Newspapers / The Carolina Times (Durham, … / Oct. 23, 1993, edition 1 / Page 10
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10-THE CAROLINA TIMES—SATURDAY. OCTOBER 23. 1993 Editorial Betrayed. When Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall was about to retire, in answer to a query about his successor, Marshall - commented that a black snake and a white snake will bite ' you. In other words, color has nothing to do with the probability of being bitten by an animal designed to do just ; thati; ■ ■■ Well, the black snake — Clarence Thomas, who was put on the Court at the urging of John C. Danforth (R-Missouri) and by President George Bush — has bitten and probably will continue to bite. Danforth and Bush had to know that Thomas could be depended upon to do their bidding. Clarence Thomas is the epitome of the person historian Carter G. Woodson was talking about in that famous quote: "If you can contol a man’s thinking, you do not have ■ to worry about his actions. If you make a man feel that he is inferior, you do not have to compel him to accept ■ an inferior status, for he will seek it himself. If you ; make a man think that he is an outcast, you do not have . : ;to order him to the back door, he will go without being ■ told. And if there is no back door, his very nature will demand one." . We urge everybody who can read to get a copy of the November issue of Emerge magazine that has a picture of Clarence Thomas on the cover with a "handkerchief" tied ;afound his head. The lead story in that issue tells of the :disappointment of those who supported his nomination to the Court and documents Thomas’ votes in several cases crucial to African Americans. , If there was ever a case of betrayal [to some folks], this is : it.:Many of Thomas’ supporters thought that surely any black person in a guaranteed lifetime position — where he would never have to be beholden to anyone for anything — would govern his actions with fairness and understanding. Not so. ■They have been betrayed and have now found out that Thomas’ "very nature" demands that he make a "back door". Professor William E. Nelson, a professor of political science and black studies at Ohio State University, summed Up the debacle: "From the time he was chair of the EEOC, I always considered Clarence Thomas to be the worst kind of racist — a black man who hates'himself." To Be Equal Discrimination Impacts Black Job Losses By John Jacob Last month. The Wall Street Journal published a page one story that ihould have rocked the nation. Instead, it was met with silence and ndifference.' The story was about job losses in the last recession. And the big news vas that African American workers were the only racial group to suffer a let loss of jobs during the 1990-1991 recession. The :figures came from employment reports filed with the Equal Smplt^'jnent Opportunities Commission by over 35,000 companies with nore than 40 million workers. The ifct job loss for black workers at those companies was almost 50,000,:while Hispanics gained over 60,000 new jobs, Asians, 55,000, ind whiles over /0,000. The black share of jobs at those companies was iLso dpt^'h, for the first time in nine years. And at- some companies, blacks lost jobs far out of proportion to their ihare rdf the company’s workforce. At one large firm, for example, African Arnericans made up 13 percent of the payroll and 32 percent of the job losses. There, are plenty of explanations for this unacceptable situation, but none of jhem convince me that discrimination and ethnic stereotyping don’t play a part. One supposedly non-discriminatory factor spells serious trouble ahead for the African American community. Blacl^: lost blue-collar jobs, but gained jobs in managerial, professional, and technical occupations. That reflects a changing economy' in which lack of educational credentials leads to fewer employment opportunities and greater vulnerability to layoffs. But a changing economy still doesn’t explain why black workers were the only group to have a net job loss, or why their job losses in unskilled and sertji-skilled jobs were disproportionately larger than those of other racial groups. Whites, by the way, did not have a net job loss in any occupational category, further indicating tliat who works and who doesn’t is subject to a lot more than just blind market forces. The story also spotlights a worrying new trend. Some companies said they had no idea that black job losses were so disproportionate because they only u-ack total minority employment. So rising Hispanic and othei minority employment masked black job losses. That suggests that some corporate "diversity" programs arc being run as black removal programs. It also tells us that many companies are, at best, indifferent to their ^ial and legal obligations. And at worst, as in companies where black job losses were grossly disproportionate, it indicates an illegal pattern ol discrimination. This grim story requires action on several fronts. Corporate leadership has to review and correct all policies and practices that impact on equal opportunities, with special emphasis on reviewing diversity programs that result in fewer opportunities for African Americans — the only Americans who have historically and persistently been excluded from the workplace. The EEOC should also take aggressive action to enforce the law’s :qual employment mandates. At the very least, it needs to require ixplanations from companies with disproportionate black job losses. Congress too, needs to get into the act. It should investigate iisproportionatc black layoffs and if there is a need for new laws, pass strong, loophole-proof equal employment legislation. Unless action is raken, the black economy will continue to be eroded by discriminatory employment policies and by restriaed opportunities. This is an issue the African American community must not allow to be ignored. NEWEST NRA POSTER BW Along the Color Line Beyond Diversity Dr. Manning Marable For half a century, we have pursued the goal of "diversity” in higher education, with at best mixed and uneven results. In the 1950s, liberal educators would say with pride that they were committed to the goal of a "color blind" environment. 1 distinctly recall professors saying to me that they "could not remember" whether this or that student was "a Negro." They fully embraced the liberal perspective of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., that individuals should be judged "not by the color of their skin but the content of their character." It speaks volumes about the problems inherent in such a statement, when one realizes that black conservatives like Shelby Steele can simplistically advance the same words today, but for a reactionary purpose. We should all agree that "color blindness" is-our goal. As the great Reggae artist Bob Marley of Jamaica observed, "Until the color of a man’s skin is of no greater consequence than the color of his eyes, there will be war." But the question should be, how do we get there? How can we "deconstruct" race? We cannot get there by pretending that "race" and "color" no longer matter, that they have magically declined in significance since the sixties. In a racist .society, color symbolizes the inequality of power relations, the ownership of property and resources, between various groups and classes. To end racial prejudice, we must restructure the power relations between people of color and upper-to- middle income whites. This means that we must pursue a "color conscious" strategy to create the conditions where color is one day irrelevant to determine the positions of power, educational access, health care and to other opportunities of daily life. In the 1970s and 1980s, the ideal of color blindness gave way to what could be termed "symbolic representation." Liberal educators believed that the recipe for cultural diversity would be achieved by bringing representatives of a new spectrum of interests into the academy-women, racial minorities, physically disabled people, lesbians and gays, as well as othere. Programs were established to create new academic courses in women’s studies. Black Studies, Chicano Studies, gay and lesbian studies, and Asian-Arnerican Studies. Minorities and women were "symbolically represented" with their appointments as counselors and college recruiters. Multicultural student services centers were established to address perceived concerns of the students of color. These reforms should have represented a beginning, rather than the end, of a process of education reconstruction on issues of social and cultural difference within the academy. Instead, somehow we have lost our way. And at many colleges and universities, we are actually moving backward. One reason is that women and racial minorities were usually hired and subsequently located in the bureaucratic margins of academic institutions, rather than within real centers of power, xlicre were few deliberate programs which actually tried to identify scholars of coloi and/or female faculty with administrative abilities, to mentor and cultivate them, and to advance theq) forward. At some institutions, minority faculty occupied a revolving door position, usually at the designated ranks of insUuctor or assistant professor, never to be tenured or reappointed. Transcending the old, restrictive boundaries of "diversity" means going beyond the old language of "minority groups" within our colleges and ir society as a whole. We must settle for nothing less than the fundamenta redefinition of the "mainstream," to be fully inclusive of the broades range of cultural perspectives, religious and philosophical values languages and social traditions which reflect all of America, Going beyond diversity means fostering a cultural dialogue between the representatives of various ethnic groups on campuses which leads to exchange, sharing and cultural synthesis. Universities must go out of their way to create spaces for people of color and other oppressed groups to express themselves culturally, and to dialogue with others. As things now stand, too often we find students of various ethnic backgrounds relating to each other at a polite social distance, never really learning about other groups’ experiences. We only begin to appreciate our own culture, when we take the time to leam what is valuable in someone else’s culture. Going beyond diversity in higher education will require a change in the power relations between people of color, women, and the traditional elites which dominate our universities. By redefining the mission and core content of our education, we can begin to move from the margins to the center. Dr. Manning Marable is Professor of History and Political Sciem and director of the African-American Studies Institute, Columbi University. "Along the Color Line" appears in 250 publications anil radio stations throughout the U.S. and internationally. Carolina Beat Why Government Can’t ‘Reinvent’ Itself By Marc Rotterma RALEIGH - "Reinventing government" has become the new in-phrai among the policy wonks inside the Washington Beltway and in sla capitals across the country (including Raleigh). Bill Clinton aides, policy types and politicians from both major partii have embraced the concept. Vice President A1 Gore is chairing a stuc commission on reinventing government, looking for ways to create more efficient and responsive government. State governors aii lawmakers as well as mayors and other local officials across the counti are also talking up "reinventing government" as a solution to problems! government inefficiency and ineffectiveness. Case in point: our ow Government Performance Audit Committee, which identified hundrec of millions of dollars in savings in North Carolina state government. This exercise to me, seems to be a terrible waste of time and taxpayer; money — not because government isn’t ripe for "reinvention," bi because trendy language and study commissions have a poor track rccor in the government-reform game. Having served in Ronald Reagan’s administration during its first tern I remember how hype can overtake reality. Gore’s "reinventin government" commission and North Carolina’s GPAC seem striking! similar to the Reagan administration’s Grace Commission that identifici federal government waste and inefficiency. This voluminous report was presented to President Reagan and th. Congress. It contained numerous recommendations on how to cut the fa out of the federal budget and get more services at lower cost. Hundred of billions of dollars could have been saved. But Congress did little o nothing about the Grace Commission recommendations, just as the NortI Carolina General Assembly did this year when presented with thi recommendations of GPAC. Some have compared North Carolina’s GPAC experienced with a fin tmek arriving to put out a fire long since dead, since the performanci audit was ordered during the 1991-92 budget crisis but by the time lh( Study was ready in 1993 the legislature had no fiscal crisis to fix Unfortunately, fire trucks can only fight blazes. They don’t do much t( prevent conditions (neglect, fought, etc.) that can lead to fires later Ideally, that’s what these government efficiency efforts would do: prevent future crises. Ross Perot, in my opinion, is right when he says that we need tc downsize tlie federal government agency by agency. Some political junkies will remember that Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, during his ill- fated bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, proposing radical changes in the federal government which would have cut the number of departments and consolidated many agencies. He made few friends in Washington with this idea. Kerrey s colleagues on Capitol Hill are, in fact, a significant part of the problem. Recently, on the front page of The Washington Post an article pointed out how much excessive power and authority the Congress wields over federal departments, by mandating programs that can’t be cut, even ,if a departmental secretary wanted to. The executive branch is, to a large degree, losing its autonomy. Separation of powers must be maintained. C^e words like reinventing government won’t work. This nation needs to get alrout the business of restructuring, downsizing, and even, in some cases, disrnantling government. While this requires radical action, *v. require "reinventing" anything. John Locke, the namesake t' the mink tank I direct, wrote in the 17th Century that government should be limited in both scope and size. He specifically attacked the idea of large government bureaucracies making policy through regulation and administrative decisions, arguing that "absolute arb'mu-y power, or governing without setded standing laws, can neither of them consist with the ends of society and government" We need to rediscover how government should be orgaiized, not "reinvent" it
The Carolina Times (Durham, N.C.)
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Oct. 23, 1993, edition 1
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