A few years ago, I interviewed Fox News’s Juan Williams and wrote a review of Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America — and What We Can Do About It. The thesis of his book was that so-called black leaders must step out of the arena of corporate shakedowns, scandals, and outdated rants about the sins of white people (quoting myself) and serve as true leaders focusing on self-determination and individual responsibility.
The book’s message was important, and the fact that Williams votes for Democrats made it more powerful. His advice and suggestions were common sense and empowering, although I knew he supported what he calls “affirmative action,” which is not common sense and quite the opposite of empowering. Commenting on the Ricci v. DeStefano case in the Washington Post, he laments the “death” of racial preferences:
“It is a death that has come too early, as even the nation’s latest unemployment numbers show. African Americans have close to double the joblessness of whites, while the unemployment rate among Latinos is a third higher than that of whites. In a nation that is rapidly becoming more racially diverse, these are destabilizing disparities in power and class. In the professional world, blacks and Hispanics make up a mere 4 percent to 6 percent of the nation’s lawyers, doctors and engineers. These gaps are exacerbated by differences in education and income and, more important, by the history of government-enforced segregation that long denied African Americans entry into schools and the business world.”
Is Williams implying that disparities between the races are caused by racial discrimination and, therefore, hiring and admitting based on race is warranted? He may want to read Shelby Steele’s article for a different view on the topic. At any rate, Williams lets both sides have it as he theorizes why racial preferences are on the wane:
“More often than not, it is the American left that gets lost in absurd fantasies about race in this country. They pretend there has been no progress in recent decades, even when they see the rise of a black middle class and witness the election of a mixed-race president and the likely confirmation of a Hispanic woman to the Supreme Court. But today, it is the right wing and its supporters on the high court who are making stuff up. They pretend that the nation is already so transformed that a colorblind America is a reality and that affirmative action is superfluous, so much so that white employees in a city fire department — an arena long dominated by Irish and Italian Americans — need help from the Supreme Court to get a promotion.”
Whether the nation is transformed is an important point to consider in the preferences debate, but there’s more to it. Discriminating against whites to make up for past discrimination against blacks is not the solution to the disparities problem, and Ricci does not damage the civil rights cause, as Williams contends. Treating people as members of racial groups and not as individuals damages the civil rights cause. And telling a race of people that they must be held to a lower standard also damages the cause.
How is Williams defining the term affirmative action? (The question is somewhat rhetorical.) As originally conceived, it meant taking steps to include more qualified minorities in hiring and admissions pools. It quickly morphed into a racial spoils system to purportedly redress America’s racial wrongs. Roger Clegg asserts that discrimination will always be with us. “The question is whether the best way to fight discrimination is with more discrimination, rather than simply enforcing the very available and effective laws we have on the books against discriminating.”
Most preference opponents say no. Tying all of this together with Steele’s and Clegg’s comments, the solution lies elsewhere. It must begin in the lives of individuals, each of whom is protected by laws against racial discrimination. Black families must commit themselves to building stable homes for their children, incorporating the values of education and hard work, and developing the courage to embrace the freedom America affords in practice.
If Ricci is any indication, government-sanctioned racial preferences face a bleak future. Now’s the time to come up with and implement a better solution to the racial “problem,” and it must start with the individual.
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