Two weeks ago, the Clinton Administration unveiled a plan to re-establish limited affirmative action preferences for minority owned businesses. The plan responds to a Supreme Court decision that struck down an earlier system of preferences designed to direct substantial government business to minority contractors. The Court required the government to limit the scope of preferences to situations in which the government could demonstrate clear effects of racial discrimination.
Subsequent court decisions reflect increasing public skepticism of preferences to redress discrimination. The debate in California around Proposition 209 reflected a deepening sense among white Americans that the disadvantages of poverty are more serious than the disadvantages of race, and that the disadvantages of poverty are felt equally strongly by poor white Americans.
It is true that all poor children -- black, white and Hispanic -- are more likely to score below children from more affluent families on standardized tests. All poor children are more likely than affluent children to live in neighborhoods with lower quality schools, and in circumstances that provide less than adequate nutrition and health care to prepare them for school. It sounds more equitable and more just to eliminate preferences based on race and create preferences based on need. The truth, however, is more complex.
While most white Americans identify class issues as being distinct from race, most African-Americans believe the two are inextricably linked. Just as the statistics of capital punishment suggest systemic racism in the sentencing of capital criminal cases, a close look at the statistics of poverty and race suggests a strong link between the two.
In 1996, the most recent year of relevant data, 48 percent of African-American families and 51 percent of Hispanic families earned less than $25,000. During the same year, only 25 percent of white American families earned less than $25,000. Although only 8 percent of white families lived below the poverty line, 29 percent of African-American families and 31 percent of Hispanic and Native American families lived in poverty.
A U.S. Government census report released in June revealed a heartening parity between the high school graduation rates for African-American, Hispanic, and white students, a dramatic shift since 1960, when African-American and Hispanic graduation rates were less than half the rate for white Americans. The report also noted, however, that the college graduation rate, an increasingly important determinant of economic success, remains substantially lower for African-American and Hispanic students and shows little sign of improvement.
Of course, a statistical link between poverty and race does not necessarily mean that racism limits economic success. Several disturbing studies, however, reveal ongoing racism in the work-force. One study conducted several years ago by CBS News documented systematic discrimination in the hiring practices of temporary employment agencies which routinely rejected African-American applicants in favor of white applicants, even though the resumes and transcripts of the African-American applicants were superior to those of the white applicants. When questioned, the temporary agencies responded that their hiring practices reflected the preferences of their contracting employers.
Even if racial discrimination has diminished in corporate America, and I believe it has, many of those in poverty today must surely be there as a result of discrimination yesterday. For this reason alone, we should pay particular attention to the opportunities we create for poor African-American and Hispanic citizens whose poverty may well be the bitter fruit of past as well as current discrimination.
Most of us would prefer to live in the world imagined by opponents of affirmative action, a world in which preferences designed to create equal opportunities could ignore race. Unfortunately, race still matters. Our compassion for the poor and disadvantaged of all races should not blind us to the fact that social justice and economic justice are intertwined.
