The Lot of Black Professionals: Interview with David Jones
Sleeper, Jim
At a conference on "leadership succession" in New York late in 1985, I was struck by the remarks of David Jones, then executive director of the city's Youth Bureau, now head of one of the city's...
...Dissent: How did you feel at that time about your parents' middle-class generation—that they'd laid a foundation, or "sold out" to whites...
...We didn't see that from day one white students were making connections with law professors that would lead to the Law Review and to clerkships...
...Also, you're in such a rarefied group that everyone still thought they were going to do it...
...I got hit on the side of the head and backed up against a bridge abutment by some mill workers...
...Jones: It didn't say enough...
...At a conference on "leadership succession" in New York late in 1985, I was struck by the remarks of David Jones, then executive director of the city's Youth Bureau, now head of one of the city's oldest nonprofit social service agencies, the Community Service Society...
...I'd been arrested at Downstate Medical Center, which had refused to integrate its construction, and at that demonstration I'd talked with Malcolm X. All these things were swirling around, and in a way it was moving you, making your decisions for you...
...Because my father [Thomas Russell Jones] was a lawyer and state assemblyman and later a judge, I grew up as a middle-class black in Bedford-Stuyvesant and remember "Jack and Jill" and other social organizations, as well as the church-related groups that formed the core of black middle class society...
...So I was very concerned when I saw what happened to her...
...Again, most people were not relying on any constituency other than their "godfather...
...But because of the close neighborhood ties you had a fair amount of protection...
...Everything was in flux...
...JIM SLEEPER Dissent: Tell us a little about the history of the black middle class in New York...
...Even before that, my sister and I were sent out to private school in Manhattan...
...I think I would've taken a completely different direction without that assault, because suddenly the stories my father had told me made more than just intellectual sense...
...I spent a year as a law clerk to Judge [Constance Baker] Motley in the federal courts, and when I came back in 1975, it wasn't so much the assignments I was getting —I wasn't on the IBM case, which was probably an early indication of the problem, though I was on Time, Inc., Shell Oil—but the comments I got about my campaign leaves...
...Dissent: Were you having discussions with other black associates about what to do if passed over...
...Almost no black knew why one should spend time networking...
...Already at that point there were several black associates who'd been passed over, and one of them had had real trouble and ultimately committed suicide...
...We had a naïve assumption that we were entering a pure meritocracy and that we would move in these circles comfortably enough to make fast friends and move forward...
...Jones: I see that as embitterment...
...We thought, boy, they're coming to us because they see us as among the next leaders of their firms and the nation...
...Moreover, he argues, the two phenomena are related: precisely because blacks plucked for Ivy League scholarships and dazzling career paths tend to be overly trusting of pure meritocracy and so avoid forging links to a political power base "back in the community," they remain highly vulnerable to racism as individuals, even as they deprive the black community of a more sophisticated leadership...
...Jones: It was mixed...
...Jones: I had been pretty abstracted about that...
...I knew that you didn't go up to a white policeman for help...
...I'd been called names, but never assaulted, so that changed my perspective...
...and besides, the civil rights movement was losing steam...
...They took on a tangible impact, especially because I hadn't been bothering anyone, not even talking to anybody...
...I finally got my own lesson while up in Maine on a college spring break, fishing on a roadside...
...Failure to have a base of some sort with clout means you won't move, no matter how many cocktails you have with the managing director...
...I just went to a reunion of black professionals who'd gone to Wesleyan: there were sixty people, black men and women, just from the N.Y...
...When I talked to Jones at the Community Service Society in January 1987, he described the recruitment of capable young blacks as "window dressing" by firms that still block black advancement to positions of real leadership...
...Even the idea of contributing to a black political campaign is very recent...
...Dissent: How were you accepted by your schoolmates...
...It was felt that you couldn't have it both ways, though many of us did...
...If anything, the notion of any "constituency" outside whatever partner we were going to link up with was alien...
...For most of us, ironically, that started to crumble when we became involved in the civil rights movement...
...I became an intern for Senator Robert Kennedy, a contact that was developed because I attended all the early meetings with my father in the development of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation...
...Activism declined as a result...
...Each passing year you lose more and more young people...
...Somehow we didn't see that this would carry through after law school...
...Dissent: But you must have met some white liberals who were genuinely committed to your assumptions about leadership...
...I saw fine homes, a genteel setting, but one also more integrated with the black working class...
...So I was taken out and put in Brooklyn Friends— which made it clear to my father that they had done him a great favor—and then in Elizabeth Irwin in the Village...
...In cities like Atlanta and Chicago, where, Jones notes, there has been a better relationship between black elites and masses, not only has there been stronger black political power, but blacks in the private sector, too, have more often managed to rid themselves of some of the tortuous ambiguities that bedeviled the young law associates he describes...
...532 • DISSENT CONFLICTS AND CONSTITUENCIES Jones: Not so much in law school, where the self-selection curbs that...
...Some of the others at firms throughout the city were coming up against it, a feeling, "Oh my god, I've failed...
...What I've been preaching and trying to tell young black professionals is, this isn't morality or civil rights, this is whether you're ever really gonna hold the keys to the boardroom...
...I was on the student judiciary board and got one of the young black men off who was alleged to have FALL • 1987 • 531 CONFLICTS AND CONSTITUENCIES had a pistol in his room...
...There was no black partner at this point...
...You need a real core of support, even if it's not direct, even it it's just a sense that, Oh, brother, we could work on the next municipal bond financing if we had a black mayor...
...It was a fundamental misperception...
...Even now, we still have too many who want to hang back...
...And we were also isolated from the black community — Dissent: You were going home to BedfordStuyvesant at night...
...I can't help but feel that there's a generation of highly trained blacks who could've brought about real powersharing in New York and gotten just what they wanted by doing that...
...My own was a very insulated environment...
...The professional cadre could have achieved the career objectives they wanted by reaching back...
...And that's what we didn't realize, that you need to have some sort of institutional power base even if you aren't personally connected to it...
...I took it to heart...
...Attorney's office for what was described as "more seasoning as a litigator...
...That was really the first of three stages in black middle-class evolution—the providing of professional services directly to the black community...
...A lot of anger, but an enormous amount of excitement...
...though none of us knew it, Angela Davis had come through two or three years earlier...
...Dissent: Why...
...As the base contracts, it becomes more difficult to mobilize different groups...
...I was getting nervous...
...What kept my attention focused back there was my father's running for elective office and his founding the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, having his first meetings with Robert Kennedy...
...So I already knew I could be part of the political establishment...
...The attrition rate was enormous, they were kicking black kids out all over the place, and interest in civil rights among the faculty did a 180-degree turn...
...We didn't want to do it at first...
...If a black made a mistake, it was always, "A-ha, we always knew there was too much affirmative action...
...The school had more substitute teachers than any other...
...But ultimately you also have to have a group that can exercise some control, not only in the political sector but also in the economy of the city...
...But we were all pretty radicalized...
...There was a moment of truth that viscerally we were coming to recognize, and you began to wonder what you would do if you were passed over, since the firm had a policy of "up or out...
...My turning point came when a senior black woman who was a litigator told me that after six or seven years she was told she ought to go to the U.S...
...Dissent: Does the experience of past discrimination factor into it—a feeling that the issue is discrimination, not personal failure...
...Manhattan Borough President] David Dinkins has worked it out...
...But some had an edge, a kind of support system that we didn't recognize as coming into play...
...To kids who drop out of Boys and Girls High School, the demagogues make perfect sense, when they listen at all, as opposed to a guy who's got a job and a house and kids in school...
...Jesse Jackson reaches the grassroots population that I can't even come near...
...Fewer people are capable, more are demanding remediation and support...
...Even though they may not act on it, I think anyone black who gets to be my age, 38, has a lot of bitterness...
...Summer associates—black or white—were treated royally at Cravath...
...Jones: It goes back many generations, even before the Civil War...
...I remembered stories my father had told me about being in the South, people drawing guns on him in the Army...
...If no blacks made partner before us, that was because we were so much brighter...
...The point is that there was almost no sense of having to reach back into and rely on any kind of black constituency...
...The problem now is that there's really no established leadership committed to pursuing their professional careers and to reaching back into the community at the same time...
...And we were getting recruited by law firms, so there was no reason to see our mistake...
...It's the problem of reaching for the brass ring—a lot of very bright people are competing...
...Jones mentioned in passing, but not casually, that several bright young black lawyers he'd known in some of the city's most powerful law firms during the mid-1970s had committed suicide andlor suffered mental breakdown, at least in part because of the ambiguity surrounding their failures to succeed as first-rate lawyers, much less become full partners in their firms...
...I never considered a black college...
...if anything, we thought, in our least admirable moments, well, this will diminish the [black] competition, we'll be particularly special...
...I got beaten up and I called the police, and they laughed...
...I was set on going to college...
...the administration was saying, "No way," and admissions of blacks dropped off very fast...
...Partly this isn't a racial issue...
...I was in the Carter campaign in New York and when I came back, while all the reviews were right, there were comments like, "Oh, you're not really committed to us" —this from a partner, who said it laughingly...
...I had worked with Robert Kennedy in the Senate, I had run part of his Connecticut campaign in the 1968 presidential race...
...I think our mistake really began by sitting in an elite circle talking just as cogently as our classmates and competing well with them, and saying, okay, I'm going to become a full member of the establishment...
...We failed to see that something might intervene...
...Dissent: How does one balance staying in the community for support with pursuing a professional career...
...Jones: Well, there was all this talk about our being important players in society, the leadership group of the country...
...We saw the liberal attitude of the firms and took this as an access point...
...It was obvious from their comments that it was all right to bring in tokens for "uplift," but when we got the things everyone else wanted for their children...
...Then the senator died, and my connections began to fade...
...Dissent: Yet you had in you that undercurrent, that experience of activism...
...All we knew was that our relatives oohed and aahed over us...
...Jones: Fritz [F.A.O.] Schwartz, Jr...
...These were sons and daughters of liberals, though I remember that when my class graduated in 1966, and I was class president and a black girl was the only National Merit scholar, admitted to Radcliffe, suddenly some parents were irritated...
...And some few of us did get through [to partner], more so outside New York City: in Washington, Atlanta, Chicago, because there were constituencies they could lean on...
...The notion was, they've let in too many unqualified people, but since we're here and doing fine, we must be the exceptions...
...I and some of my age group have to be part of the effort to change the situation to link black professionals back to the communities from which they came...
...There was an enormous amount of arrogance...
...But there wasn't much reaching back into the black community, partly because of our physical isolation...
...Then, out of the civil rights movement, there emerged not just black political leaders, but leaders in the unions and the private sector, people coming up not necessarily through the "right schools" or contacts but through their own wits and talents...
...But it was felt that we were the vanguard, we were going to be the new leadership...
...But I was drifting away from the young people I'd grown up with...
...It emerged because of the separate black economy that was a consequence of discrimination—black lawyers, doctors, undertakers, ministers, and other professionals served the black community and weren't allowed access to the larger white society...
...After being in P.S...
...It's a question of how long it takes...
...I had a sense of options...
...Dissent: And you knew of others who flipped out...
...She was a very articulate, talented young woman who had been friendly with a managing partner, which I never was—I had gotten into some problems with some partners over what I perceived as racial remarks, and I certainly had never played tennis with a managing partner...
...We worry about the plight of the two thirds of the black population battling poverty and social disintegration, but Jones's account makes clear that all is not well among that other third...
...530 • DISSENT commas AND CONSTITUENCIES whites often glamorized creative blacks growing out of the Harlem Renaissance and coming downtown...
...Suddenly people had to pay attention if you were any good...
...534 • DISSENT CONFLICTS AND CONSTITUENCIES You see guys like [California Assembly Speaker] Willie Brown who've managed to work it out...
...The demonstrations brought results, the colleges were receptive...
...There were very few blacks there...
...But I began to see there was a weakness here that had larger, "political" elements: "This isn't just you, Jones...
...At the same time, though, Brooklyn seems to have edged into a backwater...
...I did some tutoring in Middletown, which has a sizable black population...
...Dissent: What did that say to you...
...I've been relatively successful in my career, but I get angry when I think of my father, because I think there's no question that in a different kind of society he would have been tremendously and productively powerful, not only for blacks but for the city and nation...
...I remember when I was a first-year student, Ralph Winter, now a prominent federal judge, then a professor, confronted a group of black students protesting drops in black adminission, lack of black faculty, and the curriculum...
...There were some incidents with guns, flirtations with the Black Panthers...
...It's shaped how I've seen things since...
...I was recruited by Wesleyan, which was making a determined effort to get blacks...
...But by 1973-74, there was a sudden drop in interest...
...I still have trouble convincing people of this...
...I was four years in at the time...
...Dissent: So your disillusionment with this notion of meritocracy plus the slight edge of contacts through a constituency was gradual...
...I remember driving down to Maryland with my family and being refused service...
...I was being very well paid, but watching the signs all around me...
...I still remember some sharp comments that went around, though that wasn't universal, by any means...
...So we had a critical mass, and we were being radicalized by what was going on outside—Martin Luther King...
...The only time I was ever recruited actively was when Harold Washington was elected in Chicago, and the firm said flat out: "We want you to work in our municipal bond financing department in Chicago...
...it was considered that you might be looking too black...
...I didn't really notice that, because of the senator's death and the decline in the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration, my edge was growing dull...
...Many young lawyers listen to me like I'm from Mars...
...There was very little new recruitment of black associates...
...I realized I didn't have enough of a support base here...
...for the first time you see people who write out $5,000 checks...
...When I went to Yale Law School in 1970, there was a major push by educational institutions to increase black admissions...
...I survived, but there's the perception that you can't get away, and that it's just when you forget that that you're most vulnerable...
...he's now a lawyer, very conservative...
...we were the chosen, our training would make everything possible...
...The Harlem guys have done it better than Brooklyn...
...I joined a black student group called Ujamaa—"the black family" —that covered the ideological spectrum...
...We didn't see these as entry-level jobs that would go nowhere...
...Jones: I certainly didn't see it at first...
...Dissent: If your own cohort had stayed more with the community, they would've been able to come forward during times like this and have more leverage .. . Jones: Yes...
...area, who had thrived, at least in part, because they received a first-class college education that demanded first-class work, without the kind of racial chauvinism that lets minorities just get by— only to fail when they confront the harsh realities of competition and racism in this city...
...There were seven of us blacks, and my forte was litigation, so I was looking around for something else when, because of my work with the Carter campaign, [Deputy Mayor] Haskell Ward called me up and said, "Mayor Koch is looking for a special adviser," and I said, "Sure," and I took the job...
...Jones: In my angrier moments I understood the sources of lot of the rhetoric...
...Except when issues like Howard Beach flare up, and everyone gets dragged along...
...I don't really recall, growing up in the 1950s in Bedford-Stuyvesant, very much prejudice, other than what you saw in the press...
...People were very reticent, because talking about it is a sign you might think you're FALL • 1987 . 533 CONFLICTS AND CONSTITUENCIES not going to make it...
...Cliques developed...
...Everyone was looking at externals on campus—how you wore your hair, whether you associated with whites mostly or were involved in black causes...
...Jones: It can be done...
...There, I was shoved up against it, a predominantly white campus but a sizable minority of black students—they've maintained it at 15 percent black and Hispanic...
...Dissent: What's your reaction to black professionals who respond favorably to Louis Farrakhan...
...The assignments were nice enough, but you began to understand how you couldn't afford to make a mistake, while your white compatriots were getting patted on the back after each mistake and told, "I did the same thing when I was a young lawyer...
...I had already heard King speak...
...Jones: You had no sense of overt discrimination...
...recently New York City Corporation Counsel] recruited me to Cravath, Swaine and Moore, got me to come on as a summer associate, yes...
...Jones: Sure, but there was clearly a disjunction...
...There's no way to tell people to understand both sides...
...the rhetoric got pretty intense on campus...
...He can start to move a whole mass of people who are angry, who have nowhere to go...
...If we put in the hours and do well, that'll happen...
...Dissent: Can you tread the line between wanting to be racially immersed, building power, and becoming so immersed that it tends to separatism...
...You see it here at the Community Service Society as we examine statistics on public education and college enrollment, fewer and fewer minority people are getting through with a first-class education...
...I was pretty insulated because of my past activities in politics...
...I think a black professional leadership group is essential, though not the whole story...
...Jones: No, there wasn't much of a network at that point...
...I think it began to emerge when I looked at the treatment the older black associates were getting at firms throughout the city...
...Second, between the world wars, another element of the black middle class emerged, based on academic degrees and the arts, in enclaves like Greenwich Village...
...138 until the third grade, I couldn't read...
...There were those who became involved in black studies, others in conventional studies...
...Jones: Yes...
...q FALL • 1987 • 535 536 • DISSENT...
Vol. 34 • September 1987 • No. 4
