Reflections of an Affirmative ActionBaby

...And at some point, there ought to be no more need for breaks...

...James T. Fishes" imothy A. Byrnes argues, in this short book on a very large topic, that the prominence of Catholic bishops in American politics since the late 1960s owes more to the electoral strategies of national parties than to the hierarchy's desire to influence voting behavior...

...I was working at the time as an editor on the Week in Review section of the New York Times...

...8a.m.- 4:30 p.m...

...But first they neeeded to surmount the defensive provincialism which characterized their activities in the era of the "immigrant church...

...Silencing debate solves no problems...

...Catholics became a key target of these postmodern pols, according to Bymes, because their presumed conservatism on social issues could help "I've warned you, bishop ...no politics...

...I went to a second choice, Walter Williams, another economist, who readily agreed to participate...

...defeat Democratic presidential candidates in the urban Northeast and Midwest...

...it is also a political strategy designed to cause that change...

...My first choice on the conservative side was Thomas Sowell, the economist...

...That failure marked him as an outsider and an enemy, and nothing could make up for that...

...I think so myself...

...He is enough of a realist, however, to understand that without unions, warts and all, there is little if any hope that the American economy will ever be democratized...

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...But on this issue, we seem to be past the point where anything can be either simple or sensible...

...Some will think Geoghegan puts too much hope in labor law reform and has an overly romantic view of labor-management relations in Europe and Canada...

...I call it the 'the best black' syndrome, and all black people who have done well in school are familiar with it," Carter writes...

...The ferocity of the black attack on this conservative black nominee to the Supreme Court--the dean of a New York City law school compared him to a"black s n a k e " - could not be accounted for simply on the basis of intellectual disagreement...

...The "two Johns," John XXIII and John F. Kennedy, and all they represented helped transform the role of the bishops in American politics...

...And Stephen Carter considers that a tragedy...

...8 November 1991:659 neither had the establishment extended itself to him as a potential source of wisdom or of entrde to the Reagan administration...

...Catholic liberals wanrdy applauded this development: Just as the Democratic party had utilized the growth of central government to further a progressive social agenda, so too would the bishops speak powerfully in the unique Catholic idiom of social justice...

...How times change...

...But this really turns out to be a case in which the more things change, the more they stay the same...

...660: Commonweal The collapse of the New Deal coalition and the political realignments of the past three decades loom large in Byrnes's analysis of recent American politics, and he gives it a provocative twist...

...For the black establishment, I wanted-and got--Benjamin Hooks, the head of the / NAACP, but only after an enormous amount of wheedling and cajoling and flattering...

...May his tribe increase, i I THE "BEST BLACK" SYNDROME REFLECTIONS OF AN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION BABY Stephen L. Carter Basic Books, $23, 286 pp...

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...But Just Arrived...

...The reasons for Carter's ambivalence are clear in the account of his own experience...

...It would be nice to think that so sensible and simple an approach could be achieved...

...Forget all the justifications on the basis of enhancing diversity and adding to the range of perspectives available in schools or colleges or the broadcast industry or any other arena...

...Byrnes explains that even so prominent an institution as the National Catholic Welfare Conference was rebuffed in the 1920s by Cardinal William O'Connell of Boston in its efforts to promote national legislation on child labor...

...I conceived the idea of a "dialogue" on black conservatism...

...The bishops saw their role as protecting the interests of an embattled subculture: as late as 1962 "the bishops' political role...continued to be a direct function of their authoritative leadership of a clearly identifiable minority...

...it only limits the range of possible solutions...

...Given the title and the ongoing national debate over the issue, that is only to be expected...

...The only valid justification, he says, is to give people who otherwise might not get one, a chance to show what they can do...

...Nevertheless, it is hard to be critical of a Johnny-come-lately, middle-to-upper-class suburbanite who, at great personal sacrifice, is willing to go on as a lawyer representing the American labor movement now that it's flat on his back and who, to repeat, writes like an angel...

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...Don Wycliff n early 1981 I got a firsthand experience of one of the phenomena that motivated Stephen L. Carter to write his book...

...The fact is that, even at this late date, black conservatives and leaders of the black establishment don't talk to each other very much, if at all...

...Once given a break, they must put up or shut up...

...C THE BISHOPS GET USED CATHOLIC BISHOPS IN AMERICAN POLITICS Timothy A. Byrnes Princeton University Press, $29.95, 177 pp...

...Blacks, Carter says, are particularly in need of internal discussion and debate...

...This dichotomy between 'best' and 'best black' is not merely something manufactured by racists to denigrate the abilities of professionals who are not white...

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...On the contrary, the durable and demeaning stereotype of black people as unable to compete with white ones is reinforced by advocates of certain forms of affirmative action...

...At least as interesting and as poignant, however, is Carter's discussion of how dissent and dissenters are suppressed in the black community--and what happens to the community as a result...

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...I remember vividly one remark that Hooks made during our preliminary conversations...

...Child ofa Comell University faculty member, he found himself excluded from consideration for a prestigious National Merit Scholarship despite his having earned the second highest score in his high school...

...Carter is deeply ambivalent about it but, unlike Thomas, for example, or Shelby Steele, he isn't willing to say that it simply ought to be done away with...

...As a Harvard law graduate who got interested in organized labor almost by accident during his student days in Cambridge but has stayed the course ever since, he knows from firsthand experience with a variety of unions that the movement is far from perfect...

...The bulk of the attention paid to Carter's book so far has focused on Carter's heterodox position on affirmative action...

...Ronald Reagan had been recently installed in the White House...

...During the Senate Judiciary Committee's initial hearings on Clarence Thomas's nomination to the Supreme Court, it was the black conservative nominee who commanded the spotlight...

...One way that they did so was to avoid engaging in public debate--or private discussion--with them...

...Thomas's crucial failure was not to embrace what Carter contends has become the shibboleth of the civil rights leadership: affirmative action...

...Catholics in this country, as we know, became more self-confident, sophisticated, and national in their outlook...

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...But he, as was his practice, declined to talk to the press...

...All too few new ideas are being generated, and some of the old ones--such as the need for widespread systems of racial preference in college admission and employment--seem increasingly irrelevant, yet are defended with a desperation that often turns to virulence...

...This was a tribal reaction, a community retaliating against one considered a traitor and a betrayer...

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...Anyone who doubts that characterization need only reflect on the experience of Clarence Thomas...

...Yet, he says, that is precisely the luxury in which the black community---or at least its traditional leadership--insists on indulging...

...He can think of nothing, he says, "no law, no civil rights act, that would radicalize this country more than to make this one tiny change in the law: To let people join unions, as their right, freely and without coercion, without threat of being fired, just as people are permitted to do in Europe and Canada...

...I]n an era in which a third of black people still live in poverty, when the inner cities are besieged by drugs and crime, when nearly a quarter of our children are themselves having children, we cannot afford the luxury of insisting, in the name of solidarity, that any of our problems has a single, unchallengeable answer...

...The bishops played a crucial role in this realignment because, although few believed by the 1970s that they could deliver the masses of Catholic voters to a candidate or party, they could "affect that vote at the margins" where elections are won or lost...

...What can save affirmative action, Carter says, is a return to its roots...

...Realignment," he writes, "is now more than an analytical theory of political change...

...Thomas had not gone out of his way to ingratiate himself with the civil rights establishment as he worked his way upward in Washington over the last decade...

...A "dialogue," in our staff jargon, referred to an edited transcription of separate interviews with individuals on opposite sides of a current issue, each responding to the same questions...

...We've tried," he said, referring to himself and the other establishment leaders, "not to give them [black conservatives] too much attention...

...That is, the belief that the political landscape is periodically reconfigured inspired Republican party professionals to hasten that process by creating new issues to unsettle traditional voter loyalties...

...Instead, he was shunted into the National Achievement Scholarship program, reserved for the best black students, while white classmates with lower scores got National Merits...

...More power to him...

...Hooks, now cast in the role of the dissenter, was very nearly last on the bill and his testimony against the nomination got relatively little public attention...

...And what about this shibboleth, affirmative action...

...To this fanfiliar story Bymes adds a valuable discussion of the 1966 founding of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, inspired by the Vatican Council's "Decree on the Bishops' Pastoral Office" and charged with providing a national forum for the collective voice of the hierarchy...