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Affirmative action acrimony

Crowd

African-American leaders volatile in debate

March 31, 1996
Web posted at: 12:30 a.m. EST

From Correspondent Kathleen Koch

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Eliminating affirmative action is generating heated debate this election year -- and not just among politicians.

Saturday in Washington, tempers flared when African-American experts on both sides wrestled with the issue at a Boston college forum.

Latham

Affirmative action promises to be a hot-button issue in this year's presidential race, especially in California, where a measure to ban race and gender preferences in state hiring will be on the November ballot. Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole endorses the measure, while President Clinton opposes it.

On Capitol Hill, a panel of prominent African-Americans bluntly argued that race- and gender-based set-asides are the only way to guarantee equal opportunity.

Marshall

"This is a remedy. There would be no need for a remedy if we had a level playing field," said attorney Weldon Latham.

"White people don't do business with black people unless they have a special reason. They generally don't do business with us at all because they want to do business with people who look like them," said Pluria Marshall, chairman of the National Black Media Coalition. (102K AIFF sound or 102K WAV sound)


Quotes from both sides

Jones

An angry opposing panel insisted that what it calls group preferences engender resentment and abuse. "The benefits of this program tend to be concentrated on those furthest away from disadvantaged," said Brian Jones, who is the president of the Center for New Black Leadership.

And Errol Smith, vice chairman of the California Civil Rights Initiative, said, "People begin to ask the question, what is wrong with this set of people that, but for us lowering standards, they can't make it. I have a problem with that."

Anita Blaire

Anita Blaire of the Independent Women's Forum, was even more blunt. "We have this problem that continues to be here of where black surrogates are sent out to argue white points. And I don't like this dialogue. Yeah, I'm insulting you. I mean to."

A Justice Department official blamed some of the move against affirmative action on election year politics.

Patrick

"Some are engaged in simple, rank race-baiting, trying to gain political advantage by stirring the affirmative action pot in '96 the way some stirred the Willie Horton pot in '88," said Deval Patrick, the assistant attorney general for civil rights.

Both sides agreed that minorities and women have come a long way from the days of overt racial and sexual discrimination. And they concede that abandoning affirmative action before the playing field is completely level won't be done easily.

"It's going to be difficult and hot and tense," said Phyllis Berry-Myers of the Center for new Black Leadership. "Largely because what we've found is that many people equate civil rights and affirmative action as almost the same thing."

Elaine Jones with the Legal Defense Fund sounded a chord of determination. "We've struggled men and women and brown and black and yellow people together to bring us back to this point. And we're not going back."

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