[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 70 (Monday, May 1, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5927-S5928]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


            AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: AID IN DOING THE RIGHT THING

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I have been inserting into the 
Record items on affirmative action from time to time because I am 
concerned that the distortion of affirmative action can result in loss 
of opportunity for many Americans.
  Columnist William Raspberry had an op-ed piece in the Washington 
Post, and in other newspapers in which his column is circulated, on 
affirmative action.
  It appeared during the days when Congress was in recess, and many of 
my colleagues may not have seen it.
  It is simple common sense, and we seem to lack that so often.
  I ask that the William Raspberry column be printed in the Record.
  The column follows:

            Affirmative Action: Aid in Doing the Right Thing

                         (By William Raspberry)

       It was 1967, and I had just taken my new wife--a Washington 
     native--on her first visit to my home state of Mississippi.
       She had heard all the horror stories of racial 
     mistreatment, and she was pleasantly surprised at the way 
     white salesclerks seemed to be going out of their way to be 
     nice. She was particularly intrigued by one middle-aged white 
     clerk at the J.C. Penney's in Tupelo. For some reason, this 
     woman, having learned that we were from ``up north,'' wanted 
     to talk--even after we'd paid for our purchases.
       Just as we were about to make our final effort to leave, 
     her face lit up. She caught the attention of a black woman 
     across the store and beckoned her to come over.
       ``This,'' she said, introducing us, ``is our new 
     salesclerk.''
       I don't suppose I'll ever forget the humiliations, large 
     and small, of growing up under the American apartheid that 
     used to be the rule in the Deep South. But I'll also remember 
     the pride this one white woman displayed in the fact that her 
     boss had done the right thing. It was almost as if she 
     herself had been somehow redeemed.
       It's something I think of when I hear well-meaning people 
     say that affirmative action is ultimately demeaning to 
     minorities and it would be better to just let merit be the 
     rule. It's reasonable to punish discrimination, they say, but 
     an artificially produced diversity comes close to the 
     discredited practice of setting racial or sexual quotas; 
     worse, it is tantamount to acknowledge that minorities and 
     women are inferior.
       It came back to me the other day when a colleague called my 
     attention to Katha Pollitt's column in the March 13 issue of 
     The Nation magazine. This liberal publication has been a 
     staunch advocate of affirmative action and diversity and all 
     the things that give minorities and women all those warm-
     fuzzy feelings. But listen to this one passage from Pollitt's 
     piece:
       ``In the 13 years I've been associated with The Nation, 
     we've had exactly one nonwhite person (briefly) on our 
     editorial staff of 13, despite considerable turnover. And 
     we're not alone: The Atlantic has zero nonwhites out of an 
     editorial staff of 21; Harper's, zero out of 14; The New York 
     Review of Books, zero out of nine; The Utne Reader, zero out 
     of 12. A few do a little better, although nothing to cheer 
     about: The Progressive, one out of six; Mother Jones, one out 
     of seven; In These Times, one out of nine; The New Republic, 
     two out of 22; The New Yorker, either three or six, depending 
     on how you define `editorial,' out of 100 plus, . . .''
       It's a passage that could fuel right
        -wing radio talk shows for months. But that wasn't 
     Politt's point. Her point, which seems unaccountably 
     difficult to grasp, is that it's not necessarily bigots 
     and hypocrites that stand in the way of the ``diversity'' 
     so many of us favor; it's the fact that people tend not to 
     pay attention to unpleasant facts that they can as easily 
     ignore.
       Atlantic editor William Whitworth told The Post's media 
     critic, Howard Kurtz, that his magazine's statistics were 
     ``unfortunate'' and ``embarrassing.'' He went on to describe 
     the publication's open-door policy, its desire to have black 
     journalists and his bafflement that so few have applied. 
     Whitworth at least answered Kurtz's queries, as some others 
     did not. Still I found myself wondering what sort of shot the 
     magazine might have taken at, say, an insurance company or 
     police department that offered a similar defense.
       It wouldn't surprise me to learn that the management of the 
     Penney's store in Tupelo made just such an argument before 
     some combination of legislation, court decree and affirmative 
     action forced a change in the company's hiring policies.
       And it wouldn't surprise me, sometime down the road, to 
     hear Whitworth and his peers boasting of their success in 
     hiring black writers and without any sacrifice in quality, 
     either.
       Why do opponents of affirmative action find it so difficult 
     to understand that even good people need a nudge now and 
     then, or to comprehend that anti-discrimination statutes are 
     insufficient to overcome deeply entrenched racial attitudes? 
     What black writer--unemployed or working elsewhere--could be 
     certain that some white guy on one of these liberal 
     publications has the job she should have had? How can anybody 
     know?
       In some jobs, discrimination is easy to spot; the 120-word-
     per-minute typist who loses out to a competitor whose top 
     speed is 80 wpm has a discrimination claim. But what of the 
     applicant for an editorial position, or a legal clerkship, or 
     a securities brokerage?
       Anti-discrimination laws won't do it and neither will 
     affirmative action--although these things may help employers 
     to focus on their behavior.
       I keep hoping that the time will come when nearly all 
     employers will react as 
     [[Page S5928]] many already do: with embarrassment when they 
     haven't lived up to what they know to be right and with pride 
     when they know they've done it right.
       That's why I remember that beaming clerk in Tupelo 28 years 
     ago. And, by the way, I don't recall the faintest indication 
     that her black colleague found it demeaning to have been 
     hired for what may have been the best job of her life.
     

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