Affirmative Action
Kilson, Martin
Contrary to what many conservatives assert, preferential treatment is not something new to our patterns of public policy. Moreover, it has an ethical basis in what might be called a...
...In 1970 barely 2 percent of the officers in the armed forces were black...
...The result of affirmative action has been considerable achievement by the "mobile strata" of African-Americans—stable working-class, middle-class and upper-middle-class households...
...7.2 percent of 1,640,000 engineering technicians...
...Moreover, it has an ethical basis in what might be called a "higher public purpose"—that of undoing and compensating for a long history of discrimination and white supremacy...
...7.1 percent of 2,494,000 registered nurses...
...As of last year 6.5 percent of U.S...
...Both assumptions are untrue...
...Both cases entail denial of victimization and responsibility...
...At the same time, it is evident that the progress I've outlined here would hardly have taken place without affirmative action...
...It is heartening that Glazer, previously a leading proponent of the "reverse discrimination" charge, reversed his position in his Wall Street Journal article, "Race not Class," on April 5, 1995...
...And it is crucial that affirmative action, with the strong support of the mainstream African-American leadership (the civil rights community), was democratized by its extension to women and Hispanics...
...It was to the credit of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations (and bipartisan Republican supporters) in the 1960s that they decided to face the issue squarely and forge affirmative action...
...Affirmative action has been essential to the advancement of African-Americans in job markets that were long out of bounds...
...Affirmative action has used a modified merit paradigm in tandem with regular merit processes, and this has initiated breakthroughs in education, in access to the middle classes and to top-level jobs that previously excluded blacks, women, and Hispanics...
...In their opposition to affirmative action, American right-wingers are reminiscent of postwar German foes of reparations to compensate for the destruction of Jewish lives and life-chances, personhood, and property by the Nazi state...
...Sustaining such success is a crucial goal of supporters of affirmative action, together with alleviating the poverty crisis of the 30 percent of black families who are not FALL • 1995 • 469 Affirmative Action mobile—the "static strata...
...Affirmative action's modified-merit approach enables those who have been excluded to attain educational and professional experience, thereby permitting their future performance to be governed fully by merit...
...6.3 percent of 302,000 property and real estate managers...
...It is perfectly legitimate for a democracy to employ compensatory or reparational public policies to correct massive, longstanding, and cruel injuries that have been done to citizens...
...The military also provides interesting statistics...
...These now make up nearly 65 percent of black households Family income data for 1990 show that some 246,000 black households earned $50,000 to $55,000...
...some 92,000 households earned more than $70,000...
...Army generals were black, 5 percent of colonels, 8.3 percent of lieutenant colonels, and 12.5 percent of majors...
...and 8,000 earned more than $100,000...
...The career of General Colin Powell, the first AfricanAmerican to head the Joint Chiefs of Staff, makes this abundantly clear...
...Serious merit processes are not threatened by intelligent affirmative action practices...
...6.7 percent of 882,000 computer programmers...
...they don't extend their indictment to government programs that privilege and thereby foster mobility for assorted businesses, veterans, and farmers, among others...
...There are indeed real flaws and they need to be remedied— remedied, not manipulated politically so that it appears to white Americans that black Americans are recipients of illegitimate social benefits...
...7.2 percent of 479,000 therapists...
...twenty years later, thanks (partly) to affirmative action, 12 percent of officers were AfricanAmerican...
...Too many whites fail to recognize that white mobility in twentieth-century America has received considerable affirmative assistance not only by public policies at many levels, but by buddy and status networks, all of which were concurrent with policies that massively excluded blacks...
...There is what I'd call a "pragmatic interface" between modified- and full-merit processes...
...They would prefer to believe that mobility was strictly a product of self-reliance and merit, and they assume that affirmative action on behalf of blacks simply discards merit...
...Right-wing foes prefer, of course, to define affirmative action in terms of its flaws...
...2 percent of 83,000 biological scientists...
...7.6 percent of 1,325,000 accountants and auditors...
...Here are some examples of the percentages of blacks in various occupations (as of 1990): 2.1 percent of 630,000 marketing and public-relations managers...
...15.5 percent of 192,000 educational and vocational counsellors...
...In any event, job market breakthroughs for AfricanAmericans in the last three decades have hardly diminished job opportunities for white males...
...When conservatives complain that affirmative action is "reverse discrimination," it is largely an ideological ploy...
...On the contrary: affirmative action is a question of correcting what Harvard's Nathan Glazer aptly characterizes as the "distinctive condition of American blacks, scarred by a history of oppression...[and] still uniquely isolated and segregated...
Vol. 42 • September 1995 • No. 4
