From: NLG Civil Liberties Committee <cberlet@igc.apc.org>
Subject: Sklar: Re-Affirmative Action
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: ?
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 20:16:56 GMT

/* Written  5:32 pm  Sep 27, 1992 by cberlet in cdp:zmagazine */
/* ---------- "Sklar: Re-Affirmative Action" ---------- */
From: NLG Civil Liberties Committee <cberlet>
Subject: Sklar: Re-Affirmative Action

/* Written  5:30 pm  Sep 27, 1992 by cberlet in cdp:publiceye */
/* ---------- "Sklar: Re-Afirmative Action" ---------- */

Date: Sat, 26 Sep 92 15:31:01 PDT
From: Holly Sklar <hsklar>
To: cberlet
Subject: article

The following article appeared in the May 1992
issue of Z magazine. 

Excerpts from the Kerry speech referred to in the article
are appended to the end.

Reaffirmative Action 

(c) 1992 by Holly Sklar 


Liberal Democrats know how to defeat themselves better than
anyone. Their favorite strategy is a well-tested failure: the
best defense is a good sellout.

It didn't work in the Truman/McCarthy era (Better Liberal than
Red). It didn't work during the contra war and
Iran-contragate (We agree with your ends, but not all your
means). It didn't work for Dukakis (I puffed on the ACLU, but I
didn't inhale. Who wants Jesse?). It won't work now in the battle
for the hearts, minds and votes of white males.

On March 30, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry gave a speech to
his alma mater, Yale University, titled "Race, Politics and the
Urban Agenda." It could have been titled "Race, Politics and the
Vice Presidential Agenda": Memo from Vietnam War Vet (Against the
War) Kerry to Democratic Leadership Conference candidate Bill
Clinton. His divisive, myth-strewn speech is excerpted in the
accompanying box.

Kerry seemed to be following the script discredited in <The Nation>
(December 9, 1991) special issue, "The Assault on Equality: Race,
Rights and the New Orthodoxy." Guest editors Adolph Reed Jr. and
Julian Bond warned of the liberal-left "specter of racist
opportunism" with its victim-blaming message: "Liberal and
progressive forces have fallen onto hard times in American
politics because they have become too closely identified with the
excessive demands of blacks, feminists, etc. and have failed to
give proper weight to the concerns of the beleaguered white
working and middle classes."

 Affirming Myths

John Forbes Kerry chose to make his speech at Yale, a bastion of
the white upper class old boys club whose bipartisan graduates
include George Herbert Walker Bush. Yale, like other elite
universities, has long provided defacto affirmative action for
parentally correct alumni offspring who don't otherwise meet the
school's "standards." Kerry's larger audience was not the city of
New Haven but the national powers that be in politics and the
press.

Instead of debunking myths and codewords, Kerry reinforced
them--his few caveats are buried under rhetoric and anecdotes
familiar to Jesse Helms, Ronald Reagan, Pat Buchanan, David Duke,
and George Bush. (See my previous article on redistribution of
wealth from poorer to richer and divide and conquer politics for
related analysis and statistics.) Kerry used codewords like
"savagery" and "reverse discrimination." He promoted myths that
stigmatize people on welfare--not those on Social Security--like
the "culture of dependence." He echoed Pat Moynihan's slander
that as a rule families headed by single women aren't "real
families," but breeding grounds for violent criminals. Kerry
portrays poor urban America as a savage jungle in which the
heroic, hardworking few struggle to survive amid the many dope
fiends, deadbeats, muggers, and murderers.

The prevailing stereotype of poor children is that their families
are Black, urban, nonworking, large and headed by women, often
teenagers. In reality, says the Children's Defense Fund, "In 1989
only one in 10 poor children...was a poor black child living in a
female-headed family on welfare in a central city. Only one in 44
was in such a family where the mother was a teenager when the
child was born." Still fewer, one in 56, were in such a family
where the mother did not work during the previous year. Poor
white children outnumber poor Black children, though the rate for
children of color is disproportionately high. Most poor children
live in suburban or rural areas; rural child poverty rates are
above the national average. Nearly two-thirds of all poor
families with children have only one or two children. The average
number of children per poor family has "fallen substantially"
since 1969. Single parent families on welfare average 1.8
children, less than the national average.

As the Children's Defense Fund puts it in <Child Poverty in
America>, "it is evident that the stereotype is in fact the
exception--and that the extreme stereotype is a rarity....[T]he
poor are us--white, black, Latino, Native American, and Asian
American; urban, suburban, and rural; from working and unemployed
families; born to teen parents and older parents; from single
parents and married-couple families."

 Broken Economics

Why are more and more working families poor? Because average
real wages have crashed 19 percent since 1973 and the average
wages of young families with children have plummeted 26 percent.
Minimum wage no longer fulfills even the official definition of
minimum subsistence.

One out of four people surveyed by Time/CNN "said they had been
unemployed, not by their own choice, at some point during 1991."
About nine million Americans are unemployed according to official
statistics. Another six million are involuntarily working
part-time because they are on partial layoff or unable to find a
full-time job. On average only one-third of the unemployed
received benefits from 1984 to 1989, down from over 50 percent a
decade ago. A report by the Boston-based Dudley Street
Neighborhood Initiative points out that in 1985, during the
"Massachusetts Miracle," 44 percent of Boston's young people of
color 16-19 years old, and 11 percent of those 20-24 years old
were unemployed. The respective figures for whites were 6 percent
and 3 percent.

Unemployment Rates 

Year     White   Black

1960     4.9     10.2
1961     6.0     12.4
1969     3.1     6.4
1972     5.0     10.0
1973     4.3     8.9
1975     7.8     14.8
1979     5.1     11.3
1980     6.3     14.3
1982     8.6     18.9
1983     8.4     19.5
1985     6.2     15.1
1989     4.5     11.4
1990     4.1     11.3                    

Even in an era of high unemployment, two-thirds of poor families
with children have at least one worker (full or part time). In
1990, says the Children's Defense Fund, "Poor families with
children received twice as much income from work as from
welfare."

Just as a full-time, year-round job is not sufficient to avoid
poverty, neither is being married. According to the 1990 census,
the poverty rates are 5.1 percent for white married-couple
families, 12.6 percent for Black married-couple families, and
17.5 percent for Hispanics. More than two in five poor children
live in families where the father is present. For
female-householder families, no husbands present, the poverty
rate is 26.8 percent for whites, 48.1 percent for Blacks, and
48.3 percent for Hispanics. 

As Andrew Hacker points out in <Two Nations: Black and White,
Separate, Hostile and Unequal>, while the numbers of Black
female-headed households are rising, so are white. The ratio of
white to Black female-headed households has remained rather
constant over forty years. In 1950, 17.2 percent of Black
households were headed by women compared with 5.3 percent of
whites, a multiple of 3.2. In 1990, 56.2 percent of Black
households were headed by women compared with 17.3 percent of
whites, again a multiple of 3.2. Approximately half of all Black
single mothers, says Hacker, are fully self-supporting.

It's no surprise that many female single parent households are
poor since many mothers who want to work cannot find affordable
child care, and women who do work earn much less than men.
Sixty-seven percent of all workers who earn the minimum wage are
women. "Equal pay for comparable work" is still a slogan, not
reality.

A 1977 government study found that if working women were paid
what similarly qualified men earn, the number of poor families
would decrease by half. In 1983, women working full time earned
on average only 59 cents for every dollar earned by men--down
from nearly 64 cents in 1955. In 1986, they were back to 64
cents. In 1988, writes Susan Faludi in <Backlash>, "women with a
college diploma could still wear the famous 59-cent buttons."

The welfare system has penalized women for being married, denying
benefits if able-bodied men were present, whether or not the
could find employment. Today's "wedfare" penalizes mothers for
not being married. The rhetoric assumes that all women are better
off getting married and staying married, and that all mothers are
heterosexual or should be. There's no acknowledgment that divorce
can be a good choice for women of all incomes, nor that some
women leave men who physically abuse them and their children. As
Susan Faludi points out, between 1976 and 1984, a period when
the homicide rate actually declined, sex-related murders rose 160
percent: "At least one-third of the women were killed by their
husbands or boyfriends, and the majority of that group were
murdered just after declaring their independence in the most
intimate manner--by filing for divorce and leaving home." Society
blandly calls that domestic violence, not savagery.

The average welfare recipient stays on welfare less than two
years. Welfare is not a free ride, but a test of how to
subsist on too little. According to U.S. Department of
Agriculture estimates, a low-income family of three (a mother
with children ages 7 and 10) needed $309 a month to purchase a
nutritionally adequate diet in 1989. The Department of Housing
and Urban Development estimated nationally that rent and
utilities for a modest two-bedroom apartment cost $482 a month.
That left $33 for all other expenses from health care to child
care to clothes and school supplies if a family had the official
poverty line annual income of $9,885 for a family of three
in 1989. As the Children's Defense Fund points out, the average
poor family with children has an income below--often far
below--the official poverty threshold. In 1990, the average poor
family with children had a monthly income of $615--$7,380
annually--far short of the $9,009 poverty line for a family of 2
in 1990, or $10,419 for a family of 3.

"Many poor families," says the Children's Defense Fund, "manage
by cutting back on food, jeopardizing their health and the
development of their children, or by living in substandard and
sometimes dangerous housing. Some do without heat, electricity,
telephone service, or plumbing for months or years. Many do
without health insurance, health care, safe child care, or
reliable transportation to take them to or from work. Some borrow
money if they can. Some beg. Some have small amounts of
unreported income or feel compelled to engage in illegal
activities."

According to a 1991 U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means
report, AFDC benefits (for a mother and two children) steadily
declined (adjusting for inflation) from $8,178 in 1972 to $4,823
in 1991: "This represents a 41 percent decrease, and when
combined with food stamps yields a 26.5 percent decrease in total
AFDC and food stamp benefits since 1972." The report notes
further that "In 1972, all States paid AFDC benefits to a family
with wages equal to 75 percent of the poverty threshold; by 1991,
only 5 States paid AFDC to such a family. Average tax rates on
such earnings increased from 52 to 69 percent from 1972 to 1984,
and then fell to 56 percent in 1991."

Instead of higher wages and supports, single mothers get
blame, stigmatization and more cutbacks. According to the House
Ways and Means Committee report, "in 1979, approximately 30
percent of individuals in single-parent families were removed
from poverty as the result of means-tested transfers, food and
housing benefits, and Federal tax policy. By 1990, this had
declined to 20 percent." The government maintains Social Security
without means-testing for the elderly, and meanness for poor
women with children. "The percentage of elderly individuals
removed from poverty due to social insurance programs," reports
the House Committee, "increased from 68 percent to 73 percent
from 1979 to 1990."

Poverty is a reflection of social system pathology, not family
pathology. In 1989, according to the Children's Defense Fund
election-year guide, <Leave No Child Behind>, it would have cost
$28 billion to raise the income of every poor family with
children to the federal poverty line. "By contrast, the cost in
1991 alone of extra tax breaks for the richest 1 percent of
American taxpayers added by the federal government since 1977 was
$55 billion."


 Reverse Discrimination?

Kerry blames a changing civil rights movement and affirmative
action for the nation's persistence in "thinking in racial terms"
and spends many more words on what he calls the "reality of
reverse discrimination" than on racism. He reinforces the myth
that discrimination is only a "historical sin," even while
acknowledging the persistence of racism.

Kerry seems to pine for the day when white students went South to
support civil rights marchers "dressed in their Sunday best"
facing "pot-bellied sheriffs and attack dogs." As civil rights
and community organizer Pat Cusick, a white Southerner now living
in Boston, told Kerry in a meeting after the Yale speech, "You
don't have to go to the Alabama police department to find
discrimination. Harvard Law School can't `find' a Black woman to
give tenure to." The reality, Cusick told Kerry, is that without
full employment "all white people wouldn't have jobs even if
there was no affirmative action, even if there were no
African-Americans."

<Boston Globe> columnist Derrick Jackson (April 5, 1992) called
Kerry's speech "Profiles in Crumble," pointing out he spent 10
lines defending affirmative action and 69 lines on the negative.
"He fixated on the `reality of reverse discrimination,' when he
knows the biggest reality remains racial discrimination against
African Americans. Last year, the Urban Institute found that even
with the same resumes, employers treated African Americans in
Chicago and Washington less favorably than white applicants 20
percent of the time. White applicants were treated less favorably
only 7 percent of the time."

The median income for year-round full-time workers in 1990 was
$29,172 for all men--$30,186 for whites, $21,540 for Blacks and
$19,314 for Hispanics. It was $20,586 for all women--$20,840 for
whites, $18,518 for Blacks, $16,186 for Hispanics.

Another myth is that women of color benefit from "reverse
discrimination" against whites of both sexes and men of all
races. A recent study by Professors Barbara Reskin and Deborah
Merritt (to be published in the September <Southern California Law
Review>) compared the law faculty experience of women and men of
color (Black, Hispanic, Asian-American, American Indian) and
found that 44 percent of the women began teaching careers in
non-tenure track positions compared with 29 percent of the men
and were almost twice as likely to teach beginning courses as the
men. (<New York Times>, April 3, 1992)

Discrimination is wide-ranging. Government housing policies long
discriminated against people of color and strengthened housing
segregation. As Dennis Judd summarizes in the <Nation> special
issue on equality, "The Federal Housing Administration (F.H.A.)
mortgage-loan guarantees, established by the National Housing Act
of 1934, and the Veterans Administration (V.A.) loan guarantees
of the Serviceman Readjustment Act of 1944 (the G.I. Bill)
exerted a profound impact on the spatial development of urban
areas....Between 1935 and 1974, the F.H.A. insured 11.4 million
home mortgages, worth $136 million. Most of the mortgage
insurance backed the construction of new housing in the
suburbs....

"The F.H.A. suburban preference went far beyond a simple matter
of geography. F.H.A. administrators actively promoted the idea
that housing, and therefore neighborhoods, should be racially
segregated....

"All through the 1930s and 1940s F.H.A. administrators advised
and sometimes required developers of residential projects to draw
up restrictive covenants against nonwhites as a condition of
obtaining F.H.A.-insured financing. Since areas that were all
black were considered even worse credit risks than mixed
neighborhoods, the policy closed almost all African-Americans out
of the federally insured market and excluded them from the new
suburbs altogether...."

The Supreme Court ruled that racial covenants could not be
enforced in 1948, but defacto segregation continued. According to
Judd, "In 1960, not a single African-American could be counted
among the 82,000 residents of Long Island's Levittown. The
situation was typical. Between 1946 and 1959, less than 2 percent
of all the housing financed with the assistance of federal
mortgage insurance was made available to blacks."

While the white middle class was subsidized to move out of the
cities, central city neighborhoods saw disinvestment and urban
removal passing as urban renewal. Government disinvestment in
people of color has been compounded by redlining by banks and
racist blockbusting and steering practices by real estate agents.

Recent studies have exposed the extent of redlining, denying
"minority" neighborhoods the mortgages and home-equity loans so
essential for a secure home and retirement. A 1990 study of
mortgage lending in Boston found that while 11 percent of white
applicants were denied home mortgages, 21 percent of Hispanic
applicants and 35 percent of African-Americans were denied them
even with similar incomes and economic circumstances. Banks
created the SL crisis, throwing money at white Speculators and
Looters while rejecting qualified applicants of color seeking
money for homes and businesses.

When whites flee schools and neighborhoods because Blacks and
other people of color move in, that's racism. The problem is
compounded because as whites move out, so does private and public
investment in everything from schools and housing, to business
and street repair. Then more whites--and middle class people of
color--leave schools and neighborhoods in a self-fulfilling cycle
of disinvestment and decay. In Boston, home of heated busing
battles, a school system that was 80 percent white 20 years ago,
is about 80 percent students of color today. As any kid knows,
who grew up in areas where busing to district schools in other
neighborhoods and towns was common long before it became
associated with integration, busing--however well or poorly it
is implemented--is not the cause of white flight, disinvestment,
and backlash. 

Busing, a common mode of student transportation, wouldn't have
become a common tool of integration if neighborhoods were
integrated to begin with. Today, more than two-thirds of all
Black children nationally still attend segregated schools,
schools that are separate and unequal. 


 Guns and Drugs

Kerry's program for urban action begins with police-restored
order. When he encourages Yale students to think of other careers
he begins with law-enforcement.

Yes, we need more police protection and just law enforcement. But
there's not a hint that Kerry ever heard of police brutality. We
need more police protection with more protection from dangerous
police, more affirmative action, community-based policing, and
citizen review boards. So everyone can call the police without
fear that they or their kids will be beaten, jailed or shot "by
mistake."

There's no excuse for anyone to murder anyone, whether
14-year-olds blowing away 14-year-olds, or gang crossfire
killings, or quick-firing cops, or abusive husbands and
boyfriends. There's no excuse for government to delay fully
implementing programs to reverse the rise in violence. That means
dealing with causes as well as effects. Emphasizing
rehabilitation whether in prison or out. Ending the government
child abuse that in words and deeds tells some kids they are
worth everything and others they are worth nothing. It's not an
either/or situation: we need parental responsibility, individual
responsibility, and <social responsibility>.

We should ban assault weapons (widely defined) and implement
strict gun control from hand guns on. Hunters don't need assault
weapons unless they're people hunting. Society needs to reverse
the sick situation where in many places its literally easier to
register a gun than to register to vote--and stay registered.

Much of the violence now attributed to drugs is a product
of their hypocritical prohibition. That is, while some people act
more violently under the influence of drugs like PCP (and
alcohol), the major cause of violence is cutthroat competition in
the illegal drug trade--as was the case during prohibition of
alcohol. The so-called drug war has led to a proliferation of
guns to adults and children, diverted resources better spent,
endangered lives and civil liberties, and enriched organized
crime. We should make it a serious national priority to bust
organized crime, including the CIA-banking guns and drugs
networks.

One immediate step to deal with the deadly proliferation of
illegal drug trade violence is an amnesty. Not a one-shot deal,
where you turn in guns for cash. But a long-term program where
you turn in guns and get a chance for a new start with schooling,
job training, a job, counseling, drug treatment, housing, etc. 

Contrary to the racist images prevailing in politicians' speeches
and the media, Blacks and Latinos use drugs at slightly lower per
capita rates than whites--as reported by the FBI and the National
Institute for Drug Abuse in 1988. Pregnant Black and white women
test positive for illegal drugs at the same rates, but doctors
report Black women to child abuse authorities at 10 times the
rate for white women.

Most people who "do drugs" aren't addicts, just as most people
who drink aren't alcoholics. Poor addicts shouldn't go to jail
while richer ones go to Betty Ford clinics and the like. All
addicts should get treatment on demand. Laws should be toughened
for reckless drivers, drunk or drugged.

Decriminalization is long overdue. Not all drugs are alike--not
Valium, marijuana, speed, heroin or cocaine. Decriminalization of
drugs should begin immediately with the legalization of the
well-studied, widely-used marijuana. Contrary to all the
denial, "I only tried it once" and "I didn't inhale," many
Americans know the difference between reality and "Reefer
madness." A wide range of proposals have been developed on how to
proceed with decriminalization, distinguishing between specific
substances. It's time they were given a fair hearing.
Decriminalization doesn't mean you push dope along with beer
during the Super Bowl. Don't push either.

We need a real rethinking of crime and punishment and
rehabilitation. A lot more white people would be in jail if
"white collar" crime was treated more seriously--from thieves who
don't steal people's wallets, but their life savings; to
polluters who kill people slowly with chemicals. We need a wide,
nonrhetorical dialogue about what's too lenient, what's too
punitive, what's discriminatory, what's counterproductive, what
works!

 Majority Interests

Discrimination isn't reversing, support for affirmative action
is. A 1992 survey by People for the American Way of young people
ages 15 to 24, <Democracy's Next Generation: Volume II>, found that
a plurality of white youth (49 percent to 34 percent) perceive
that it is whites who are denied opportunity by discrimination.
White youth are being encouraged to blame reverse discrimination
for their economic reversals, lest they recognize how the system
discriminates in favor of the wealthy and join with people of
color to change it.

Affirmative action benefits the <majority> of the population. The
U.S. population is 52 percent women and 48 percent men. It is
74.2 percent white, 12.5 percent Black, 9.5 percent Hispanic, and
3.8 percent Asian, American Indian and others, according to the
1990 Census adjusted for undercount. In the 21st century the
United States is expected to have a majority of people of color.

What name will whites invent then to replace minority? 
Majority Emeritus?

You'd hardly know that women make up 52 percent of the
population. They're usually thrown into the dismissive "special
interest" formula of "women and minorities." Of the 100 members
of the U.S. Senate only 2 are women. The latest annual report by
the Women, Men and Media Project at the University of Southern
California surveyed the front page and local front page of 20
newspapers. They found that women show up just 13 percent of the
time. "Lest you think this is just a reflection of reality,"
writes Ellen Goodman in the April 5, 1992 <Boston Globe>, "even the
stories about breast implants quoted men more often than women."
Two-thirds of the bylines on the front pages were male. As for
the op-ed pages supposedly reflecting diversity--3 out of 4
opinion pieces were by men.

Apologists of social system pathology tell "them" they are
worthless if they don't have a job, and sustain a system that
will not provide a job for everyone, nor set minimum wage well
above subsistence.

Tell "them" violence isn't the way, and show them it is in movies
and "Turkey Shoot" wars and police beatings and death penalties.
Tell "them" not to use guns and do nothing to make them
unavailable. 

Tell "them" to stabilize their neighborhoods and deny them
adequate income, financing, and services. 

 Universal Programs

The choice between affirmative action and universal programs is a
false one. Both are needed. Progressives have long put forward
universal programs in the face of opposition by those who also
oppose affirmative action.

While the U.S. is busy blaming single mothers for their
children's impoverishment, 70 nations provide medical care and
financial assistance to all pregnant women. Not the United
States. Seventeen industrialized nations have paid
maternity/parenting leave programs. Not the United States.

Among the universal programs needed are:

* WorkFair, not Workfare. A full employment economy providing all
  with a decent job at decent wages and benefits.

* Non-stigmatized Social Security for all from youngest to
  oldest.

* Full and Fair Education from preschool to college, abolishing
  the unfair system so dependent upon income and property taxes.

* National Health Care. You've heard it before. Only the United
  States and South Africa among industrialized nations make health
  care a privilege, not a right.

Universal programs are necessary for all, but not sufficient for
those suffering racism and sexism, <past and present>.

Andrew Hacker writes in <Two Nations>, "America has always been the
most competitive of societies. It poises its citizens against one
another...No other nation so rates its residents as winners or
losers.

"If white America orchestrates this arena, it cannot guarantee
full security to every member of its own race. Still...white
America has agreed to provide a consolation prize: no matter to
what depths one descends, no white person can ever become black."

Poor whites are simply poor. Poor Blacks are stigmatized as an
underclass. Violent Black, Latino, and Asian gang members are
"savages," not violent white skinheads.

Hacker offers a parable for whites in which an official visits
you and says there's been a mistake. You were to have been born
Black to other parents. The visitor says at midnight tonight you
will become Black in appearance though inside you will remain the
same person, with the same ideas and knowledge. The visitor says
this isn't your fault and you will be compensated financially.
Name an amount considering that you are scheduled to live another
fifty years as a Black man or woman.

"When this parable has been put to white students," says Hacker,
"most seemed to feel that it would not be out of place to ask for
$50 million, or $1 million for each coming black year. And this
calculation conveys, as well as anything, the value that white
people place on their own skins....The money would be used, as
best it could, to buy protections from the discriminations and
dangers white people know they would face once they were
perceived to be black." The discriminations and dangers that many
of these same whites might say were past, until presented with
the parable.

Hacker concludes his book, "A huge racial chasm remains, and
there are few signs that the coming century will see it closed. A
century and a quarter after slavery, white America continues to
ask of its black citizens an extra patience and perseverance that
whites have never required of themselves."

It's been 28 years since the Civil Rights Act banned
discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sex or national
origin. 250 years of slavery and another 100 of apartheid in and
outside the South will not be made up for in less than 30 years
of reluctant affirmative action and persistent racism.

Generations of oppression of women will not be made up for in
less than 30 years of reluctant affirmative action and persistent
sexism.

500 years of genocide, expropriation, and exploitation of the
indigenous peoples of the Americas will not be made up for in
less than 30 years of reluctant affirmative action--and grudging
admission by some that Columbus wasn't perfect, but, hey, he was
a man of his times.

Today Asians are seen as the "model minority." Just 50 years ago,
Japanese-Americans were thrown into detention camps and today we
see fear of an "economic Pearl Harbor" and a new wave of
Japan-bashing that threatens the lives and livelihoods of all
Asian-Americans. They know racism was at work when
German-Americans suffered no such detention in World War II and
no wave of German-bashing today.

The response to white anger is neither capitulation to racism,
nor closed doors, but myth-busting and coalition-building around
common agendas. Creating a system that puts a floor under
everyone and a ceiling over no one. That envisions our nation as
a mutually-beneficial community, not a zero-sum game of winners
and losers.

                            -30- 

********************************************************************
Senator John Kerry, "Race, Politics and the Urban Agenda," Yale
University, March 30, 1992.
********************************************************************

"I ask you to consider a different part of the reality of America
today; a violent, drug-ridden, rat-infested reality; a reality in
which the institutions of civilized social life have broken down;
of disintegrated families; boarded up storefronts; schools that
have become armed camps and crackhouses replacing community
centers as the focus of neighborhood life.

"I ask you to consider a reality where more than 80% of babies
are born to single mothers; where young men die violently at a
rate exceeding that of an American war; where only one child in
three finishes high school and even then, too often, can barely
read; where the spread of AIDS and homelessness rips so visibly
at the fabric of community; where far too many families are on
welfare for far too long; and where far too many children carry
guns instead of lunch boxes to school.

"I ask you to consider a reality that is ruled not simply by
poverty, but by savagery; a tragic, inescapable and cruel reality
that increasingly affects all of us and that is eating away at
the American soul...

"Twenty-seven years ago, my Senate colleague Daniel Patrick
Moynihan warned that: `from the wild Irish slums of the 19th
century eastern seaboard, to the riot-torn suburbs of Los
Angeles, there is one unmistakable lesson in American history: A
society that allows a large number of young men to grow up in
broken families...never acquiring any stable relationship
to...authority, never acquiring any rational expectations about
the future--that society asks for and gets chaos. Crime,
violence, unrest, disorder--more particularly, the furious,
unrestrained lashing out at the whole social structure--that is
not only to be expected; it is very near inevitable...' [ellipses
Kerry's]

"...How is it, for example, that since 1965 the percentage of
black children living with both parents through the age of 17 has
gone from 50% to 6%? And this is not a trend exclusive to the
black community. Nor are any of these problems exclusive to
minority communities. They are simply exaggerated there because
the starting point is so much worse and because the impacts of
social change always seem to hit hardest at the most vulnerable
parts of our society.

"But we must ask ourselves whether this social disintegration is
merely a symptom of deteriorating values that have struck all
sectors of our society to some degree....[A] massive shift in the
psychology of our nation that some argue grew out of the 1960s--a
shift from self-reliance to dependence, from caring to
self-indulgence, from public accountability to public abdication
and chaos.

"...For more than a quarter century, American cities have been
losing industrial jobs...More people seeking fewer jobs means
more people without jobs; which means fewer people able to
support families, which means more people turning to crime, which
means more working families leaving the cities, and on and on
down the spiral of frustration to despair.

"...For me, that essential building block must be the restoration
of good jobs and of good job skills and the restoration of public
order in these communities...

"But all of us know that there are obstacles to this. Some
neighborhoods--and some people--are so wracked by drugs and crime
or so inured to the culture of dependence that they may be beyond
hope; the economic forces that robbed our cities of industrial
and manufacturing jobs are growing stronger, not weaker; most
businesses don't want to invest in the poorest neighborhoods; and
we're up to our eyeballs in red ink. But towering above all these
there is another, even more serous obstacle and that obstacle is
America's unwillingness to confront the issue of race.

"The fact is that the majority of the white majority in this
country doesn't want to invest more of their scarce tax dollars
in minority neighborhoods or in what many believe to be
predominantly minority problems. Tragically, we have come all too
often to view the urban crisis simply as a question of `us' vs.
`them'; thereby preventing real dialogue and real progress.

"It would be simple to blame all this on racism, and there is no
doubt that white racism persists in our society, that it is ugly
and insidious and present everywhere in housing and ecdcuation
and employment.

"But the issues and the reasons for our dilemma go deeper and are
more complex than that. They have their roots in the changing
nature of the movement for civil rights, in the turbulent history
of race relations and the persistence of racial stereotypes.

"Where once Martin Luther King could depict the struggle for
equal rights as a mighty battle between good and evil; a battle
where pot-bellied sheriffs and attack dogs squared off against
hymn-singing children dressed in their Sunday best; today, the
civil rights arena is controlled by lawyers and the winners and
losers determined by rules most American neither understand nor
fully accept. This shift in the civil rights agenda has directed
most of our attention and much of our hope into one inherently
limited and divisive program--affirmative action.

"let me be clear. I support affirmative action. Affirmative
action has opened doors for women, persons with disabilities and
countless minorities. It has helped create a large and growing
black middle class. It has helped minority businesses and opened
up bastions of prejudice like the Alabama State Police, which had
no black members at all in a state that is 30% black. It has
caused employers to re-think the standards and tests they use to
qualify people for employment. And it has given the benefit of
the doubt to diversity over uniformity on campuses and in
workplaces across America. This is the positive side.

"But there is a negative side and we can no longer simply will
away the growing consensus of perception within America's white
majority. We must be willing to acknowledge publicly what we know
to be true--that just as the benefits to Americans of affirmative
action cannot be denied neither can the costs. Too many
politicians, particularly in my own party, have not acknowledged
these costs for fear of undermining the very goals of affirmative
action. By that failure, we send a message to many of those who
feel alienated or abandoned by their government that we simply
don't care about them, and that we don't realize that it is they,
far more than we, who have borne the burden of compliance with
the law. The truth is that affirmative action action has kept
America thinking in racial terms and as Yale law professor
Stephen Carter has recently and so provocatively asked: `is it a
good thing, is it a safe thing, to encourage white America to
think in racial terms?'

"...Not only by legislation, but by administrative order and
court decree, a vast and bewildering apparatus of affirmative
action rules and guidelines has been constructed. And somewhere
within that vast apparatus conjured up to fight racism there
exists a reality of reverse discrimination that actually
engenders racism. No question: this reality has been exaggerated
by subjective perception and by politicians eager to exploit it,
but out of that reality has come a resentment that is real and
widespread and dangerous. It is a resentment fed by memories of
court-ordered busing and images of riots and looting and raised
fists and by a sense of being singled out to compensate for
historical sins which today's white <workers> did not commit.

"...We cannot equate fear of crime or concern about deteriorating
schools with racism and then expect those we have called racists
to invest in the very neighborhoods they have fled....We cannot
deride as politically incorrect the anger of taxpayers who work
hard to support their families and then find themselves
supporting generations of welfare families as well.

"For all of these reasons, we must maintain affirmative action as
an indispensable remedy against past discrimination, but we've
got to work harder to end the perception that it must lead
inevitably to reverse discrimination. We cannot hope to make
further racial progress when the plurality of whites believe, as
they do today according to recent data, that it is they--not
others--who suffer most from discrimination.

"We cannot make further progress if we continue to put all our
energies and emphasis into a remedy that in fact does relatively
little for the blacks and other minorities who are in the
greatest need of help. We cannot continue indefinitely to allow
the debate over quotas to drive a wedge...

"We can begin by waging war on two myths: the Democratic myth
that merely redistributing wealth will create wealth, and the
Republican myth that government cannot be a force for positive
change. In their place, I would substitute a new version of the
social contract, a covenant wherein every right is matched with a
responsibility; and where rapid, inclusive economic growth is our
overriding goal.

"This new social contract demands an approach to investing in our
people that avoids the crippling perception of racial favoritism,
an approach that accepts William Julius Wilson's view that `in
the last few years of the 20th century, the problems of the truly
disadvantaged will have to be attacked primarily through
universal programs that enjoy the support of a broad
constituency.'

"This new social contract must be designed specifically to
reinforce the values of hard work both at school and on the job;
it must be aimed at ending, rather than prolonging, dependence on
welfare....

"...It begins, in my judgment, with the simple restoration of
order, a serous and sustained and stepped up battle to re-claim
our streets and apartment houses and neighborhoods from the
criminals and gangs who now control so many of them, either
physically or by intimidation...

"Urban crime--although much of it is intra-racial--is also the
most deadly poison there is to improved relations between black
and white Americans. In shaping opinions and defining behavior,
fear will defeat fairness virtually every time...

"By putting more police on the streets, we can help reestablish
community order...

"The second thing we must do is help directly those we have the
greatest capacity to help--the infants and children who have not
yet assimilated the harshest lessons of the city and not yet
accepted the limits on their abilities or expectations. The time
has come...to make a real commitment to pre-natal care, to infant
nutrition, to child immunization and finally, to fully fund Head
Start immediately...

"Third, we must go to our cities and help the courageous people
who have never stopped struggling to rebuild the basic
institutions that support community life. Head Start or not, kids
without real families get crushed if there's no place to go after
school or at night or on the weekends or in the summer...

"We need an army of civilian volunteers to involve themselves in
these communities....We could begin with a core of experienced
people from our downsized armed forces...rather than rewarding
them with unemployment, let's put them to work teaching and
counseling and in a hundred other ways where their skills are
needed to confront the new threat here at home....

"Fourth, we need to continue replacing entitlements with
incentives in every state and federal program we can. We're
already requiring the able-bodied on long term welfare to seek
work or to accept training that will give them the skills they
need to work--but we must fund that training more adequately and
do more to generate suitable jobs. We should also provide
incentives for corporations to find summer jobs for kids who stay
in school and stay off drugs. We should set strict standards for
participation in youth job training programs so that we can be
sure to help those with the strongest drive to help themselves.

"And we should enact the legislation that is now pending in
Congress to guarantee college opportunity to every child in
America...

"Fifth, we need an all out integrated program of economic
development and growth....

"I know from experience in Boston and the other large cities of
my state that there are thousands of decent, honest and
struggling families in what we call disadvantaged
neighborhoods--the families too determined, too proud, or too
poor to move. And there are hundreds of organizations and
individuals on the front line every day, struggling against the
tide.

"If you are looking for true heroes in America, many of them are
right there, trying against all the odds to keep their kids
straight, working two and three jobs to make ends meet, trying to
hold communities together that have long since been declared dead
by a media more interested in the trauma of crime than the drama
of daily life. They desperately need our help--now.

"...So I call upon you to work ceaselessly to change and to
rebuild and repair the fabric of this society. I call upon you to
consider careers in law enforcement or teaching or drug
counseling or urban government that you may never have considered
before...

"There is not one among us who has the background or the
credentials to read a fellow citizen out of the American dream.
The minds that conceived this country; the muscles that built it;
and the blood that has so often defended and nourished its
freedoms is today so mixed in the soil of our history that we can
never forget--and should never try--to separate ourselves from
the collective and diverse `we' that defines the America of
yesterday and will inevitably determine the destiny of America
tomorrow."


Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive