant number of black 
women who head families in 
the United States.”

Nor was the ghetto itself 
thought to constitute a prob­
lem. Fifteen years ago, Ken­
neth Clark wrote about what 
happens to people “ who are 
confined to depressed areas 

(Continued on Page 102)



of^race”  and others “ for whom 
hardly anything would change 
if, by some magical stroke, 
racism disappeared from 
America. . . .  And yet hardly 
anyone is willing to say it.”  
It ’s hard enough. Raspberry 
added, “ to rehabilitate those 
people who have been crippled 
by the long-term effects of rac­
ism . . .  and it is made no 
easier by our refusal to ac­
knowledge the problem for 
what it is.”

In fact, mtmy black intellec­
tuals and political leaders 
have actively discouraged ef­
forts to raise the issue of the 
underclass in these terms. A 
significant case in point is the 
controversy that has sur­
rounded the 1978 book “ The 
Declining Significance of 
Race,”  in which the black soci­
ologist William Julius Wilson 
argues that the worsening 
condition of the underclass, 
not racism, is the problem that 
requires urgent attention. Wil­
son, who heads the sociology 
department at the University 
of Chicago, said recently that 
he “ had not anticipated the 
depth of the political-emo­
tional response”  the book has 
elicited. He readily concedes 
that his arguments are 
“ hardly revolutionary”  but 
just expand on the position 
adumbrated by Bayard Rustin 
in the mid-1960’s. Clearly, 
however, many blacks find 
this position just as objection­
able today as they did l5 years 
ago.

Wilson’s basic thesis is that 
in the modem industrial peri­
od, unlike the earlier periods 
of slavery and industrializa­
tion, class plays a more signif­
icant role than race in deter­
mining a black’s position in 
society. He does not deny that 
racial antagonisms persist in 
“ social, political and com­
munity”  areas. He merely 
contends that blacks with the 
requisite skills can now ad­
vance economically emd have 
done so, while the underclass 
—  a product of the disadvan­
tages accumulated over gen­
erations and of modem eco­
nomic developments —  can­
not. The net effect, he says, is 
a growing class division 
among blacks.

Under these circumstances, 
Wilson argues, an emphasis on 
race obscures significant dif­
ferences of experience and 
suffering among blacks. Even 
more importantly, it also leads 
to faulty analysis and to poli­
cies that don’t address “ the 
specific needs and concerns of 
those who are the most disad­
vantaged.”

In the epilogue of the forth­
coming paperback edition of 
his book, Wilson shows, for ex­
ample, that the recent decline 
in the composite black-white 
income ratio from 61 percent 
in 1969 to 59 percent in 1978 — 
figures stressed by black lead­
ers and intellectuals in argu­

ments for more affirmative- 
action programs — is mislead­
ing in that it obscures the 
sharply divergent trends 
“ within”  the black population. 
Thus, he notes that the black- 
white ratio of median fam ily 
income in male-headed homes 
increased over the same 
period from 72 percent in 1969 
to 80 percent in 1978, while 
“ the exploding number of 
black female-headed fami­
lies,”  with median incomes 
about one-third those of black 
male-headed families, brought 
down the overall income ratio. 
The emphasis on affirmative 
action, he adds, has the effect 
of widening this class division 
among blacks since it benefits 
primarily the middle class 
while not addressing the spe­
cific needs of the underclass.

Wilson’s thesis was dis­
cussed at a symposium con­
vened last year by the Univer­
sity of Pennsylvania’s Afro- 
American Studies Program. 
Lerone Bennett Jr., the senior 
editor at Ebony magazine, ob­
served that “ it verges on the 
sacrilegious to spend so much 
time discussing the declining 
significance of race . . .  in the 
face of the systematic destruc­
tion of a whole generation of 
black people.”  Kenneth Clark, 
whom Wilson called “ the 
scholar who first made me 
conscious of these issues,”  
nonetheless differed strongly 
with Wilson’s main argument, 
calling it “ a dangerous delu­
sion”  that “ drains energy and 
diverts attention from the 
stark fact that racial injus­
tices perpetrated against all 
blacks —  middle-class and un­
derclass blacks —  remain the 
unfinished business of Ameri­
can democracy. ’ ’

Wilson has countered such 
criticisms by applying his 
class analysis of race to the 
“ race politics”  of the black in­
telligentsia. At the University 
of Pennsylvania symposium, 
he observed that “ the group 
that would have the most to 
gain by a shift in emphasis 
from race to economic disloca­
tion, the black lower class, is 
not the group that is really de­
fining the issues.”  Rather, he 
added, “ the issues are being;, 
defined by the articulate black'; 
intelligentsia— the very group j 
that has benefited the most in ' 
recent years from antidis­
crimination programs”  and 
which therefore has “ a vested 
interest in keeping race as the 
single most important issue in 
developing policies to promote 
black progress.”  Taking note 
of “ the increasing class hos­
tilities in the black communi­
ty,”  he remarked that if  “ the 
little man”  ever gains his 
voice, he might well use it “ to 
beat d o ^  the mythology de­
veloped by the black intelli­
gentsia: Blacks, regardless of 
their station in life, have a uni­
form experience in a racist 
society.”



been rooted in profound and 
enduring institutional changes 
in employment practices, Gov­
ernment policies, education, 
labor and other areas, there is 
no reason to believe that it will 
not continue. But it has bene­
fited, at best, two-thirds of the 
black population, divided al­
most equally between middle- 
class and working-class 
blacks. The bottom third has 
not only failed to participate in 
the progress of the last 15 
years, but its social and eco­
nomic position has deterio­
rated to an alarming extent.

During the 1970’s, for exam­
ple, the unemployment rate 
for 16- to 19-year-old blacks 
rose by more than half —  from 
24 percent to over 37 percent 
today. The percentage of all 
black males over 16 who 
dropped out of the labor force 
entirely —  who neither worked 
nor sought work and thus did 
not even appear in the unem­
ployment statistics — also in­
creased by more than half, 
from 20 percent in the mid- 
1960’s to nearly 40 percent 
today. And though the problem 
of female-headed black fami­
lies has scarcely been men­
tioned since the acrimonious 
controversy over the Moyni- 
han report, it has grown stead­
ily worse —  from 23.2 percent 
of all black families in 1962 to 
28 percent in 1969,37 percent in 
1976 and 40.5 percent in 1979.

What has been happening is 
clear; The black underclass of 
the ghetto has been expanding 
at precisely the same time as 
the black middle class has also 
been expanding and moving 
ahead. Moreover, this schism 
shows every sign of growing 
still wider in the future. The 
structural barriers to employ­
ment for the imderclass are 
greater now than they were 15 
years ago, for during this 
period thousands of manufac­
turing plants seeking space for 
expansion have relocated out 
of the central cities, leaving 
potential black workers in the 
ghetto more cut o ff than before 
from the economic main­
stream. And the ghetto’s “ tan­
gle of pathology”  is now more 
deadly. Another layer of dam­
age has thus been added to the 
legacy of history and circum­
stance, one that is particularly 
crushing to the spirit in that it 
foilowed upon a moment when 
there seemed to be hope.

Though the problem of the 
underclass has grown more in­
tractable and has, in fact, been 
brought more sharply into 
focus by the "deepening 
schism”  in the black popula­
tion, there is no greater readi­
ness now than there was 15 
years ago to acknowledge its 
true character. In an article 
discussing the underclass, Wil­
liam J. Raspberry, a black col­
umnist for The Washington 
Post, wrote that “ everybody 
knows”  that “ there are some 
blacks for whom it is enough to 
remove the artificial barriers

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from m ique disabilities and 
' requiring special attention. 
The underclass became.^^ in­
stead, a symbol o f^ lack  suf­
fering and white cruelty, a liv­
ing reminder o f past and 
present injustices and of the 
continuing debt that American 
society owed to all blacks, re­
gardless o f the position they 
had achieved in life. Thus, 
while the problems o f the un­
derclass could not be honestly 
discussed, its condition was 
made the basis of an ideology 
of racial victimization that 
was applied to the entire 
“ black experience”  in Amer­
ica.

But even ets this ideology 
was developing and gaining a 
greater hold on many black 
leaders, it was becoming in­
creasingly defective both as a 
description of the actual condi­
tion of the black population in 
America and as tm explana­
tion of the present causes of 
racial inequality. Even before 
this perspective took root, in 
fact, the black population was 
not monolithic —  this, of 
course, being the very reason 
why President John^n and 
others had raised the issue in 
the first place. Moreover, 
since 1965 there has been a 
deepening class schism among 
blacks, a trend identified a 
decade ago in a speech at 
Tuskegee Institute by the 
black economist Andrew F. 
Brimmer, then a member of 
the Board of Governors of the 
Federal Reserve System.

Between 1965 and 1977, the

number of blacks attending 
college more than quadrupled 
—  from 274,000 to 1.1 million. 
As their numbers rose, so, too, 
did their aspirations, as seen 
in the growing numbers of 
blacks studying for careers in 
business, engineering, chemis­
try, computer science and 
other highly professionalized 
fields. Because of these educa­
tional advances and the de­
cline in job-market discrimi­
nation, the number o f blacks in 
professional tmd managerial 
jobs nearly doubled during the 
1970’s, to 1.9 million, and the 
income o f young college-edu­
cated blacks rose to about the 
same level as that o f their 
white counterparts. (Black 
males earned slightly less 
than white males, and black 
females earned slightly more 
than white females.)

The earnings ratios for all 
blacks employed full-time 
have not been as high, but 
even here the gains have been 
impressive: Black males
earned 77 percent as much as 
white males in 1975, up from 63 
percent in 1955, while, over the 
same period, the income of 
black females rose from 57 
percent to 98.6 percent in rela­
tion to the earnings o f white fe­
males.

While the current recession 
has eroded some of the gains 
made by middle- and working- 
class blacks, the progress re­
flected in these figures has 
been real and not, as some 
have maintained, meager and 
illusory. And becavise it has

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As Clark’s study made pain­
fully clear, the ghetto poor 
were trapped in a “ self-perpet- 
tiating pathology”  whose 
symptoms were “ low aspira­
tion, poor education, fam ily in­
stability, illegitimacy, unem­
ployment, crime, drug addic­
tion and alcoholism, frequent 
illness and early death.”  This 
“ disease”  was the result of 
centuries o f accumulated in­
justices, starting with slavery 
and continuing with segrega­
tion and poverty. But it had 
now taken on a life o f its own, 
so that the elimination o f dis­
crimination, in and o f itself, 
would not bring about its cure. 
Moreover, according to Rus- 
tin, the disease was spreading 
as a result o f structural 
changes in the economy —  for 
example, the elimination of 
unskilled and semiskilled jobs 
by automation —  that were ex­
cluding, growing numbers of 
black youth from the modem 
labor market. There clearly 
could be no solution to the 
problem in the absence o f a 
massive, systematic effort by 
the Federal Government 
(along the lines of the 10-year 
“ Freedom Budget”  proposed 
by Rustin’s mentor, A. Philip 
Randolph) to rescue the un­
derclass, looking ultimately to 
its gradual transformation 
into a stable working-class 
population and the abolition of 
the ghetto itself.

This view became the basis 
for President Johnson’s fa­
mous civil-rights address 
delivered at Howard Univer­
sity on June 4, 1965. The ad­
dress, which Moynihan helped 
draft, summarized the essen­
tial arguments of the “ Negro 
Fam ily”  report by way o f de­
fining “ the next and more pro­
found stage o f the battle for 
civil rights.”  Declaring that 
“ freedom is not enough,”  the 
President dwelt at length upon 
“ the scars of centuries,”  the 
“ ancient brutality, past injus­
tice and present prejudice”  
that had buried much o f the 
black population “ under a 
blanket o f history and circum­
stance.”  For these reasons, 
the President explained, there 
were “ deep, corrosive, obsti­
nate differences”  between 
black and white poverty, the 
most important —  because its 
influence radiated “ to every 
part o f life”  —  being “ the 
breakdown o f the Negro 
family structure. ’ ’

The President announced he 
would convene a special White 
House conference in the fall. 
But before the conference was 
held, the Watts riot occurred 
and the White House released 
the internal Government re­
port on “ The Negro Family ”  
—  “ specifically to assert”  zis 
Moynihan later wrote, “ that 
something was known about 
the otherwise inexplicable 
events in California. ”

The report, which called at­
tention to the growing inci­
dence of female-headed black

families dependent on welfare, 
aroused a storm of indigna­
tion. Actually, it only rein­
forced what President John­
son had said in his speech —  
that legal equity was insuffi­
cient in that the damage his­
tory and present circumstance 
had caused in the life of the 
Negro American had to be re­
paired if  there was to be genu­
ine racial equality. For Moyni­
han himself, the report was a 
brief for the Government’s 
adoption of a jobs strategy 
that would seek to strengthen 
the role o f the father as the 
fam ily provider. Such a strat­
egy, he also felt, would have to 
be supplemented by a plan for 
child allowances as a way of 
offsetting the subversive ef­
fect on fam ily stability o f a 
wage system not geared to 
family size and need.

But in the bitter post-Watts 
atmosphere, Moynihan was 
accused o f blaming the black 
poor for their own plight tmd 
offering an excuse for Govern­
ment inaction. These were 
really secondary issues, how­
ever, because the underlying 
objection to the report —  
which was reflected in its crit­
ics’ argument that the female­
headed fam ily was actually a 
healthy adaptation to harsh 
conditions —  was its conten­
tion that history had inflicted 
debilitating wounds on the 
black American. What was 
being denied, in other words, 
was the idea, implicit in the 
Moynihan argument, that 
there was something patholog­
ical in the social fabric o f the 
ghetto underclass.

This denial, which was in­
sisted upon ever more strongly 
as racial tensions and black- 
nationalist tendencies grew in 
the late 1960’s, expressed itself 
in a political attitude that dig­
nified the violence and degfa- '̂ 
dation in the culture o f thq; 
ghetto underclass. The atti­
tude took its most explicit 
form in the emergence of the 
Black Panthers, who extolled 
the revolutionary character of 
the “ lumpen proletariat”  (a  
term knowingly misappropri­
ated from Marx, for whom the 
underclass was not revolution­
ary but “ a recruiting ground 
for thieves and criminals of all 
kinds” ),  and whose politics of 
nihilism and street violence 
were countenanced and en­
couraged by fashionable lib­
eral opinion. I t  also found sub­
tler expression in the growing 
acceptance o f the idea that the 
sole (rt>stacle to black advance 
was white racism. The “ dis­
ease”  that had to be cured — 
the problem, in short —  was 
not the ghetto with its growing 
underclass, but the racist and 
repressive character of Amer­
ica itself —  a view  that was 
given an international dimen­
sion in the ideology of third- 
world radicalism that was 
then rapidly becoming popu­
lar.

At the same time, no effort



was made to conceal the mis­
ery of the ghetto. On the con­
trary, this condition was bran­
dished as conclusive proof of 
America’s sickness and as the 
basis o f demands for immedi­
ate Government relief. And, 
since it was also denied that 
there was anything inherently 
pathological in this condition, 
it followed that the misery was 
solely a function of the maldis­
tribution of power, money and 
jobs, and that relief would 
come simply from their redis­
tribution. Thus, the idea of 
abolishing the ghetto gave way 
to demands for “ commimity 
control”  over its institutions. 
Welfare came increasingly to 
be seen not as a debilitating 
condition from which one 
should try to escape, but as a 
right that had to be more ad­
equately fulfilled. And empha­
sis was placed not on attacking 
the structurai causes of unem­
ployment, such as the discrep­
ancy between the skills and 
motivation required for pro­
ductive employment and the 
lack of these among youth 
trapped in the ghetto, but on 
demanding racial quotas —  an 
approach that actually by­
passed the underclass since 
there were ample numbers of 
middle-class black youths bet­
ter prepared to fill the avail­
able openings.

The sad irony in all o f this is 
that what appeared to be a 
form o f racial militancy was, 
in reality, a policy of racial ac­
commodation. Though de­
mands for redistribution were

frequently couched _ in such 
radical-sounding terihs as 
“ black power,’’ '“ reparations”  
and “ self-determination,”  
nothing was being proposed 
that would, or was intended to, 
lead to the dissolution of the 
ghetto underclass. On the con­
trary, the new approach both 
rationalized and subsidized 
the underclass’s continued ex­
istence. It appealed to many 
whites by offering them a con­
venient excuse to evade the 
whole problem while, at the 
same time, allowing them to 
show proper “ concern”  for the 
disadvantaged by submitting 
to “ black demands.”  And it 
also appealed to a new class of 
black political leaders and 
Federally funded antipoverty 
workers who became, in ef­
fect, the power brokers be­
tween the Government and the 
black poor. These workers had 
a stake in preserving the un­
derclass as a political base 
from which they could 
threaten —  and extract con­
cessions from — white society.

The nature of the relation­
ship between the underclass 
and its self-appointed political 
spokesmen was obscured by 
the invocation of a “ black per­
spective”  according to which 
both shared a common inter­
est based solely on race. This 
perspective, by assuming the 
existence of a monolithic black 
community set o ff against an 
alien and hostile white society, 
ruled out tmy serious consider­
ation o f the underclass as a 
distinct social group suffering

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blacks and assume that “ the 
task is finished.”  But it is hard 
to believe that most Ameri­
cans are unaware of the exist­
ence of large black ghettos, 
such as Liberty City in Miami, 
which are plagued by high 
unemployment, crime, drug 
abuse and other social ills. 
And if they are unaware of the 
problem, or not sufficiently 
concerned about it, one must 
then ask why the current black 
leadership cannot arouse the 
nation’s attention. It has much 
more access to power than the 
old civil-rights leadership, 
which was able to dramatize a 
problem — legalized segrega­
tion in the South — that was at 
least as remote from the con­
sciousness of most Americans. 
Why, then, does its voice not 
resonate in the country with 
the same force?

To understand what has 
gone wrong, it is necessary to 
go back a full 15 years to a mo­
ment when the black move­
ment faced certain crucial 
choices regarding its future 
perspective and program. In 
early 1965, just as the civil- 
rights movement was winning 
its greatest victories in Con­
gress, several important anal­
yses appeared that challenged 
the prevailing optimism with 
respect to eliminating racial 
inequality. The basic point of 
all these analyses — Kenneth 
B. Clark’s study, “ Dark 
Ghetto” ; Bayard Rustin’s ar­
ticle, “ From Protest to Poli­
tics,”  and Daniel Patrick 
Moynihan’s Labor Depart­
ment report, “ The Negro 
Family”  —  was that in spite of 
the gains of the civil-rights 
movement, the life of the black 
poor in the urban ghettos was 
getting worse, not better, and 
that much more than just the 
removal of legal barriers to 
equal opportunity was needed 
to save these people. This 
point of view had far-reaching 
implications that were never 
absorbed by the black leader­
ship, a critical failure that 
may well explain its inability 
to arouse the nation’s attention 
to the urgent problem of the 
ghetto poor.

All three analyses agreed 
that the central problem that 
now had to be addressed was 
the existence of a growing 
black underclass in the urban 
ghetto. As the Moynihan re­
port pointed out, it was partic­
ularly important to focus at­
tention on this group since 
“ the emergence and increas­
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class may beguile the nation 
into supposing that the cir­
cumstances of the remainder 
of the Negro community are 
equally prosperous, whereas 
just the opposite is true at 
present, and is likely to con­
tinue so.”

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position changed, not
that o f tb^e “ former allies of 
blacks’ ’ <who t>te accused by 
Dr. C le *  ot having replaced 
Sou tb^  segregationists as 
the dhief opponents o f racial 
equality.

In practical terms. Dr. 
Clark’s view  is defeatist and 
politically counterproductive. 
He speaks of building “ new, 
more secure alliances.’ ’ But 
where are allies to be found if 
he is correct in assuming that 
even contemporary liberals 
“are at best ambivalent”  in 

their commitment to racial 
equality? Dr. Clark com­
mends Gunnar Myrdal’s 
analysis o f the “ dynamic con­
flict”  between the American 
ideal of equal treatment for all 
and the injustice of racial dis- 

1 crimination, but he misses its 
1 basic point. For Myrdal, this 
I conflict was not an immutable 
I feature of American life, but a I genuine dilemma —  one that I the civil-rights movement 
* used to advantage by identify­

ing civil rights, in Myrdal’s 
I words, “ with moral principles 
1 held dear by the white Ameri- 
Icans.”  Since Dr. Clark does 
[not believe these principles 
I are sincerely held by the white 
1 majority, he doesn’t think any­
thing is to be lost by violating 

[them. Thus, he doesn’t ac- 
I knowledge that policies o f ra­

cial preference have stimu­
lated a “ white backlash,”  
which he characterizes as just 
a continuation o f traditional 
racism “ camouflaged by a 
more sophisticated Northern 
urban guise.”  This doesn’t 
prevent him, however, from 
using the antagonisms thus en­
gendered as evidence o f the 
pervasiveness o f racism. As a 
strategy for black advance, it 
leaves something to be de­
sired.

In contrast. Professor Wil­
son’s position offers hope, 
though surely without illusion. 
His thinking is not “ diversion­
ary,”  as Dr. Clark charges, 
but rivets attention on the cen­
tral issue, which is the worsen­
ing condition of the black un­
derclass. Professor Wilson is 
“ optimistic”  only in the sense 
that he acknowledges that 
American society has changed 
for the better tuid is thus capa­
ble of further change. Dr. 
Clark, by taking refuge in the 
simplistic view that the prob­
lem of the underclass would be 
solved if whites only would 
think and behave differently, 
and by pressing for policies 
that are both divisive and ir­
relevant to the underclass, 
only helps to perpetuate the 
problem and to reinforce the 
hopelessness of blacks and 
whites alike. ■

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GERSHMAN RESPONDS
Continued from  Page 33

the pervasiveness of racism is 
demonstrated by opposition to 
policies of racial preference in 
employment and education. 
Nowhere, however, does he es­
tablish that this opposition is 
equivalent to racism. His rea­
soning appears to be that 
America is so “ contaminated 
by racism”  that blacks cannot 
receive fair treatment without 
Government-imposed policies 
of racial preference. But he of­
fers nothing to dispute the evi­
dence — contained, for exam­
ple, in an important study by 
the Rand Institute — that 
young blacks entering the 
labor force with skills com­
parable to those of whites re­
ceive equal earnings. More­
over, instead of responding to 
the arguments of Dr. Thomas 
Sowell, who feels that racial 
preference actually harms 
blacks by stigmatizing their 
achievement and discouraging 
the acquisition of the skills 
needed to compete on equal 
terms with whites, he just dis­
misses Dr. Sowell as a black 
who has retreated from the 
“ struggle for racial integra­
tion.”

Dr. Sowell’s views, however, 
may explain why a majority of 
blacks, according to the con­
sistent finding of opinion polls, 
favor a meritocratic standard 
as against preferential treat­
ment. Evidently it is Dr. 
Clark’s opinion that these 
blacks, like the black execu­
tives who believe they have 
achieved their position by 
merit, have succumbed to 
“ premature and wishful”  
thinking.

It is surely an arguable 
proposition that remedying 
past injustices requires racial 
preference, but it does not fol­
low that opposition to racial 
preference is equivalent tc 
racism. Dr. Clark halls the 
Brown decision for removing 
Governmental support for ra­
cial distinctions. It woulri 
therefore seem incumbent 
upon him to acknowledge that 
the issue now in dispute is 
whether such distinctions 
should be reintroduced by law, 
albeit for a different purpose.' 
He may now prefer a color­
conscious policy to one that is 
colorblind. I f  so, then it is his



Dr .Kenneth B. Clark’s basic 
assumption is that, in spite of 
"the aura of racial progress’ ’ 
in recent years, all blacks re­
main the victims of “ systemic 
and pervasive American rac­
ism.”  But his analysis does not 
support this sweeping proposi­
tion, and his approach will 
only reinforce the very pat­
terns of racial isolation and in­
equality that he decries.

An essential point of Dr. 
Clark’s argument is that the 
condition of the black under­
class is attributable entirely to 
racism, by which he means the 
conscious refusal of whites to 
accept blacks as equal human 
beings and their willful, sys­
tematic effort to deny blacks 
equal opportunity. But since it 
is also Dr. Clark’s contention 
that this same racism is di­
rected with equal force at all 
blacks, even those who “ ap­
pear”  to have escaped exclu­
sion, it is not clear how he ac­
counts for the special plight of 
the underclass or how he ex­
plains the growing class 
schism among blacks that, in 
his own words, “ brings with it 
a new and imminent risk of 
serious intraracial turbu­
lence.”

By way of explanation, he 
writes that “ past American 
racism was democratic in that 
it tended to reject and exclude 
all blacks without regard to in­
telligence, education, talents 
or personal character.”  The 
obvious implication is that 
contemporary “ racism”  is 
less “ democratic”  in that it 
tends to exclude —  and include 
— according to these same 
nonracial criteria. Apparently 
without realizing it. Dr. Clark 
here affirms “ the wishful and 
premature optimism”  of Prof. 
William Julius Wilson, who 
also maintains that such 
“ class”  factors, as he calls 
them, explain the deepening 
black schism.

Another essential point of 
Dr. Clark’s argument is that 

(Continued on Page 90)



F o u ^ e m p l ^ ^ e n  lounge on a street com er in Harlem. After 16years of riots, protests and Government programs, life in black ghettos has continued to deteriorate.



A MATTER OF cuss
By Cari Gershman

Black leaders, says the 
author, are 
preoccupied with 
racial bias as the sole 
cause of ghetto 
Doverty—an approach
:hat ignores growing 
class divisions witmn 
the black conununity.

f  all the grievances 
voiced by black lead­
ers in the wake of last 
May’s racial violence 
in Miami, the one re­
peated most fre­
quently was that the 
country no longer 
cares about the prob­
lems of blacks. That 
such a view should be 
expressed by black 
leaders shows how 

far we have come since the 1960’s, when 
issues pertaining to racial equality 
were at the top of the American politi­
cal agenda. Today, according to Benja-

Carl Gershman is vice chairman o f So­
cial Democrats, U.S.A., and a resident 
scholar at Freedom House. He is a for­
m er research director at the A. Philip  
Randolph Institute.

min Hooks, executive director of the 
National Association for the Advance­
ment of Colored People, “ the pendulum 
is swinging back. Black folks ain’t 
worth a damn in this country.”  As 
Mayor Richard G. Hatcher, of Gary, 
Ind., put it, “ The black man has be­
come invisible again. ”

The concern felt by black leaders that 
the country has grown indifferent to 
black needs comes after a decade in 
which blacks made significant political 
gains. This apparent contradiction was 
alluded to by Hatcher in his keynote ad­
dress to a national black-leadership 
conference that met last February in 
Richmond, Va. Recalling a previous 
national black conference in Gary in 
1972, he noted that “ in just eight years 
we have more than tripled the number 
of blacks serving in the legislatures, the 
city halls, the courtrooms and on the 
school boards of America.”  Yet, he 
went on, “ as our voice has grown

A Harlem woman sits before the high-school graduation portraits o f her grand­
sons, one of whom now works in real estate, the other fo r the telephone compan^~

stronger, our nation’s commitment has 
grown weaker.”

Neither Hatcher nor any of the other 
black leaders who attended the Rich­
mond conference — including Hooks; 
the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, executive di­
rector of Operation PUSH; former 
United Nations Ambassador Andrew 
Young; Vernon E. Jordan Jr., presi­
dent of the National Urban League, and 
Cardiss Collins, chairman of the Con­
gressional Black Caucus —  was able to 
account for this paradoxical situation. 
One argument advanced at Richmond 
attributed the difficulties encountered 
by black leaders to the growth of anti­
black sentiment in the country — as 
seen, for example, in the increased ac­
tivity of the Ku Klux Klan. But while it 
is true that the Klan now has about 
10,000 members, a gain of 50 percent 
since 1975, this growth does not reflect 
the mood in the country in general or 
even in the South, where the Klan is pri­
marily based. All the polls, in fact, 
show that the American people are 
much more favorably disposed toward 
racial equality now than they were at 
the height of the civil-rights movement 
in the 1960’s.

The apparent “ invisibility”  of the 
black poor is aiso attributed to the 
growing mood of fiscal conservatism, 
as symbolized by the passage fn 1978 of 
Proposition 13 in California. But the 
view that the country is retrenching on 
its commitment to the black poor is not

borne out by the facts. The Federal 
Government’s antipoverty expend! 
itures during the 1970’s doubled in real 
terms and how total $67.5 billion a year] 
a figure that does not include more than| 
$20 billion in antipoverty spending by] 
state and local governments.

A third explanation, which was 
stressed repeatedly by the speakers at 
the Richmond conference, was that 
black leaders were not being listened to 
because of the country’s preoccupation 
with national defense in the wake of the 
Soviet invasion o f Afghanistan. But this 
argument is also unpersuasive, for 
there is no reason why a commitment 
by the United States to oppose foreign 
aggression must necessarily involve a 
retreat on efforts to eliminate domestic 
injustices. In fact, the period of the 
black revolution in America, which 
begtm with A. Philip Randolph’s March 
on Washington Movement in 1941 and 
culminated with the great March o, i 
Washington in 1963, coincided with 
America’s entrance onto the world 
scene as a great power, committed to 
the defeat of Nazi aggression and then 
to the containment of Communism.

What, then, accounts for the feeling 
among black leaders that the country is 
“ abandoning the black cause,”  as Pa­
tricia Roberts Harris, the Secretary of 
Health and Human Services, said fol­
lowing the Miami riot? Her own analy­
sis was that whites see the progress 
madebysome (Continued on Page 92)



TKROUOFRACE
By Kennetli B.CIari(

White Americans, the 
author says,̂  are at best 
ambivdent in their 
commitment to racial 
equality. The 
sufferings of the black 
ghetto can be laid 

ectlyatthedoorof
aciai oppression.

I
t no longer is fashionable for 
white or black public officials to 
discuss flagrant examples of ra­
cial inequalities openly. A  mora­
torium has been declared when 
it comes to confronting concrete 
symptoms of American racism 
such as segregated schools and 
colleges, segregation in housing, 
pervasive job discrimination, 
racial bias in the administration 
of the system of law enforce­
ment and criminal justice. In­
stead, these manifestations of racism 

are masked by such labels as “ reverse 
discrimination,”  “ quotas”  or “ benign 
neglect,”  And efforts to combat racism 
are being diverted by the myth that so-

Kenneth B. Clark is Distinguished Pro­
fessor Emeritus of Psychology at the 
City University of New York and presi­
dent of a race-relations consulting firm.

cial and economic injustices are a func­
tion of class, not race.

Today, black civil-rights leaders, 
black public officials and some black 
academics — the members of the 
gradually expanding black middle 
class — are emphasizing broad urban 
and economic problems such as unem­
ployment, lack of job training for the 
unemployed, inflation and the fiscal in­
stability of our cities, as well as impor­
tant international issues. And it is true, 
of course, that economic and urban 
crises do directly affect the status of 
blacks. Blacks do suffer earlier, longer 
and more directly than whites from 
economic recessions and from the cut­
back in services that is a consequence 
of chronic urban crisis. But the major 
responsibility for these sufferings lies 
not with economic forces, but with 
American racism as it manifests itself 
in those specific racial problems that

black and white leaders today refuse to 
confront.

Racism, indeed, is a major barrier to 
any fundamental solution for whites as 
well as blacks. The fiscal stability of 
American cities will remain tenuous as 
long as deteriorating ghettos inhabited 
by undereducated, underemployed and 
unemployed blacks are permitted to 
proliferate. The national economy is 
likely to remain unstable as long as a 
tenth of the nation is held in a condition 
of economic underdevelopment, ex- 
ciuded from a productive role in the 
overall economy. As long as a dispro­
portionate number of blacks are rele­
gated to the stigmatized status of tax 
consumers on the welfare rolls and as 
long as a subtle exclusionary system 
limits the number of blacks permitted 
to compete for token middle-class jobs, 
the economic status of all Americans is 
threatened. These key determinants of 
economic and urban instability provide 
the fuel of urban ghetto eruptions.

Why have realistic and reasonable at­
tempts to remedy even the most fla­
grant residues of racism — in education 
and housing, for example — encoun­
tered such implacable resistance? Why 
have the benefits of the civil-rights 
movement of the 1950’s and 60’s been 
restricted to some few blacks and failed 
to improve the living conditions of un­
derclass blacks? Are there ways to 
build new, more secure civil-rights al­
liances against the pervasive post- 
Reconstructionist resistance to further 
racial advance? These difficult ques­
tions must be answered — and without 
wishful thinking or sophisticated forms 
of racism — if the promise of American 
democracy is not to become a mockery.

Some observers contend that the 
present stagnation in the struggle for 
racial equality is not caused by the shift 
of emphasis among black and white 
leaders but is the inevitable result of 
the “ backlash”  among whites occa­
sioned by the speed with which blacks 
have gained economic inclusion. They 
contend that “ white backlash”  is a 
counterreaction to “ preferential treat­
ment”  for blacks. They speak of “ re­
verse discrimination”  and “ displace­
ment”  of whites from “ their”  jobs, 
“ their”  schools and “ their”  neighbor­
hoods. Such explanations are widely 
circulated by some former liberals who 
now proudly identify themselves as 
“ neo-conservatives”  on racial issues as 
well as on economic and political 
issues. “ White backlash,”  however, is 
not new. It is traditional American rac­
ism in a more sophisticated. Northern 
urban guise. Racism, old and new, is

based on the assumption that there are 
limits on the opportunities and benefits 
of American democracy that blacks are 
permitted to share.

As the center of the civil-rights move 
ment has shifted from the Southern 
states to Northern urban centers such 
as Boston, New York, Philadelphia and 
Chicago, this new intellectual leader­
ship has emerged as a major factor in 
blocking further racial progress and 
maintaining the racial status quo. Just 
as Southern public officials and politi­
cians stood in front of the schoolhouse 
door and cried “ never”  to desegrega­
tion, arguing that they were simply 
being responsive to the racial anxieties 
of their white constituents, so, today. 
Northern advocates of the racial status

The scene on a street com er in Har­
lem in front o f an abandoned building.

quo, while eschewing the crude and 
flamboyant racial tactics of the South­
ern past, extol the virtues of ethnic 
isolation and the protection of white 
groups from black “ invasion.”  They 
deny that they are racists; they may 
even point to their personal friendship 
and professional association with 
blacks, and their membership in and 
support for civil-rights organizations. 
Some who publish articles against af­
firmative-action programs in aca­
demic journals and popular magazines

The New York Times Magazine/October 5, 1980 25



were former allies o f blacks on the ra­
cial battlegrounds of the South. Their 
credentials give credence to their 
present arguments against further ra­
cial progress on the ground that any at­
tempt to remedy past racism, such as 
programs to insure black representa­
tion in college classes, is itself a form of 
racism because it treats blacks as a 
special, separate group. Thus, in the 
name of an attack on racism, they 
would perpetuate racism.

Because o f their own inability to 
counter this strategy o f Northern neo­
conservative intellectuals and standpat 
public officials, black civil-rights lead­
ers and political officials themselves 
have contributed, by omission, to re­
gression in the movement toward ra­
cial equality. Black middle-class lead­
ers, in confusion and disarray, have 
lost the initiative to define the issues 
and to counter the new semantics of 
racism. They have yet to present an ef­
fective rebuttal against such racial 
code words as “ busing,”  “ quotas,”  
“ reverse discrimination,”  “ meritocra­
cy,”  "maintaining standards”  —  the 
shorthand terms Implying that reme­
dies for racial injustice w ill weaken the 
fiber o f the society as a whole and lead 
to a new racism. □

In the 1950’s and 60’s black civil- 
rights leaders were able, by appealing 
to the Federal courts, to counter the fla­
grant and crude defiance of Southern 
racism. In the historic Brown v. Board 
o f Education decision of 1954, described 
by the legal scholar Louis H. Poliak as 
“ the most important governmental act 
o f any kind since the Emancipation 
Proclamation,”  the Supreme Court of 
the United States asserted that racial 
segregation in public schools violated 
the equal-protection clause of the 14th 
Amendment. It established the judicial 
basis for removing governmental sup­
port o f arbitrary racial distinctions. A 
bright beacon o f hope for all American 
minorities, the Brown decision raised 
the morale of blacks. It provided the 
full and sustained motivation for the 
nonviolent civil-disobedience move­
ment coordinated with brilliance and 
imagination by the Rev. Martin Luther 
King Jr. Within the decade immedi­
ately following the Brown decision, the 
American civil-rights leadership sus­
tained the momentum in behalf of ra­
cial justice and obtained objectives un­
matched in American history.

During that period, James Farmer, 
A. Philip Randolph, Dorothy I. Height, 
Dr. King, John Lewis, Whitney M. 
Young Jr., Roy Wilkins, Malcolm X  and 
other black and white civil-rights activ­
ists demonstrated that, in spite of some 
differences, it was possible to combine 
resources, approaches and styles and 
to forge a leadership cadre. Civil-rights 
victories. Including the 1964 Civil 
Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights 
Act, were the result. The leadership of 
the Supreme Court was reinforced by 
Congress and by positive executive ac 
tions of the Kennedy and Johnson Ad­
ministrations. American blacks had 
every reason to believe that, at long 
last, the promises of American democ­
racy would no longer be withheld on the 
basis of race and color.

Yet, in spite of these very real gains, 
the goal of unqualified racial equality

r ;

The existence of an 
underclass is not just a 
black issue. It affects 
the hiture of America.

~ . VL.

Three boys stand in a Brooklyn street severely damaged during the 1977 blackout.

has remained tantalizingly elusive. As 
the more blatant forms of racial segre­
gation, rejection and cruelty decreased 
in the Southern states, the predicament 
of blacks confined to the Northern 
urban ghettos worsened. As segrega­
tion was eliminated in Southern and 
border states, residential segregation 
remained fixed and the number of seg­
regated schools increased in Northern 
cities. Even as more blacks were bene­
fiting from the 1964 Civil Rights Act, 
the masses of blacks remained caught 
in a futile underclass, victims of tragi­
cally inferior public education, exces­
sive unemployment and underemploy­
ment, and the stigma of welfare. To 
them, the “ benefits”  of the 1964 Civil 
Rights Act seemed a hoax. Ironically, 
the aura of racial progress and the 
civil-rights legislative victories con­
tributed to an increasing sense of des­
peration and futility among these 
Northern urban-ghetto blacks. The 
spotlight on the progress of some 
blacks made it possible to see more 
clearly the economic predicament of 
the majority of blacks, who remained 
the main victims of ghetto crimes. 
Their youths were functional illiter­

ates, school dropouts, unemployed and 
unprepared to compete for a construc­
tive role in society. They had to live in 
deteriorated housing; their sanitation 
and health services remained inade­
quate. This festering pattern of human 
neglect and indifference exploded 
inevitably in the sporadic ghetto riots 
of the middle and late 1960’s and early 
70’s. As the center of gravity of the 
civil-rights movement shifted from the 
Southern states to the Northern cities, 
hope gave way to battle fatigue among 
the black leaders.

Traditional American optimism for a 
while sustained the wishful belief that 
the progress achieved was important 
and imperative. Just as many of the 
gains following the Emancipation 
Proclamation and during the Recon­
struction period were neutralized by 
racism, pragmatic politics and the fa­
tigue of the abolitionists, so the post- 
Brown civil-rights gains have been re­
tarded by similar realities of systemic 
and pervasive American racism. In an 
early indication that the era of civil- 
rights innocence was coming to a close, 
the National Association for the Ad­
vancement of Colored People was

forced to abandon its inspirational 
slogan “ Free by ’63.”

The most poignant symptom of in­
cipient racial disillusionment was the 
sudden rise of the black-separatist 
movement. Almost overnight, the bira- 
cial approach to the struggle for racial 
justice and desegregation was reversed 
by Stokely Carmichael, who, as the 
head of the Student Nonviolent Coordi­
nating Committee, insisted that “ black 
power”  required the exclusion of 
whites. Racial militancy was now 
equated with racial separatism and a 
rejection of the goals of racial integra­
tion. The interracial rationale and 
strategy that had led to the Brown deci­
sion and other court victories were now 
rejected, not only by white suprema­
cists, but by black separatists as welt. 
In the wake of this emotional reversal 
and the rejection of the hard-fought-for 
goals of racial integration, many black 
students at interracial colleges de­
manded and obtained segregated cam­
pus facilities; black-separatist cults 
erupted throughout the northern and 
western regions of the nation, and their 
nonrational and flamboyant pro­
nouncements and demands were exten­
sively publicized by the media.

The black-separatist movement, 
which reached its zenith in the late 
1960’s and the early 70’s, was a carbon 
copy of white supremacy. In asking for 
a return to the nonthreatening sanctu­
ary o f racial isolation, it demonstrated 
not only the frtistration of young black 
leaders, but also their anguish emd 
deep-rooted fear that they were not yet 
prepared for the single-standard 
competition of a nonsegregat^ society 
— a fear subtly reinforced by many for­
mer white allies who joined in those 
black demands for racial isolation.

Understandable as were these often 
unstated but transparent fears of young 
blacks, the black-separatist movement 
could not be sustained. The skeletal 
structure o f black separation remains 
on “ integrated”  campuses, but the ma­
jority of the black masses never suc­
cumbed to this Lorelei o f black racism. 
They, more shrewdly than their young 
and more privileged leaders, under­
stood that racial isolation was the 
sourceof their anguish.

Yet subtler forms of the separatist 
charade continue to appear. Some of 
the same blacks who, in 1954, had 
hailed the Supreme Court’s repeal of 
the myth of “ separate but equal,”  now 
embraced the separatist doctrine as 
they sought to justify the continuation 
of traditionally black colleges —  and in­
sisted that all-black schools were ac­
ceptable if they were under the control 
of blacks. Some black academics, such 
as Dr. Thomas Sowell, the economist, 
supported the neo-conservative racial 
position in articles questioning the 
desirability of the continued struggle 
for racial integration. These are more 
sophisticated forms of black retreat 
than the crude and flamboyant pos­
tures of the black separatists, but they 
are just as destructive to the momen­
tum of the civil-rights movement.

The clarity of the objectives and 
goals of the racial struggle were 
clouded by other examples of diversion­
ary thinking among some black aca­
demics. Probably the best example of



this can be found in the recent 
writings of William Julius Wil 
son, a highly respected Uni­
versity of Chicago sociologist.

In 1978, Professor Wilson 
published his provocative and 
scholarly book, “ The Declin­
ing Significance of Race: 
Blacks and Changing Ameri­
can Institutions,”  an example 
of the wishful and premature 
optimism of the successful 
black middle-class academic.

I He concluded that class rather 
than race was the prime deter­
minant of social and economic 
inequities in America. Even 
though recent reports, particu­
larly the 1979 study released 
by the National Urban League, 
demonstrate that racism con­
tinues to limit the educational, 
economic and political mobil­
ity of blacks, many whites and 
some middle-class blacks 
have come to believe that dis­
crimination and segregation 
are no longer major problems 
limiting the life chances of 
blacks. And this theory is now 
being used by public officials 
as another justification for a 
contemporary policy and poli­
tics of ■ ‘benign neglect. ’ ’

The present inability of 
black political and civil-rights 
leaders to cope with the per­
sistent and deepening prob­
lems of American racism has 
many causes. Within the last 
decades there has been an 
abrupt loss of most of the 
major and charismatic black 
leaders. Martin Luther King 
Jr. was assassinated just as he 
was seeking more effective 
methods to deal with the 
bedeviling problems of North­
ern and urban racism. Whit­
ney M. Young Jr., of the Na­
tional Urban League, died sud­
denly as he was developing 
plans to make corporate lead­
ers more sensitive and respon­
sive to their pragmatic self-in­
terest in seeking the goals of 
racial justice. Roy Wilkins re­
tired after a long and produc­
tive tenure as leader of the 
N.A.A.C.P., and his successor, 
Benjamin Hooks, has not 
demonstrated a similar ca­
pacity. With the retirement of 
James Farmer, the Congress 
on Racial Equality soon be­
came a separatist cult virtu­
ally indistinguishable from the 
racists whom the organization 
had fought so courageously. 
Malcolm X  was murdered as 
he was seeking a way to be­
come a rational and effective 
ally of other civil-rights lead­
ers.

The erosion of the civil- 
rights leadership cannot be ex­
plained only by the death and 
retirement of the early black 
leaders. Ironically, the very 
success of the civil-rights 
movement has deprived it of 
many of its potential leaders. 
Some of the most effective 
civil-rights lawyers were ap­
pointed to the Federal courts.



s .
thus taking them away from 
the battlefront. Thurgood 
Marshall, Robert L. Carter, 
Spottswood W. Robinson 3d 
and Constance B. Motley can 
— and do —  contribute to the 
quest for racial Justice as ex­
amples of personal achieve­
ment and as direct guardians 
of democracy within our judi­
cial system, but they can no 
longer do so as activists.

More than 5,000 black o ffi­
cials have been elected within 
the last 10 years throughout 
the nation, demonstrating that 
the almost total racial exclu­
sion within the American polit­
ical system has ended. But this 
gain is finite; black elected of­
ficials either do not have the 
power or have not yet found 
the formula to improve the 
educational, economic and 
housing status, and the quality 
of life, of the black underclass. 
And they have, at least tempo­
rarily, been removed from the 
pool of potential civil-rights 
leaders.

The same conclusion must 
be reached concerning those 
blacks who have made it into 
the middle class by means of 
jobs in corporate America. 
Many o f these new black 
managers and executives are 
assigned to such race-related, 
“ created”  areas as “ com­
munity affairs”  and “ special 
markets.”  They are rarely 
found in line positions con­
cerned with developing or con­
trolling production, supervis­
ing the work of large numbers 
of whites or competing with 
their white “ peers”  for signifi­
cant promotions. In these 
created jobs, blacks lack the 
kind of security that goes with 
line positions; they are kept on 
by the sufferance ofwhite gov­
ernmental and corporate deci­
sion makers.

These black employees jeop­
ardize what little power they 
have if they seek to exercise it 
too aggressively in behalf of 
other blacks. It is generally 
understood by blacks in these 
positions, and by their white 
“ benefactors,”  that the cause 
of personal racial justice can 
best be served if  blacks 
demonstrate that they are 
“ objective,”  “ balanced,”  
“ moderate”  and not too pushy 
on racial issues. As a consult­
ant to private corporations on 
affirmative action, I have 
often observed that, with some 
noticeable exceptions, black 
affirmative-action officers of 
corporate and educational in­
stitutions are more likely to be 
cautious in the performance of 
their roles than many whites 
in similar positions.

Many black directors on cor­
porate boards seem similarly 
unable or unwilling to become 
actively involved in promoting 
employment and staffing 
practices beyond racial toke­
nism. They find it difficult and 
awkward to jeopardize their

personal gains and the affable 
acceptance of their white col­
leagues, and they appear to 
have little power to influence 
decisions relating to blacks of 
the white-controlled corpora­
tions or institutions with which 
they are identified. Some 
blacks have even stated pub­
licly the premature and wish­
ful belief that their status and 
positions in these corporations 
and institutions are uncon­
nected to the fact that they are 
black.

Even the more insightful of 
these successful blacks have 
not yet found the formula for 
communicating to whites that 
the presence of experienced 
and thoughtful blacks in genu­
ine decision-making positions 
can bring a dimension and per­
spective that could improve 
the quality of the decision­
making operation itself. Un­
qualified racial justice within 
a corporation or an educa­
tional institution strengthens 
the structure and function of 
that institution and gives so­
lidity to the overall economy.

Yet another negative side ef­
fect of racial progress has 
been a new and imminent risk 
of serious intraracial turbu­
lence that has further eroded 
the position o f the nation’s 
traditional black leadership. 
Underclass blacks who ob­
serve the apparent success of 
middle-class blacks can read­
ily compare it with the chronic 
failures of their own lives. 
Traditional resentment and 
hostility toward whites can ex­
tend to resentment and hos­
tility toward successful 
blacks. Past American racism 
was democratic in that it 
tended to reject and exclude 
all blacks without regard to in­
telligence, education, talents 
or personal character. The 
struggle for racial justice 
could be conducted with a 
minimum of intraracial class 
conflict. With the recent suc­
cess of the civil-rights move­
ment, however, some blacks 
appear not only to have es­
caped exclusion, but even to 
have been embraced by white 
society. A  few black males are 
invited to join private clubs as 
a sign of institutional maturity 
— or as a means o f making the 
white members of these sud­
denly integrated clubs worthy 
of consideration for judicial or 
other public office. Some 
blacks are able to purchase 
homes or rent apartments in 
previously all-white neighor- 
hoods and suburbs. But the 
masses of the black under­
class remain entrapped in de­
teriorating ghettos. When they 
vent their frustrations and 
desperation in spasmodic 
eruptions, they are told by 
black middle-class leaders 
that this will only make mat­
ters worse. Such advice from 
the representatives of the 
black middle class to the



^'^||j^ng-to-lose”  black under­
class can be expected to elicit 

-and intensify the latent group 
self-hatred common to op­
pressed groups. An example of 
this was the cool —  if  not hos­
tile —  reaction Andrew Young 
and Jesse Jackson received 
when they sought to reason 
with blacks in Miami after the 
recent uprising in that city.

Unless the racial oppression 
now perpetrated on the mil­
lions of members of the black 
underclass is remedied, the 
civil-rights gains now enjoyed 
by the black middle class will 
prove to be tragically Pyrrhic 
victories. Without a genuine 
commitment by American 
society to implement solid 
remedies, one must expect an 
increase in group and individ­
ual antisocial and self-destruc­
tive acts. Continued racial re­
jection and its manifestations 
could enable a skillful dema­
gogue to exploit the festering 
rage of the black masses 
thereby contributing further 
to the social and economic in­
stability of all Americans.

The dynamics, threats and 
challenges of today’s struggle 
for unqualified racial justice 
may well require a new kind of 
black leadership. There are 
serious questions whether the 
charismatic individual leaders 
who played so important a role 
in recent decades are appro­
priate for the modem era. 
There are uncertainties as to 
whether the structure and 
function of the traditional 
civil-rights organizations can 
cope with the problems 
spawned by their past suc­
cesses. The types of strategy 
and action that the present re­
quires may demand a new 
coalition of political, com­
munity, religious and aca­
demic leadership among 
blacks. The danger is tl^at a 
vehicle to bring about such a 
coalition is not currently avail­
able, and it needs to be devel­
oped and put into use before it 
is too late.

To understand the complex 
inconsistencies of American 
race relations today, one must 
return to Gunnar MyrdaTs 
classic analysis of the “ Ameri­
can Dilemma.”  Race relations 
since the 1950’s have verified 
his thesis of the dynamic con­
flict between the verbalized 
ideals and goals of democracy 
and the powerful pragmatic 
politics that support the per­
sistent forms of institutional 
racism in all aspects of Ameri­
can life —  schools, colleges 
and universities, professions, 
churches. Government agen­
cies, corporations, labor 
unions and residential com­
munities. Within this tangled 
web of ideals contaminated by 
prejudicial practices, the his­
tory of the struggle for racial 
justice, while revealing gen­
eral even though spasmodic 
progress, has been consistent 
in its inconsistency. From the 
Emancipation Proclamation 
to the present, there has been

a repetitive cycle o f hope, 
progress, frustration, turbu­
lence, violence and seeming 
regression. We now seem to be 
in the frustration phase. The 
goals of racial justice, which 
are consistent with American 
democratic ideals, must con­
stantly be sought within politi­
cal realities contaminated by 
racism. White Americans, 
from the early abolitionists to 
our contemporary liberals, 
are at best ambivalent about 
accepting black Americans as 
human beings entitled to the 
same respect, rights and op­
portunities granted to other 
Americans as a matter of fact.

The challenge to the nation’s 
leadership, white and black, is 
to restrain a new wave of tur­
bulence and regression, and to 
create a new era o f hope and 
visible progress on the path to 
equal justice for all Ameri­
cans. ■



Kenneth B. d a r t Responds
jarl Gershman’s analysis of 

iecontemporary status o f the 
black civil-rights movement is 
highiy sophisticated, balanced 
and constructive —  and an il­



lustration of some of the com­
plexities of the struggle for ra-' 
clal justice confronting black 
and white Americans in the 
1980’s. It would be all too easy, 
for example, for blacks to dis­
miss his article as another ex­
ample o f whites exercising 
their power to define contem­
porary civil-rights problems 
primarily in terms o f their 
own aspirations and interests. 
But blacks and whites must 
not retreat into a miasma of 
self-protective platitudes, su­
perficial slogans and escapist 
rationalizations; they must 
face and seek to resolve even 
the most disturbing interra­
cial disagreements. Progress 
cannot be achieved by denials.

Thus, I agree with the em­
phasis Mr. Gershman places 
on the predicament o f the 
growing black underclass in 
the ghettos of large American 
cities. Federal, state and local 
governmental programs, the 
activities o f traditional civil- 
rights organizations, com­
munity projects and even the 
increase in the number of 
black elected officials have not 
made any observable dent on 
this critical problem. I also 
agree with his statement, in 
his analysis of the role of ra­
cial “ militants,”  that “ what 
appeared to be a form of racial 
militancy was in reality a 
policy of racial accommoda­
tion.”  It is now clear that the

black power”  and “ com­
munity control”  movements, 
while having some temporary 
cathartic value, did not im­
prove by one iota the educa­
tional and economic status of 
ghetto-entrapped underclass 
blacks.

Unfortunately, Mr. Gersh- 
man’s analysis did not discuss 
the pathos of this acceptance 
of segregation on the part of 
some blacks or the irony of 
this confusion among blacks in 
the wake o f the promises o f ra­
cial justice inherent in the his­
toric Brown decision. In spite 
of his other insights, he does 
not seem to understand that 
this verbal retreat to segrega­
tion on the part of some blacks 
is indicative of their frustra­
tions in the face of “ white 
backlash”  — the euphemism 
for persistent white racism. 
He does not seem to under­
stand that these frustrations 
are far more significant in that 
regard them any anxieties on 
the part of blacks concerning 
their abilities to compete with 
whites on a single standard in

truiy nonsegregated society.
Mr. Gershman’s description 

of the positive role p la y ^  by 
Daniel Patrick Moynihan in 
American race relations when 
he was part of the Kennedy 
and Johnson Administrations 
is correct. It was my belief at 

( Continued on Page 109)



Continued from  Page 105

the time, a belief that 
many o f my respected 
black and white col­
leagues in the social sci­
ences did not share, that 
Mr. Moynihan was liberal 
and progressive on racial 
matters. It is curious, 
however, that Mr. Gersh- 
man’s otherwise insight­
ful analysis left out the 
equally important fact 
that, during the period 
when he was a part of the 
Nixon Administration, 
Mr. Moynihan reversed 
his position on racial mat­
ters. He became and re­
mains one of the most ar­
ticulate leaders o f the 
“ neo-conservative”  posi­
tion. In contributing his 
slogan of “ benign neg­
lect,”  he helped to set the 
stage for the present con­
fusing racial policy and 
the civil-rights doldrums. 
This serious omission 
raises questions concern­
ing Mr. Gershman’s ob­
jectivity.

Mr. Gershman de­
scribes most favorably 
the thesis presented by 
Prof. William J. Wilson in 
“ The Declining Signifi­
cance of Race.”  I find it 
difficult to understand 
how it is possible to com­
prehend the cycle of pa­
thology that characterizes 
the ghettos except in 
terms o f j"acial oppres- 
sioif. Race, not class, 
m tlsf be the answer — un­
less one assumes that the 
prisoners o f the ghettos 
are inherently inferior or 
are somehow responsible 
for their own predica­
ment. In this aspect of his 
interpretation, Mr. Gersh­
man fails to see that the 
racial dehumanization 
Americans permit is a 
symptom of the deep-seat­
ed, systemic and most 
dangerous social disease 
of racism. This fact, 
which threatens the eco­
nomic and moral founda­
tions of the entire society, 
cannot be dismissed by 
quoting Professor Wilson, 
by tallying the number of 
black elected officials and 
other statistics or by the 
most detailed dissection 
of the inconsistencies of 
the blacks who met in 
Richmond, Va., in their 
desperate search for some 
way through the tangle of 
the present manifesta­
tions of American racism.

As I read Mr. Gersh­
man’s detailed descrip­
tion of the events and dis­
cussions at that meeting, I 
could not help thinking of 
another subtle manifesta­

tion o f American racism 
— namely, that it is not 
likely that any black so­
cial scientist or journalist 
would have had access to 
the details of similar dis­
cussions among a group of 
spokesmen for white eth­
nic groups. I also believe 
that we would have made 
a major step toward ra­
cial justice in America 
when a black social scien­
tist would be invited by 
The New York Times to 
write his analysis of the 
aspirations, conflicts and 
inconsistences of one or 
another group of white 
Americans.

The frustrations, incon­
sistencies, contradica- 
tions and aspirations of 
the present group of black 
civil-rights leaders, black 
political and religious 
spokesmen and black aca­
demics are matched and, 
I believe, determined by 
the fears of racial change, 
by the well-publicized ex­
planations and equivoca­
tions o f white public offi­
cials and by the rationali­
zations of some white aca­
demics, In spite of the 
most sophisticated analy­
ses, the most balanced 
and seemingly objective 
discussions supported by 
the latest statistics, the 
facts of continued racial 
injustices and cruelties 
cannot be excused by stat­
ing the problem in such a 
way that the victims are 
blamed for failing to im­
prove their economic posi­
tion.

It is not clear whether 
Mr. Gershman accepts 
the fact that the self-per­
petuating pathology of the 
ghetto is determined by 
the self-perpetuating 
cruelties of American rac­
ism. Yet he has made an 
important contribution to­
ward honest dialogue 
which is necessary in 
order to continue the 
struggle for unqualified 
racial justice. In spite of 
my questions and the 
areas of disagreement, I 
am in complete agree­
ment with his penetrating 
concluding insight; “ The 
existence of a permanent 
underclass in all of the 
major cities is not, after 
all, just a black issue. It is 
an issue that affects the 
future of America as a v i­
able civilization.”

It would be tragic if 
America were to permit 
its past and future contri­
butions to a democratic 
civilization to be sacri­
ficed on the altar of rac­
ism. ■



Youth Unrest All Over
By Sandy Close

SAN FRANCISCO — Periiaps the 
most chilling aspect ofThT ftotifig'ih 
Mfanii — as m upheavals tEat have 
i ^ e d  Teheran, San Salvador, Mana­
gua, Capetown, and Kwangju, South 
Korea, recently — was that the first to 
kill and be k il l^  weretfie voune.
-Was the Miami rioting just a momen- 

j tary fla^H ~re5eniaOiiDBfe^^
blacks, infji'pated at inaqwitahlp 

la w enforcement and endemic- unem- 
I ploymfent? OF was Miami^s-the first 
UfUted^Sfates episode in a ,je »-era  of

gr^aK £ Ia Ife ii-«h er-U n ited  States 
citiesaswell?
! With huge populations of youths now 
confroming limited-OPoortunitiKi that 
are bSing^even further reduced hv 
wofldwl^rer^sinn,' widecpreaH ftig-
■cuiitBiRTsryoutK'lh bulging_sities-ef the 
tPtrd'ytg'ia nas become aconspicuous

ers constitute nearly half of the popu­
lation and not 28 percent, as Census 
Bureau figures surest.

Partly because of Americans’ legiti­
mate concern with the aging of their 
population and with the many problems 
facing the elderly, this expanding popu­
lation of minority urban youth has been 
largely ignored. Yet as in the_Uiird 
world, thew young p i^ le  coulif'repre- 
sentthe moSTtaportant element .shap­
ing ther quality of life in urban America 
in this decade.

Iran’s revolution began when half its 
population was under 17 years of age, ac­
cording to Michael Fisher, a Harvard 
anthropologist, and when Teheran was 
bursting with unemployed and dissident

Tact of international life 
I Tn the United States, however, the be­

lief has taken hold that we will eventu­
ally eliminate the problem of our discon­
tented ^uth through the aging of our 
population and the steady decline in the 
number of our own young.

Fred Crossland, who heads the Ford 
Foundation’s division of educatiem and 
public ^ licy, cites Census Bureau data 
to predict that America’s population of 
18-year-olds, about 2 percent of the 
overall pop^ation in July 1979, will 
shrink at least 25 percent between now 
and 1994 to 1.3 percent of the popula- 
ti<m — a trend that, most experts say, 
would mean fewer demands on scarce 
resources, less competition for jobs, 
and, especially, fewer yxmng criminals 
on the streets. But a critical factor is 
missing in such projections; Through­
out the 1980’s, a recent Wall Street 
Journal news report estimated, nearly 
half of the expected population in­
crease in this country will come from 
soaring illegal immigration, mainly 
by young immigrants of child-bearing 
age. In fact, there is no way to sustain 
a modest rate of economic growth 
without substantial migration of labor, 
mainly from Hispanic and other Carib­
bean countries with very high birth 
rates, according to Clark Reynolds, a 
labor economist at Stanford Universi­
ty’s Food Research Institute. The re­
sult could be many more young people 
in our cities in coming years than we 
now expect.

If, in fact, we are undercounting 
yoimg and poor blacks as well as under- 
estimatii^ the flow of immigrants, we 
are blinding ourselves to the possibility 
that our cities, rather than coming to 
resemble European garden cities with 
their genteel oldsters, will look more 
and more like third-world cities, whose 
youth populations are not only growing 
poorer and less-educated but also larger 
as a result of higher birth rates and 
m iction  from even poorer countries, 
cities and villages.

As a consequence, a growing propor- 
j tim  of  urban residentsin this ^ ntfv 
I ^ ~ b e  foreien-bom. nonwhite and 
i  voune. Already 44 percent of all people 
, ofSispanic descent in the United States 

are under 18. Nonwhites account for 
three out of four children in the public 
schools of eight major United States 
cities. New York City among them, and 
more than half the public-school enroll­
ment in 13 more cities. David R. Jones, 
special adviser to Mayor Edward 1. 
Koch of New York City, believes that 
an accurate census count for his city 
would show that minority New York­

young workers and students. Nicara­
gua’s revolution was essentially carried 
out by youth, a fact underscore by re­
ports that 90 percent of the casualties 
were under 19 years of age. In South

Korea, according to Bruce Cumings, a 
specialist in Asia at the University of 
Washington, hundreds of thousands of 
istudents, shut out of universities by 
martial law and out of labor markets by 
global recession, provide ready bodies 
for an increasingly volatile (^positirai 
such as the m e  that temporarily seized 
the city of Kwangju. In South Africa, 
where the majority of the black pc^la- 
tion, as in the rest of the continent, is 
under 15, black andmixed-race students 
have mounted the most widespread

protests against the Government since 
the Soweto uprising in 1976.

Nowhere in the United States has the 
polarization between elderly and young, 
white and minority members, reached 
so wide a gulf as in Florida, already the 
state with the nation’s highest percent­
age of elderly. By the year 2000, the Cen­
sus Bureau reported in 1979, Florida will 
have more pe^le over 65 than under 14; 
further, one-third of the blacks and resi­
dents of Hispanic background will be 
under 14 — a trend that ongoing immi­
gration from Latin America and the 
Caribbean will accelerate.

This polarizaticm already manifests 
itself in the heightened hostility toward 
yotmg people in Florida. As Rasa Gust- 
aitis r^ r te d  earlier this year in The 
Saturday Review, this hostility is 
particularly apparent in Florida’s dis­
proportionately small investment in 
public education. Although it is one of 
the country’s wealthiest states, Florida 
ranks 32d in expenditures on schools. 
The le^slature has refused to enact any 
restraints on housing discrimination 
against children; much of the new 
urban housing is designed exclusively 
for retirees. The state educational sys­
tem has adopted an unusually punitive 
attitude toward young trouble-makers, 
with corporal punishment standard 
practice in almost all public schools.

Black youths feel the pressure of this 
punitive hand most acutely. More than 
half of Dade County’s black pc^ation 
of 200,000 is under 19. Although blacks 
form only 15 percent of the county’s total 
residmits, black youths account for the 
largest number of arrests, the highest 
percent of school eiqiulsions and the 
highest number of droj^ts.

If the cutting edge of jriuths’ discon­
tent is to be found in third-world urban 
communities abroad and in the United 
States, it is by no means limited to 
them: Eruptions of white youths in Am­
sterdam and Zurich and London and 
Hamburg underscore the extent to 
which the frustrations of the new gener­
ation in the 1960*s apply to young people 
of all races and even classes.

No white-youth revolts have erupted 
in the Uidted States as they have in Eu­
rope. But the rising indicators of the 
deeply felt sense of having now*’°rp - 
go — rising suicide f9le&; h l^  school 
dropouts, illegitimate pregnancies, 
amoi^ others — are clear. Many young 
people understand that for the first time, 
in American history, the new genera­
tion carmot hope to match the standard 
of living of its parents, let alone surpass 
that standard.

Like their third-world counterparts, 
vdiite youths share combative assert 
tiveness, a refusal to be wished a w a y ^  
whether it takes the form expressed bjf 
fascist National Front youths in Lorn 
don, street toughs in Hamburg, punk-l 
rockers in New York City. Increasing-\ 
ly, they must carve out their own 
tions —  like the 20 million, largelw 
young, largely ncmwhite global mi­
grants who now wander across re-1 
giMial and national frontiers looking! 
for new, urban-based ways to survive.

Wherever officialdom thinks it can 
contain and control these new popula­
tions of urban youth with pre-emptive 
crackdowns, it will likely be met with 
protracted and bloody youth-led revolts 
— with more Teherans, Capetowns, 
Kwangjus, Managuas, and Miamis.

Sandy Close is editor of the Pacific 
Ncjjp Service.



b. Notwithstanding the Court's ruling, the State 
Attorney elicited testimony from Mrs. Proffitt that she had 
telephoned the police after her conversation with petitioner.
[Tr. 253].

c. This evidence was presented by the State 
Attorney to establish indirectly the content of petitioner's 
excluded conversation with his wife —  that is, to imply the 
inculpatory nature of the statements made —  and was not relevant 
for any other reason.

d. Petitioner could not properly cross-examine 
Patricia Proffitt as to her testimony without sacrificing his 
marital privilege, already acknowledged by the court, and his 
constitutional and common law right to privacy and personal 
integrity. Petitioner was forced either to forgo his right to 
cross-examine and suffer the damaging inferences the jury would 
draw from the fact of the telephone call, or examine Mrs.
Proffitt and relinquish the protection of privacy which the court 
had afforded him.

28. The trial court's instructions to the jury on 
flight improperly imposed on petitioner the burden of proof to 
disprove guilt and commented on petitioner's failure to testify 
or present evidence in his behalf, in violation of petitioner's 
rights to Due Process of Law, the presumption of innocence, and 
the privilege against self incrimination guaranteed by the Fifth 
and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution.

a. The trial court instructed the jury as follows;

- 2 3 -





THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 19, 1980

Tongues 
And Myths

By Frank Anshen

STONY BROOK, N.Y. — Ever since 
the United States Supreme Court, in*
1974, mandated special treatment in ’ 
public schools for children who do not '' 
speak English, public interest in, and 
debate on, national and state policy to­
ward languages other than English 
and toward their speakers has been?^' 
dominated by myths. Nowhere is this 
more true than in the debates in the 
New York City area on the role of '
Spanish in the schools. '

Myth No. 1: The United States has 
always been monolingual. In fact, in­
tolerance for non-English languages ' 
as national policy is rather recent.
Louisiana entered the Union in 1812 
with a French-speaking majority.
Until the Civil War, Louisiana’s legis­
lative debates took place in French 
and English, laws were published in 
both with the French version often the 
official one, legal notices appeared in ■ 
both, and both were used in legal pro- • 
ceedings. Public and private educa­
tion also took place in both.

In 1902, a Congressional committee 
reported on the courts of New Mexico, 
which became a state in 1912, this 
way: “ The Justices of the peace practi­
cally a ll. . .  speak Spanish and the pro­
ceedings of their courts are conducted 
in Spanish.”  As late as 1884, the legis­
lature enacted a law specifically au­
thorizing monolingual Spanish public 
schools, and later it required that Eng­
lish be a subject in all public schools.

In the 19th century, Ohio and Penn­
sylvania supported with public monies 
schools in which German was the lan­
guage of instruction. There are exam- ■ 
pies from Wisconsin, Colorado, Hawaii : 
and other states, but the point is clear:
Widespread governmental tolerance 
or support of bilingualism is neither 
new, nor un-American, nor divisive.

In all of the states cited, English is 
now the overwhelmingly predominant 
language. This resulted not from gov­
ernmental fiat but from recognition by 
individuals that the rewards of speak­
ing English were greater than the the French language that even today 
problems of leaping it. ^threatens national unity. -

Myth No. 2; Monolingualism is the How about'Canada? Quebec is gov- 
norm, bilingualism a deviation. With emed by a party dedicated to breakup 
surprisingly few exceptions, bilingual- ' of the Canadian federation. Surely

region. How did this hostility arise? 
When Belgium became independent in 
1830, French became the national lan­
guage. Parliamentary debate and the 
affairs of most local governments 
were conducted in French as was all 
post-primary education. Strangely, 
this enforced monolingualism did not 
strengthen national unity; Instead, 
among Flemish speakers it bred in­
creasing nationalism and hostility to­
ward French. In 1930, when the lan­
guages were made legally equal, the 
alternative to the bilingual policy was 
civil war and destruction of Belgium 
as a unitary state. It is legal bilingual­
ism that has saved Belgium, and legal 
monolingualism that has left a herit­
age of Flemish suspicion and hatred of

forced monolingualism did little to 
promote feelings of unity In the British 
Isles, and today Ireland, unlike Que­
bec, is independent.

Myth No. 4: Children need the 
basics, not bilingual education.

In its decision, the Supreme Court : 
reasoned that children mnnot learn ij 
reading, writing, and ^arithmetic,. 
when taught in a language they do not ' 
understand. It is difficult to argue with 
this conclusion.

Frank Anshen is assistant professor of 
linguistics at the State University of 
New York at Stony Brook. . . >

"'-'•1 'e-'.-'

ism is common throughout the world. 
In the Soviet Union and China the role 
of minority languages is a constitu­
tional question The future of Breton in 
France, Basque and Catalan in Spain, 
and Welsh in Britain are matters of 
continued debate. Finland has two of­
ficial languages, Switzerland four, and 
India more than 20. Portugal, Iceland, 
the Korean Peninsula, and Cuba seem 
uncompromisingly monolingual, but it 
is not easy to add to that list.

Myth No. 3: Belgium and Canada 
are examples of the disunity fostered 
by Government-sponsored bilingual­
ism. There is indeed enormous ho.s- 
tility in Belgium between French and 
Flemish speakers, to the extent that 
the French-language Louvain Univer­
sity, once situated in the Flemish- 
speaking area, was forced to- physi­
cally relocate to the French-speaking

here we see the divisive effects of 
bilingualism supported by the Govern­
ment. Well, not quite. The rise in 
French nationalism in the last 20 years 
did not result from successful Govern­
ment-sponsored bilingualism but 
rather from the failures of that policy. 
French speakers, living in a country 
dominated economically and politi­
cally by English speakers, feared for 
the survival of French.

The alternative to bilingualism in 
Canada would be legally enforced re­
placement of French by English. We 
have an example of such imposition. 
Ireland was part of the United King­
dom, a state, like Canada, with an 
English-speaking majority. Succes­
sive British Governments Imposed the 
English language on Ireland to the ex- 
tent that by 1920 less than 5 percent of 
the population spoke Irish. This en-



Excerpts from Final Report o f Humanities Commission
NEW YORK

The following are excerpts from the 
the final report o f  the Rockefeller 
Commission on the Humanities re- 
leased here last week.

Nailed to the ship’ s mast in Moby  ̂
Dick is a gold doubloon stamped with 
signs and symbols “ in luxuriant pro­
fusion.” The coin is Captain Ahab’ s 
promised reward to the crewman who 
sights the white whale, but in its em­
blems each man reads his own mean­
ing. As Ahab says, “ This round gold 
is but the image o f the rounder globe, 
which, like a magician’ s glass, to each 
and every man in turn but mirrors 
back his own mysterious self.”

Like the bright doubloon, the hu­
manities mirror our own image and 
our image o f the world. Through the 
humanities we reflect on the funda­
mental question: what does it mean 
to be human? The humanities offer 
clues but never a complete answer. 
They reveal how people have tried to 
make moral, spiritual, and intellectual 
sense o f a world in which irrational­
ity, despair, loneliness, and death are 
as conspicuous as birth, friendship, 
hope, and reason. We learn how in­
dividuals or societies define the moral 
life and try to attain it, attempt to rec­
oncile freedom and the responsibil­
ities o f  citizenship, and express them­
selves artistically. The humanities do 
not necessarily mean humaneness, 
nor do they always inspire the indi­
vidual with what Cicero called “ in­
centives to noble action.”  But by 
awakening a sense o f what it might 
be like to be someone else or to live 
in another time or culture, they tell 
us about ourselves, stretch our imagi­
nation, and enrich our experience. 
They increase our distinctively hu­
man potential.

The humanities presume particular 
methods of expression and inquiry— 
language, dialogue, reflection, imagi­
nation, and metaphor. In the human­
ities the aims o f these activities of 
mind are not geometric proof and 
quantitative measure, but rather in­

sight. perspective, critical under­
standing, discrimination, and creativ­
ity. These aims are not unique to the 
humanities, but are found in other 
fields, in images from the arts, and 
in new forms o f expression created by 
film, television, and computers. No 
matter how large their circle, howev­
er, the humanities remain dedicated 
to the disciplined development o f ver­
bal, perceptual, and imaginative skills 
needed to understand experience.

For centuries the fields o f knowl­
edge most often viewed as humanistic 
have been languages and literatures, 
history, and philosophy. To these the 
Commission on the Humanities' of 
1963-64 added the arts, “ the history 
and comparison o f religion and law,”  
and “ those aspects o f the social sci­
ences which have humanistic content 
and employ humanisitic methods,”  
Legislation authorizing the National 
Endowment for the Humanities now 
also includes linguistics, archaeology, 
and ethics. This Commission, too. 
sees languages and literatures, histo­
ry, and philosophy as the central hu­
manistic fields, and we accept these 
additions. But fields alone do not de­
fine the humanities:

“ At their most vivid, the [human­
ities] are like the arts as well as the 
sciences. The humanities are that 
form o f knowledge in which the 
knower is revealed. All knowledge 
becomes humanistic when this effect 
takes place, when we are asked to 
contemplate not only a proposition 
but the proposer, when we hear the 
human voice behind what is being 
said.”  (Charles Frankel, speech in 
Austin, Texas, December, 1978.)

Whether defined by questions, 
methods, or fields, the humanities 
employ a particular medium and turn . 
o f  mind. The medium is language. 
Discourse sets in motion and supports 
reflection and judgment. The human- . 
ities have close ties not only with 
speech but especially with writing and 
the thought processes writing makes 
possible. Study in the humanistic dis­
ciplines is not limited to texts—oral

cultures have reflected deeply on hu­
man experience and have achieved 
great wisdom— but it cannot proceed 
without creating and using texts. In 
our time the humanities necessarily 
have to do not only with written word 
and print, but also with the electron­
ically processed word. While the me­
dium in the humanities is language, 
the turn o f mind is toward history, the 
record o f what has moved men and 
women before us to act, believe, and 
build as they did. Conscious o f our 
links with the past, we achieve a 
deeper understanding o f ourselves in 
the present and discover possibilities 
and limits that will shape our future.

The essence o f the humanities is a 
spirit or an-attitude toward humanity. 
They show how the individual is 
autonomous and at the same time 
bound, in the ligatures o f language 
and history, to humankind across 
time and throughout the world. The 
humanities are an important measure 
o f the values and aspirations o f any 
society. Intensity and breadth in the 
perception o f life and power and rich­
ness in works o f  the imagination be­
token a people alive as moral and aes­
thetic beings, citizens in the fullest 
sense. They base their education on 
sustaining principles o f personal en­
richment and civic responsibility. 
They are sensitive to beauty and 
aware o f their cultural heritage. They 
can approach questions o f value, no 
matter how complex, with intelli­
gence and goodwill. They can use 
their scientific and technical achieve­
ments responsibly because they see 
the connections among science, tech­
nology, and humanity.

This report is intended for all who 
care about the quality o f our common 
life. Surveying America today, many 
would argue that the humanities are 
in crisis and would describe this crisis 
as symptomatic o f a general weaken­
ing o f our vision and resolve. Al- 
'though this Commission does not take 
an apocalyptic view, we are deeply 
concerned about serious social defi­
ciencies o f perception and morale.

Our society has increasingly assumed 
the infallibility o f specialists, the ne­
cessity o f regulating human activity, 
and the virtues o f material consump­
tion. These attitudes limit our poten­
tial to grow individually and to decide 
together what is for the common 
good. When does specialization suf­
focate creativity, denigrate the criti­
cal judgment o f non-specialists, or un­
dermine the idea o f leadership? When 
does regulation become regimenta­
tion? At what point does materialism 
weaken the will to conduct our lives 
according to spiritual and moral val­
ues? How we as a society answer 
such questions will guide our activi­
ties at home and abroad. We need the 
humanities to help answer them intel­
ligently and hopefully.

This Commission believes that the 
humanities are a social good and that 
their well-being is in the national in­
terest. In this report we describe what 
is now being done to strengthen, the 
humanities, and we recommend fur­
ther means for invigorating them—a 
reconsideration o f their purposes in 
education and public life and a mo­
bilization of resources In their behalf. 
We proceed from the premise that the 
humanities are widely undervalued 
and often poorly understood.

Much o f our system o f education 
shows signs o f deterioration, notably 
in the secondary schools. The reading 
and writing skills o f high school sen­
iors have declined since the early 
1960’s; the rate o f illiteracy in this age 
group has been estimated at over 10 
per cent and as high as 20 per cent. 
Public confidence in schooling as an 
institution has declined seriously 
since the 1960’s. Tax cuts, spending 
limitations, and narrow applications 
o f the “ back to basics”  movement re­
sult in education built on principles 
o f management and quantitative 
measurement. This foundation alone 
cannot support the historic purposes 
o f elementary and secondary educa­
tion-discerning citizenship and per­
sonal growth—for which the human­
ities are essential.

Many students in schools and col­
leges avoid broad intellectual devel­
opment in favor of acquiring imme­
diate job skills. A national survey 
comparing attitudes o f college fresh­
men in 1969 and 1979 reveals sharp 
declines in the importance they give 
to two educational objectives closely 
related to citizenship and individual 
enrichment— keeping up with politi­
cal affairs and developing a philos­
ophy o f life (“ The American Fresh­
man: National Norms for Fall 1979,”  
published early this year by the 
American Council on Education and 
the University o f California at Los 
Angeles). Teachers o f the humanities 
see the diminishing numbers o f stu­
dents in their courses as a mark o f 
society’ s indifference to their work. 
Declining enrollments provide admin­
istrators an excuse for trimming the 
humanities in schools and cutting de­
partmental budgets in colleges and 
universities.

The structure o f higher education 
has cracks. In many institutions the 
undergraduate curriculum lacks con­
tinuity and coherence— in the human­
ities and in their relation to other 
fields. A majority of students need re­
medial English. Foreign language re­
quirements for admission and gradu­
ation have been reduced or aban­
doned. Large numbers o f graduate 
students and young Ph.D.'s in the hu­
manities cannot find academic jobs; 
their distressing plight frightens many 
o f  the best undergraduates away from 
the humanities. The system o f schol­
arly research—litwaries, institutes, 
publishing, and sabbatTcals—is jeop­
ardized by inflation. b\ 'he even more 
rapid rise in the cost o f materials and 
maintenance, and by the decline in 
private funding for fellowships.

From the late I950’s to the 1970’ s 
the ranks o f professional humanists 
and academic administrators grew at 
an unprecedented rate. Yet in recent \ , 
years many humanists and adminis- {
trators have abdicated their most ba- 
sic social responsibility: to help shape 

Continued on Page 16, Column 3
. ;.v______



Kockefeller Text Continued from  Pa^e 14

a philosophy o f education. Some have 
indiscriminately applied cost-ac­
counting methods to the curriculum 
without considering larger questions 
o f educational purpose or cultural 
heritage. Others have dodged de­
mands for accountability without de­
fending the value and indeed the rel­
evance o f the humanities. Still others 
hold to expectations and systems of 
reward inherited from years o f expan­
sion, professional mobility, and self- 
conhdence: graduate faculty, for ex­
ample, have been slow to advise stu­
dents about the job crisis and its 
implications for career and curricu­
lum. Learned societies have failed to 
recognize and respond to the needs 
o f schools, community colleges, and 
cultural institutions. Some educators 
dehne education narrowly according 
to the special needs of their institu­
tions or the particular interests o f the 
community. In brief, many humanists 
and administrators have adopted po­
sitions from which they cannot con­
tribute to general discussion o f the re­
lationship between education, cul­
ture, and life in the community.

Efforts to define America’ s com­
mon culture have stirred fears among 
minorities that their contributions to 
cultural life are to be thrown back into 
the melting pot. The cultural debate 
allegedly between “ elitists”  and 
“ populists" oversimplifies issues and 
weakens everyone's will to preserve 
our diverse heritage and find common 
values. Without widespread public 
commitment to cultural preservation, 
our museums, libraries, and other cul­
tural institutions will have to close. 
Without some agreement on stan­
dards o f judgment, we cannot sensi­
tively develop new cultural forms 
such as television and film in which 
the medium is often not language and 
the turn o f mind not historical.

Our society has only fieeiing per­
ceptions o f humanism as a civic ideal. 
Although the humanist is above all a 
teacher and scholar, since ancient 
Athens humanists have been expect­
ed to contribute to the general sense 
o f civic responsibility. In the middle 
1960’ s many humanists took up the 
cause o f civil rights, while toward the 
close o f that decade many joined col­
leagues from other fields in the move­
ment for peace in Vietnam. Not sur-' 
prisingly, humanists were no more 
able than anyone else to resolve the 
battles then raging in this country 
over our national policies at home and 
abroad. As the Watergate scandal un­
folded, millions wondered how sup­
posedly educated men in our govern­
ment could have such little apprecia­
tion o f the requirements o f civic 
virtue. These traumatic episodes In 
our recent history have done little to 
clarify how the humanities or indeed 
education can contribute to civic life 
through participation in and criticism 
o f the political process.

The need to interrelate the human­
ities, social sciences, science, and 
technology has probably never been 
greater than today. They converge in 
areas such as biomedical research, 
the application o f microprocessing 
and computer technologies, the con­
duct of government, arms control, 
and the safe use of natural re­
sources— subjects requiring interdis­
ciplinary investigation because of 
their social and ethical implications. 
Whether because of frustration, mis­
understanding, or indifference, how­
ever, collaboration among humanists, 
scientists, and technicians is insuffi­
cient. In universities and in public life 
the impression persists that the hu­
manities and sciences form two sep­
arate cultures, neither intelligible to 
the other. This impression indicates 
a fundamental kind o f illiteracy. So 
long as it prevails, humanists will 
hesitate to use new technologies, in­
cluding television, to the advantage of 
learning. Scientists and technicians 
will not appreciate the relevance o f

the humanities. As the physical and 
social conditions o f life change, few 
people will understand the real areas 
o f interaction or divergence among 
science, technology, and human val­
ues.

External financial support for the 
humanities has increased in current 
dollars over the past fifteen years, 
thanks especially to the National En­
dowment for the Humanities ( n .i..»i .). 
Created by Congress in 1965 along 
with the National Endowment for the 
Arts, the n .e.h . has become a bene­
factor and representative of the hu­
manities in Washington. But inflation 
and popular movements to reduce 
taxes have depreciated public and pri­
vate support o f teachers, scholars, 
educational institutions, libraries, and 
museums. The n .e .h . itself is criti­
cized for being either too “ elitist" or 
too "populist”  in its allocation of 
funds, or more generally for extend­
ing the arm o f the federal bureaucracy 
into public (and private) life. . . .

The prospects for the humanities 
are better than some might think. Ed­
ucational opportunity in and beyond 
school is now available to more 
Americans o f all origins and ages than 
ever before. Access to higher educa­
tion has broadened in the past fifteen 
years as four-year institutions have 
expanded and two-year colleges pro­
liferated. Total undergraduate and 
graduate enrollments for credit in­
creased from about 4.8 million in 1963 
to about 11.7 million in 1979; within 
these totals, enrollments in two-year 
colleges rose from about 900,000 in 
1963 to 4.3 million in 1979. Noncredit 
enrollments in adult education have 
grown even more dramatically, as has 
public interest in the performing arts, 
museums, and cultural activities. The 
expansion and diversification of 
learning represent a major commit­
ment o f American democracy and 
have opened new possibilities for the 
humanities.

The exploration o f these possibili­
ties will not progress if people blame 
the economy for every woe. No law 
of history proves that minds must 
close when belts are tightened. We

believe the humanities iiecu leathi- 
mation as much as support. We see 
our report primarily as a contribution 
to rethinking the humanities, not as 
a shopping list. We hope that all who 
want to improve education and the 
quality o f life will share this view. . . .

Culture and Citizenship
The humanities are often placed in 

the middle o f a cultural debate that 
carries the shorhand description “ elit­
ism versus populism.”  Indeed, read­
ers might view some arguments in this 
report as elitist or populist. We have 
not let these terms control our debate, 
however. We reject the elitist-popu­
list formula as a misleading label for 
some real, diverse, and often con­
fused issues in our culture.

Some people think it elitist to point 
out that our culture arose in what is 
generally described as the Western 
tradition; populist to affirm that Na­
tive and Latin American, African, 
and Asian cultures also form our heri­
tage. Elitism is associated with high 
culture, which often refers to a finite 
list o f works, authors, and standards; 
populism with popular culture, which 
has an inexhaustible list. The rich are 
thought elitist because they can afford 
educational and cultural activities the 
poor cannot. Those who emphasize 
our common culture are sometimes 
called elitist, whereas those who ac­
centuate cultural pluralism are called 
populist. Maintaining traditional 
forms of cultural expression is often 
viewed as elitist, whereas admiring 
novelty and spontaneity is apparently 
a populist trait. It is allegedly elitist 
to advocate the preservation of cul­
tural resources, populist to urge 
broad public access to them.

“ Elitism versus populism" distorts 
these issues. The Western tradition 
includes popular culture and non- 
Western elements. Our common cul­
ture is not limited to the Western tra­
dition nor restricted to the wealthy. 
An interpretive exhibit o f Cezanne’s 
paintings accessible to people across 
the country is neither elitist nor pop­
ulist.

“ Elitism versus populism" reduces 
debate to ideological categories and 
polarizes opinions. To be sure, the is­
sues above express tension between 
cultural views that are sometimes ir­
reconcilable and often must compete 
for limited resources, as we discov-

Members o f  Rockefeller 
Panel on the H um anities

NEW YORK
The following are the members o f

the Rockefeller Commission on the
Humanities:
Richard W. Lyman, president. Rockefel­

ler Foundation, and former president, 
Stanford University, chairman.

William O. Baker, chairman. Bell Lab­
oratories.

A ida Barrera, president. Southwest Cen­
ter for Educational Television.

Robert Coles, professor o f psychiatry 
and medical humanities. Harvard Uni­
versity.

Jill K. Conway, president. Smith Col­
lege.

Robben W. Fleming, president. Corpo­
ration for Public Broadcasting.

Charles Frankel, former president, Na­
tional Humanities Center (deceased May 
10. 1979).

Paul A. Freund, professor emeritus of 
law. Harvard University.

William H. Gass, professor o f philos­
ophy, Washington University.

A. Bartlett Giamatti, president, Yale 
University.

Hanna H. Gray, president, University of 
Chicago.

Warren J. Haas, president. Council on 
Library Resources.

Sheldon Hackney, president, IXilane 
University; president-elect. University 
o f Pennsylvania.

William R. Hewlett, chairman o f the 
executive committee, Hewlett-Packard 
Company.

Jeremiah Kaplan, president, Macmillan 
Publishing Company.

Nannerl O. Keohane, associate profes­
sor o f political science, Stanford Univer­
sity.

Robert Kotlowitz, vice-president and 
director o f programming, wnet-tv . 
New York.

Richard D. Lamm, governor. Colorado.
Sherman E. Lee, director, Cleveland Mu­

seum of Art.
Robert M. Lumiansky, president, 

American Council o f Learned Societies.
Martin E. Marty, professor o f the his­

tory o f modern Christianity, University 
o f Chicago.

Roch L. Mirabeau, dean of arts and sci­
ences, Miami-Dade Community 
College-North Campus.

Charles A. Mosher, former Congress­
man, Ohio.

Charles Muscatine, professor o f Eng­
lish, University o f California at Berke­
ley.

Walter J. Ono, professor o f English, 
Saint Louis University.

Harold Raynolds, Jr., commissioner of 
education. Maine.

Henry Rosovsky. dean o f the faculty o f 
arts and sciences. Harvard University.

John E. Sawyer, president, the Andrew 
W. Mellon Foundation.

L ewis Thomas, president. Memorial 
Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

Darwin T. Turner, professor o f English 
and chairman o f Afro-American studies. 
University o f Iowa.

Helen Vendler, professor of English, 
Brown University.

Harry Woolh, director. Institute for Ad­
vanced Study.



'aeltberauons as a Com­
mission. Nevertheless, our discus­
sions convinced us that we are not 
dealing with mutually exclusive cul-' 
tural realm';. Frequently the tensions 
can, at least in principle, be resolved. 
More often than not, they can gen­
erate creative energy i f  they are un­
derstood clearly and approached con­
structively.

The controversy over bilingualism 
exemplifies such tension. Proponents 
support bilingual education as the 
right road to full citizenship, with 
competence in both English and the 
language o f origin. The President’ s 
Commission on Foreign Language 
and International Studies claims that 
denigrating the languages o f  immi­
grants and linguistic minorities has 
partly caused the present ignorance of 
foreign languages (Strength Through 
Wisdom, Washington, D.C., 1979). 
Critics o f bilingual education, on the 
other hand, fear that it may create 
permanent foreign language enclaves 
in the United States, or that some 
children, caught halfway between two 
cultures, may miss opportunities or 
become “ alingual” — not competent in 
any language. Congress has recently 
authorized the Office o f Bilingual Ed­
ucation (Department o f Education) to 
conduct a national evaluation o f bi­
lingual education. This study must 
help end the needless politicization of 
the issue, which prevents an accept­
able resolution o f the two points of 
view. Just last year, such politiciza­
tion produced a noisy and rancorous 
struggle in the California State Leg­
islature that did nothing to shed light 
on the genuine problems of bilingual 
education, still less to contribute to 
their solution.

American society, among the 
'•world’s most diverse in its cultural 
origins, should cherish that diversity 
as a source o f constantly renewed 
strength. But there is danger in diver­
sity when it is carried to extremes. 
No society can flourish if its citizens 
deny the possibility of a common cul­
ture that unites all despite differences 
in origin, education, and outlook. 

This Commission docs not seek’ to 
preserve a narrow set o f moral, so­
cial, and aesthetic values; nor do we 
believe that pluralism should lead to 
excessive cultural particularism, 
crude moral relativism, or the suspen­
sion o f  critical judgment. We propose 
three principles oy which the human­
ities can help us all find common 
ground amid the competing interests 
and values in our national l ife . ' .

First, our cultural tradition con­
tains works generally regarded as 
classics. This tradition holds a special 
regard for the past, yet is flexible and 
alive. Western culture has always 
been enlarged and enriched by non- 
Westem cultures, by new works of 
art and scholarship, by the contribu­
tions of people never before given 
their due. and by concerns arising 
from our historical situation. These 
help define and redefine the canon of 
classics by forcing us to look at tra­
dition in fresh ways.

Second, there are standards within 
standards. Some popular novels are 
more subtle than others, some Greek 
or Navajo myths more profound than 
others, some black autobiographies 
more enlightening than others, some 
of Shakespeare's plays more effective 
dramatically than others. It is in no 
way undemocratic to recognize these 
distinctions, and only confusion and 
bigotry gain by denying them. All 
people have the capacity to reach for 
high standards of expression, inter­
pretation, and discrimination; these 
are not exclusive privileges o f one 
class or culture.

Hiird, education has a socializing 
dimension, as individuals share ideas, 
relate panicular experiences to uni­
versal concerns, sharpen their moral 
faculties, and serve the community. 
The humanities, by emphasizing our 
common humanity, contribute espe­
cially to the social purpose o f learn­
ing—to education for civic participa­
tion. which has been a strong theme 
in American society since the days of 
Thomas Jefferson.

iso cuncepuon oi me numaniues is 
complete if it omits humanism as a 
civic ideal..

In the European Renaissance many 
humanists connected learning with 
civic duty and decried what they took 
to be the pedantic, unworldly alti­
tudes o f medieval scholasticism. 
Since the Renaissance the connec­
tions between education and public 
life have multiplied. Democracy rests 
on the principle o f enlightened self- 
rule by the entire citizenry. So, in a 
sense, does our modern system o f 
cultural patronage. In the Renais­
sance the humanities depended on a 
few patrons; today support for and 
participation in the humanities are 
public forces and public responsibil­
ities on a large scale. Finally, though 
slowly, the meaning o f cosmopolitan­
ism has broadened, and with it the 
idea o f citizenship. We cannot afford 
to look parochially at other cultures 
as curiosities, “ like us”  only insofar 
as their members have converted to

Chnsuanuy or studiea at Oxlord or

These important social changes d o ^  
not point to a simple or single ideal 
o f civic virtue. Our republic stands on 
a belief that educated citizens will 
participate effectively in decisions 
concerning the whole community. 
Humanistic education helps prepare 
individuals for this civic activity. The 
humanities lead beyond “ functional”  
literacy and basic skills to critical 
judgment and discrimination, en­
abling citizens to view political issues 
from an informed perspective. 
Through familiarity with foreign cul­
tures—as well as with our own sub­
cultures— the humanities show that 
citizenship means belonging to some­
thing larger than neighborhood or na­
tion. Complementing the political side 
o f citizenship is the cultural. A  liter­
ate public does not passively receive 
cultural works from academic guard­
ians, but actively engages in the in­
terpretation, creation, and re-creation

ol inose works. t"ariicipauon .i>
 ̂republic o f letters is participation in 
community life as weU.- 

 ̂Although the humanities pertain to 
citizenship, they also have an integ­
rity o f their own. They are not always 
relevant to urgent social or political 
issues. They are not simply a means 
to advanced literacy or cultivation. 

^Nor are they a duty, a requirement, 
^or a kind o f finishing-school con- 

cem—“ froth on the brew, embroidery 
 ̂on the blanket. I f  to grow in wis­
dom— not simply in cleverness, or 
dexterity, or learning—is practical, 
then the humanities, properly con­
ceived and conveyed, are decidedly 
practical. They help develop capac­
ities hard to define clearly and with­
out cliche: a sharpened critical judg­
ment, a keener appreciation o f expe­
rience. Study o f the humanities 
makes distinctive marks on the mind; 
through history, the ability to disen- 
Ungle and interpret complex human 
events; through literature and the

aru», me lo  ui6uiifcuiai» uic
deeply felt, the well wrought, and the 
continually engrossing from the shal-"? 
low, the imitative, and the monot<^ 
nous; through philosophy, the sharp- 
ening of criteria for moral decision 
and warrantable belief.

These capacities serve much more 
than the notion that, as a member o f 
a community or state, the individual 
has civic duties and virtues. There are 
other values besides civic ones, and 
they are often found in privacy, in­
timacy, and distance from civic life. 
The humanities sustain this second 
conception o f individuality, as deeply 
rooted as the other in our cultural in­
heritance, in three important ways. 
First, they emphasize the individuaTs 
critical vigilance over political activ­
ity. This is a form o f civic participa­
tion. but it demands judgment ac­
quired through detachment and cir­
cumspection. Second, teaching and 
scholarship in the humanities fre- 

Coniinued on Follo*i'ing Page



O ' ^ T 'l i

Minority Report: True Integration 
Is Elusive Despite Statistical Gains

Continued From First Pm/e 
least moderately segregated," even though 
the number was down sharply from 76% in 
1968.

By another measure, the U.S Department 
of Education similarly reported that 607» of 
black children attended schools that were at 
least half black in 1978, although that was 
down from 70% of black children 10 years 
earlier. The department reported that the 
greatest progress tgward integrated schools 
in.that period came in the South, where the 
proportion of black children attending 
mostly black schools dropped to 597<> from

In the Northeast, the figure rose to 7 1%. 
from 68%. during these years, reflecting 
"while flight" to the suburbs and the rigid­
ity of segregated urban housing patterns.

In other areas, progress toward integra­
tion has been far more promising. These in­
clude higher education and numerous occu- 

■ pations and professions.
Today about one million blacks arc en­

rolled as college undergraduates, a fourfold 
jump from i960. Blacks account for about 
117(. of undergraduates at American col­
leges, up from 7% in 1970 and 67o in 1960; 
their college-enrollment proportion almost 
equals their \1% share of the total U.S. pop­
ulation. Furthermore, only about one-third 
of black undergraduates attend predomi­
nantly black colleges, against about half in 
1960.

At the graduate and professional-school 
level, blacks constitute about 67o of enroll­
ments, up from 47o in 1970.

As more blacks gain access to higher ed­
ucation. their representation in the profes­
sions and better-paying jobs generally has 
risen, although their proportional represen­
tation still lags behind that of whites. In the 
last two decades, nonwhite participation in 
professional and technical jobs has nearly 
doubled, to about 97c. and nonwhite repre­
sentation in the Labor Department's 
"managers and administrators" category 
also has doubled, to around 57c. Blacks 
make up 117c of plumbers and pipefitters, 
almost twice the proportion of the 1960s, and 
87c of machinists and job fitters, four times 
as many as two decades past.

Currently, there are 9,300 black physi­
cians and surgeons in the U.S., double the 
number of 1960, The population of black law­
yers stands at nearly 12,000, almost six 
times the number of 20 years ago.

De Facto Segregation Remains
But the reality behind these impressive 

figures is less heartening to those who de­
sire a colorblind society; where statistical 
integration exists, it is often accompanied 
by de facto segregation.

On the nation's college campuses, for In 
stance, some fraternities and sororities re 
main as vestiges of the formal segregation 
of past days. More common is an edgy sort 
of voluntary racial separation that discour­
ages contact between black and white stu­
dents who would like to make friends.

"Black students eat at the same tables in 
the cafeteria" and keep to themselves in 
other ways, says I^e Hockstader, a senior 
at Brown University in Providence, R.I., 
who is white and would like easier associa­
tion with blacks. Race relations at Brown 
are "a little bit tense," he says, adding, 
"There's never much interaction outside the 
classroom. "

Sometimes the separation is a reaction to 
racism. Scott Barnett, a black 1980 graduate 
of Northwestern University in Evanston, 111., 
says he sought black roommates after a 
white he roomed with "thought that because 
I w,as black. I would clean up the room all 
the time." A less subtle dormitory incident 
was a sign reading "death to niggers" that 
someone hung on a dorm room door, he 
says.

If anything, racial separation is even 
more prevalent in the professions. In law. 
medicine and other fields, parallel black and 
mostly white professional organizations still 
exist, and partnerships of whites and blacks 
are rare.

■lohn L. Crump, executive director of the 
National Bar Association, an 8.000-member 
lilack lawyers' group whose .activities paral- 
lei those of the American Bar Association 
(which also has black members), says pri­
vate practice holds so little promise lor 
black lawyers that nearly 757,. of them work 
for government agencies. A recent National 
Law .lournal survey showed that just 12 of 
the ;i,70n partners of the 50 biggest U.S. law 
firms were black.

Frank S. Royal of Richmond. Va„ presi­
dent-elect of the National Medical Associa­
tion, a f.OOfl-member black physicians’ 
group, says he knows of only two private 
medical practices in which blacks and 
whiles are partners. And he says that in 
some cities, access to hospitals and other 
medical facilities remains a problem for the 
black practitioner. "The American medical 
profession is just as segregated as American 
churches," he notes.

(According to the National Council of 
Churches in New York, some 90'’, of Ameri- 
ciui blacks belong to black churches. An offi­
cial of the group says that this isn't surpris­
ing "when you consider that churches re­
flect the residential, social and cultural pat­
terns of the society as a whole. "I 
Change In Aftlliide

showed that 54%, of whites wouldn't be upset 
if blacks moved into their neighlxrrhoods up 
from 32%. in 1963. Nearly half of the whites' 
polled two years ago said they had regular 
contact with a black co-worker, up from 
327„ in 1963, and the proportion of whites 
who said they had a black friend rose to 407c 
from 20%.. 4 '̂ -

Sizable majorities of both blacks and 
whites told the Harris pollsters that their re­
lationships with members of the other race 
were pleasant and easy, leading the Na­
tional Conference o) Christians and .lews, 
which commissioned the polls, to conclude 
that "familiarity has not bred contempt."

And while integration has at least tempo­
rarily taken a back seat to other issues 
among the nation's black grorjps, there ex­
ists no desire to turn back the clock. Says 
Benjamin Hooks, executive director of the 
National Association for the Advancement of 
Colored People, the nation's largest civil- 
rights organiz.ation: " I ’m from the South, so 
there's no point of asking me if / want to go 
back to riding at the back of the bus."



Black Executives Sa v 
Prejudice Still Impedes 
Their Path to the Top

They Say They Are T oo  Few 

And O ften Are Assigned 

Window-Dressing Posts

Corporations:: It Takes Time

By J o n a t h a n  K a u f m a n  '
Staff Reporter o f T hk Wa i.i. Sthkkt  J<»uknai,

The typical senior'corporate .executive, 
according to a recent study, is male, 54 
years old. married and the father of Ihi' e 
children. He was bô n In the Midwest. wa.s 
educated at a public university'and e,iriis 
just over $100,000 a year.  ̂ ' .

And he is, almost surely, white. Of Ihe 
1,700 senior executives ’.'surveyed by.' 
Korn/Ferry International, ’ an executive 
search firm, when it drew up that profile, 
only three were black. - • :

Another study, a survey by the Chicago 
Urban League of 13,000 managers in the 
area who were ranked "department head" 
or higher, found that only 117 were black 

Fifteen .iiears after the phrase "affirnv 
ative actlQg," passdd Into the national vocab­
ulary, blacks remain all but absent from the 
execufive suite. The country’s 11% bl.u k 
population is only be^nning fo enter middle 
management in significant numbers and is 
represented at-higher levels chiefly by an 
occasional vice president;. That vice presi­
dent, moreover, is likely to hold not a finan­
cial or operating position but the title of pub- 
ijc-relations or personnel director-a highly 
visible post, but hardly, the-most promising 
route to the top. • , - ' " v.iafA.,:/
A Matter of Experience ■-'y" ’’

Corporations say the main reason them 
aren't more blacks at the top is time, and 
that the situation will, remedy itself, "lie- 
velopment of people is a process that takt-s 
time," says Walter Hoeppner, manager of 
personnel development for Standard Oil Cn. 
(Indiana). Most blacks didn't even enter the 
corporate ranks until the late 1960s, he says, 
and it takes anyone, black or white, 15 to 25 - 
years to rise to the top. * ’

The Korn/Ferry study of typical senior 
executives lends credence to this analysis. 11 
found that the subjects interviewed had been 
with their .companies an.' average of 19 
years. ' -. ■■ 'j  '

But many blacks who have reached the 
executive level say there is more to it than 
that. They suggest that white corporate i v 
ccutives, comfortable dealing with ctlii'r 
whites and trusting their abilities, havott’l 
tried aggressively to bring blacks into their 
own elite cir.cle.-Says Phillip Davis, a-black 
vice president with -Norton'  Simon Inc.: 
"Even in 1980, we would be naive to think 
that discrimination doesn’t exist.” .



“ Spook by the Uoor”  
i-lark, lijMTUs, a black senior vii e ini'sl- 

d('iit at First National Bank of Clncaf;o, 
comments that “ back in the old days, people ' 
used to joke about 'the spook by the door'- : 
the one black employe that many companies : 
hired and put in a highly visible ixrsitinn to ' 
show they weren't prejudiced. If thiiitt.s have 
changed since then. I sme haven't seen It."

Tlie failure of more blacks to reach the o 
corporate pinnacle faster is hardly the kind 
of explosive issue to spark riots or protests. 
Even the Equal Employment Opportunity 
Commission, the federal agency assigned to: 
investigate complaints of job discrimination, 
focuses its greatest efforts elsewheie,' 
"Entry-level cases are the easiest kinds for . 
us to prove, and they affect many more peo­
ple,” says Daniel Leach, vice chairman of 
the agency. ■ . ; c ■

The director of another agency, 'Weldon 
Rougeau of the Labor Department's Otlice,''' 
of Federal Contract Compliance, is con- ; ' 
vinced that “ discrimination' is'alive and 
well, albeit very subtle." Mr. Rougeau, who ’ 
is black, believes that "deep in their hearts, 
many whites still can’t accept the idea of 
equal opportunity. They , don't look at a 
black executive in the same., way . as they 
look at a white executive.”., .
“ He Has to Be W h i t e '

Stuart Taylor, a black industrial psychol- •- 
ogist with Booz, Allen & Hamilton, suggests • 
that a white male executive will often feel ■ 
uncomfOrtUble dealing with a black peer,-, 
more stffeven than with a white female exec- 
utive. "A white executive is used to dealing 
with white women," Mr. Taylor says, "His ' 
wife is a woman. His mother is a woman.', 
Bui most white executives have, never dealt i 
with a black.” /'k ■

For a black to make it in the corporate ' 
world, Mr. Taylor contends,'-“he has to be ; 
white: He has to think like a white, have the 
same concerns as a white, go to the same 
church as a white." ' ,: ;

A closely related matter is'what Bernard 
Anderson, a black' economist with the 
Rockefeller Foundation, calls the "corpuralc 
culture"-that combination' of social con­
tacts, corporate politicking and technical 
knowledge that makes for a successful exec-. 
utive. Many whites have long been exposed':' 
to this system through friends and parents, ' 
but blacks entering the corporate world.' 
from a different background may face a dif- 
ficult adjustment.

Black executives, joined by such federal 
officials as Mr, Rougeau, argue that compa-* 
nies could overcome such obstacles if they 
truly wanted to. These critics point to man­
agement programs that put talented people 
on a "fast track" by giving them wide expe-'! 
rience in a shortened time. They say the 
same could be done to move promising 
blacks up in the corporate ranks faster.

Far from putting blacks on the fast 
track, however, companies havg tended to 
move them into executive posts overseeing 
personnel or affirmative-action programs. A 
survey by the executive search firm of Hei- i’ 
drick & Struggles found that personnel and,. 
public-relations jobs make up a dispropor-;- 

Please Turn to Page l i ;  Column 2



Rigiiisi^ 1 OH tier: Black Executives 
Say Bias ■ Jlows Their Rise to the Top

<3>-
Cimlimicd Fn ■ • First Paiie 

tionately high 257o of positions held by black 
executives.

“ By and large, nimiiaiiies remain unwill­
ing to put blacks in sensitive positions where 
lliey haven't been tested, where they can af­
fect tne bottom line," says Edward Wil­
liams, a black vice president of Harris Trust 
& Savings Bank in Chicago. “ Better to put 
them in personnel or urban affairs, where 
the worst they can do is give out too many 
tickets to the baseball game," (Mr. Wil­
liams, however, does hold an operating posi­
tion.)

•lames Nixon, for instance, is vice presi­
dent for affirmative action at International 
Telephone & Telegraph Corp,, although he 
has 15 years' experience as a nuclear engi­
neer. Mr. Nixon believes that "the people 
who hired me felt more comfortable putting 
me in a position they were familiar with 
blacks handling, like affirmative action, 
than with making me head of, say, nuclear 
engineering." (ITT's vice president for per­
sonnel, Ralph Pausig, says the company 
hired Mr. Nixon for the post because it 
wanted someone "whose technical back­

ground would help him do a better job in at- 
tiacting and promoting the kind of minori­
ties the company needed.")

AiKlrew Brimmer, the bl.'ick economisi 
w'ho once was a member of the Federal He 
serve Board, suggi'sts another reason some 
companies assign blacks as they do. The 
path to top jobs, Mr. Brimmer says, nor­
mally leads through a "pyramid of experi­
ence" that takes about 20 years to climb. He 
believes that corporations tend to cluster 
black executives in personnel and PR posts 
because "those are the easiest positions to 
bring people in at a senior level. They don't 
have to pass through the experiejice pyra­
mid." ,

Many on Way Up ■ v
To gauge black progress in corporations, 

Mr, Brimmer suggests looking one or two 
levels low'er in the "pyramid." There he 
finds the picture heartening. “There are an 
awful lot of black assistant vice presidents 
and black assistant treasurers,”  he says. 
The number of blacks holding white-collar 
jobs of all levels has more than doubled 
since the 1960s.

Mv. Anderson of the Rockefeller Founda­
tion believes there are enough blacks in 
middle-rank posts to ensure that several 
m.'ijor coriwratlons will have black chief ex­
ecutives or seni^execufives before the dec­
ade is out. “ Witfi increasing pressures on 
companies to compete, they won’t be able to 
afford to discriminate," he says. \

Still, blacks seem sure to remain under­
represented for years to come. One recent 
survey asked corporate personnel officers 
how long they thought it would be until the 
number of black executives reflected blacks’ 
11% prtiportion of the general population; a 
majority thought it would take more than 20 
years, and almost a quarter said it would 
lake at least 30.

Companies wanting to hire black college 
graduates to “ grow their own" executives 
also complain of a shortage of black engi­
neering and M.B.A. graduates. Du Pont Co., 
which says it is aggressively seeking such 
graduates, calculates that only 2% of the 
71,000 engineering students who graduated 
last year were black. One Du Pont executive 
says that during a recent recruiting trip to 
Howard University, his company was com­
peting with 500 other concerns for the 70 or 
80 graduating black engineers.

It might seem that the people in the best 
po.sition to improve blacks' corporate prog­
ress would be those black executives who 
have already reached top positions. Yet 
some of them concede that they are reluc­
tant to press the issue too hard. Roger 
Plummer, an assistant vice president for 
marketing with Illinois Bell Telephone Co., 
notes that ■ "if you spend an inordinate 
amount of time doing that sort of preaching, 
it can affect your credibility as a manager." 
Pushing a little

Historically, blacks have made their 
greatest gains by applying external pressure 
on institutions, as in the civil-rights move­
ment of the 1960s and the affirmative-action 
suits of the 1970s. And some blacks believe 
such pressure is the only way to move'more, 
of their numbers to the top rank of corpora-



■‘The only way you change the character 
of :ia iiistitufjon Is by negotiating through 
strength," says Mr. Burrus, the black offi­
cial of First Chicago and a former Chicago 
city comptroller. " If a group of blacks 
comes down here and meets with the board 
of directors and says. 'You should have 
more black e.xecutives because it’s the right 
thing to do,' everybody will shake hands and 
nothing will get done.

"But,” he goes on, "you better believe 
that if all our black deiwsitors came down 
liere and moved all their money to tlie bank 
across the street, we'd sit up pretty fast and 
say, ‘What exactly do you want?' "

Adds Mr. Davis of Norton Simon: "The 
1970s brouglit many blacks in through the 
doors of major corporations. The challenge 
of the 1980s is to push them higher.”



T H E  N E W  YO RK T IM E S , FR ID AY, M ARC H  14, 1980

. . f  ‘ S

W  * AT
W  '  '  V #

W 'j?'

Eiigoie Mihaesco

Black Men Are Last
By Robert W . Goldfetrb

GREAT NECK, N.Y. — Corporate 
affirmative-action programs have 
been far more productive for white 
women than for black men. Black 
women — labeled “ twofers”  by some 
personnel managers because they are 
counted twice on Government compii- 
ance reports, once as women suid once 
as minorities — are being employed 
and advanced less rapidly than white 
women but faster them black men.

The National Urban League re­
cently reported that the nation’s work 
force grew by nearly 5.2 million em­
ployees between 1974 and 1977. Of 
these, 3.5 million entered private in­
dustry. Fifty-three percent of all new 
employees entering private industry 
were white women, 26 percent were 
white men, 5 percent were black 
women, 12 percent were of Hispanic 
background and 4 percent were Asian. 
At this same time, as many new black 
male employees left private industry 
as entered, so there was no net in­
crease in their number.

Corporations, required by the Gov­
ernment to set specific goals for hiring 

•and promoting both minorities and 
women, appear to be implementing af­

firmative-action programs as though 
given a choice of advancing either 
women or minorities. Irritated at hav­
ing to attain any Government-imposed 
hiring goals, many managers are 
more comfortable advancing white 
women than black men. Many of these 
white male managers are contemptu­
ous of black men, whose advancement 
in business and the professions they 
ascribe to “ reverse discrimination.” 
They characterize black men as arro­
gant, impatient, unwilling to conform 
to business standards and lacking 
basic job skills. They say it is difficult 
to find black men qualified for mana­
gerial positions since only 6 percent of 
the graduates of four-year colleges are 
black and the proportion of black stu­
dents in graduate schools has been de­
clining. Women, on the odier hand, 
now constitute 43 percent of the worit 
force and receive nearly half the de­
grees being awarded by universities 
and colleges. White women have also 
been in the corporate world far longer 
than black men.

White male managers devote more 
attention and effort to recruiting and 
training women and far less to advanr- 
mg black men. Wbra reminded that 
they are required by Federal and state 
law to hire and promote both minorities

and women, many managers reply that 
Government compliance officials usu­
ally are satisfied by a modest show of 
good faith. Recruiting and advancing a 
modest number of white women, they 
confide, is ample demonstration of good 
faith.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 
legislation and executive orders that 
followed required corporations to in­
crease sharply their hiring of ethnic mi­
norities. Companies hired growing 
numbers of black men as urban-affairs ; 
directors, minority recruiting specitd- 
ists, community-liaison coordinators 
and corporate social-responsibility di­
rectors. For nearly a decade these and 
similar positions provided employment 
for black college graduates. The 1974 re­
cession gave many companies reason to 
reduce die size of these programs, re­
garded as costly luxuries. Many black 
employees were dismissed or assigned 
to more conventional jobs in which Uieir 
performance was closely monitored. 
They rarely were given training, guid­
ance or the informal support requii^ in 
the new jobs. Black men often felt 
viewed as intruders in a white world. 
The informal alliances and flow of infor­
mation that prove so valuable to ambi­
tious white men and increasingly to 
white women were unavailable to them. 
In protest, some black managers com­
mitted career suicide by reacting in 
ways that hurt or ended their employ­
ment. They often did so by fulfilling the 
stereotypes whites ascribe to blacks: 
They arrived late to important meet­
ings, moved from assignment to assign­
ment without developing enduring skills 
and exploded in a fury of temper at 
what whites perceived to be minor 
slights. The few black managers who 
did succeed found themselves in the 
lonely position of being the only black at 
the job level they had attained. Loneli­
ness, a feeling of being endlessly judged 
not as a manager but as a black man, 
and having no confidence that they 
would be permitted to advance to their 
fullest potential all combined to damage 
their spirits and careers. Many white 
managers, impatient with black subor­
dinates, withdrew what little support 
they had been providing. The failure 
rate of black men accelerated.

Searching for ways to attain affirma­
tive-action goals despite their mounting 
frustration, some white male execu­
tives intensified their recruiting and 
training of white women. The same men 
who until recently ignored or blunted 
the advancement of women began to see 
in them an opportunity to reach hiring 
goals without having to deal with black 
men. Burning with ambition, women 
seized this support. As a result black 
men feel squeezed out in this competi­
tion for a diminishing number of t^por- 
tunities for promotion, training and 
jobs.

Robert W. Goldfarb, president of a 
consulting firm, works with compa­
nies to develop affirmative-action pro­
grams.



M m o t u y  VAr /̂

Integration Is Elusive'^^ 
Despite Recent Gains; 
Social Barriers Remain

Progress Is More Statistical 

Than Real as Blacks Seek 

. Housing, Education, Jobs

New Goal: ‘Here-Now ’ Issues

By C h a r l e s  W . St e v e n s

Staff Reporter o f T i ik Wa u . STRKtrr Jou
. When court-ordered desegregation came 

to Atlanta's public schools two decades ago, 
it was heralded as a great stride forward for 
integration: The system was 55% white and 
45% black, and a thorough racial mix 
seemed possible. The years since have 
shown the foliy of this hope. Atlanta's whites 
moved to the suburbs or sent their children 
to private schools. Now the public-school 
system is 90% black.
■ Such has been the dominant course of ra­
cial integration in the U.S. Since the civil- 
rights movement began in eamesf 25 years 
ago, the legal framework that supported 
segregation has been removed, and blacks 
have made notable statistical advances in 
important fields. But progress toward the 
free and equal association of blacks and 
whites envisioned by idealists of the 1950s 
and '60s has been fitful, and much of what 
mixing has occurred has Involved a fairly 
thin layer of well-educated, well-off mem­
bers of both races.

Moreover, prospects are dim that this sit­
uation will change substantially any time 
soon. Social bar- | iw  
riers to integration 
are proving far 'N / 1 M 1 7 1 1 M " '/ ! 
harder to crack 
than the formal le­
gal obstacles. Also, 
integration itself 
has faded as a pri­
mary goal of many 
blacks.

"The issue isn't 
integration versus 
non-integration 

anymore-it’s here-now things like jobs, 
says Selwyn R. Cudjoe, professor of Afro 
American studies at Harvard University. 
“ There’s a growing realization that integra­
tion won’t put bacon on the table.”

"For blacks, integration has been de 
layed too long, and it's coming too little, too 
late," says Ali A. Mazrui, professor of politi 
cal science and director of the Center for Af­
ro-American and African Studies at the Uni 
versity of Michigan. “ It was resisted (by 
whites! for so long that when whites began 
saying, 'Let’s have it,’ some blacks replied.

' 'Who says we want it anymore?’ .......
In no area of American life have segre

■ gated patterns hung on so tenaciously as in 
housing. Here and there one can find neigh 
borhoods or suburbs that have achieved 
some measure of stable racial balance, but 
they are exceptional.

This is true not only in the aging central 
.• sections of the major cities of the East and 
" the Midwest, where black populations have 

become predominant, but elsewhere as well 
- indeed, the maintenance of segregation de­

spite the considerable population movement 
of the last 20 years has served to underscore 

;its resilience.
^Moving to Black Suburbs
> The U.S. Census Bureau reports that 
.from 1960 to 1979 the number of blacks liv- 
>ing in big-city suburbs grew by 72% to about
■ five million, compared with a 38% growth in 
„the white suburban population in that pe
riod. But much of that movement was be­
tween mostly black city neighborhoods and 
suburbs that were already mostly black or 
:were rapidly becoming so.

For instance, the Cleveland suburb of 
East Cleveland had nearly no black resi 
dents in i960. By 1970 it was 60% black, and 
by 1980 the figure had climbed to 82%. A 

-study by Pierre de Vise, professor of politi- 
cal science at the University of Illinois at 
'Chicago, showed that all but a handful of the 
blacks living in the 200 or so suburbs that 

. .ringed Chicago were clustered jn just 15 of 
/.those communities. ”  '

' Racial discrimination ' in the ’ sale or 
rental of housing is banned by law in most 
of the U.S., but those laws are apparently 
widely circumvented by both real-estate 
agents and mortgage lenders. A study of 
mortgage-lending practices in New 'Vork 
and California, released in June by Harvard 

[n^nd Massachusetts Institute..of-T^bnology, 
'̂ ■found that black applicants were far more 

likely to be denied a mortgage than whites 
of similar income and had to pay higher in­
terest rates for the mortgages they did get. 
jank Policy?
■ “We don't know whether the discrimina­
tion is overall bank policy from the top or 
just done lower down,” says Helen F. Ladd, 
a co-author of the study. “My own sense is 
that there is a lot of prejudice at the level of 
loan officer.”

In sum, “What we’ve seen is resegrega­
tion, or the extension of previous segrega­
tion,” says Edward L. Holmgren, executive 
difector of the National Committee Against 
Discrimination in Housing, based in Wash­
ington. “Any progress that has occurred has 
been halting and slow.”

Because public-school enrollments are 
closely tied to housing, it isn't surprising 
that integration hasn't proceeded quickly 
there either. This is true despite the striking 
down of separate-school laws in the South 
and the imposition of busing to achieve 
greater racial balance in some Northern 
cities.

The extent of integration in the public 
schools is a matter of debate, much of which 
centers on the definition of what constitutes 
an “ integrated” school unit. The U.S. Civil 
Rights Commission developed a formula 
based on school enrollments as a percentage 
of a district’s racial population. It concluded 
that in 1977 46% of the nation’s black school- 
children still attended schools that were “ at 

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