CQ Researcher Link 9.1: Race in America - Sage Publications

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Race in AmericaAre blacks still handicapped by racism?

Many people believe the end of legal

discrimination gave blacks the same

chance of success as other Americans.

And by any measure, African-Americans’

social, economic and political standing has vastly improved

since the civil rights upheavals of the 1950s and ’60s. Yet, by

all the same measures — wealth, income, life expectancy,

school success, crime rates — blacks lag far behind whites.

Many African-Americans — and not a few whites — say

discrimination, whether due to institutional habits or deliber-

ate prejudice, prevents them from attaining jobs and homes

equal to those enjoyed by whites. The recent Supreme Court

decision upholding affirmative action heartened many blacks.

But racially tinged incidents, such as those in Cincinnati,

Benton Harbor, Mich., and Tulia, Texas, periodically shatter

Americans’ complacency about race.

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THE ISSUES ......................595

BACKGROUND ..................604

CHRONOLOGY ..................605

CURRENT SITUATION ..........611

AT ISSUE ..........................614

OUTLOOK ........................617

BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................620

THE NEXT STEP ................621

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July 11, 2003 • Volume 13, No. 25 • Pages 593-624

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THE ISSUES

595 • Is discrimination still aproblem in the U.S.?• Are blacks economicallyharmed due to racism?• Is the criminal-justicesystem racially biased?

BACKGROUND

604 Road to EmancipationSlavery began in the U.S.in the early 1600s.

606 Rise of ‘Jim Crow’“Jim Crow” laws deprivedblacks of civil rights.

608 Civil Rights EraWorld War II fostered integration.

609 A Dream Deferred?In the 1970s civil rightslaws faced a backlash.

609 Persistent PovertyHigh rates of teen preg-nancy are blamed.

CURRENT SITUATION

611 Affirmative ActionUniversity of Michigan’splan is upheld.

616 Bush AdministrationPresident Bush favorsrace-neutral proposals.

617 Action in the StatesSome states are revisingtheir racial-profiling policies.

OUTLOOK

617 Lingering Problem?Racism could remain potent for a long time.

SIDEBARS AND GRAPHICS

597 Re-Segregation Increasingin Southern SchoolsBusing and other integrationefforts were abandoned.

598 Are Blacks Losing Clout?Race-based redistricting pro-motes political segregation.

600 Predatory LendingMinorities are most vulnerable.

601 Whites Earn the MostBlacks and Hispanics lag.

603 Affirmative Action Is UpheldUniversity admissions practiceswon’t change, experts say.

605 ChronologyKey events since 1941.

606 The N-Word and OtherRacist SymbolsSome states outlaw them.

611 Minority HomeownershipLarge gaps remain betweenwhites and blacks.

612 Anti-Arab Sentiment RisingDiscrimination is up since 9/11.

614 At Issue• Should colleges use raceas a factor in admissions?• Is the Confederate flag aracist symbol?

FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

619 For More InformationOrganizations to contact.

620 BibliographySelected sources used.

621 The Next StepAdditional articles from currentperiodicals.

623 Citing The CQ ResearcherSample bibliography formats.

RACE IN AMERICA

Cover: Howard University student Ford Bell supports affirmative action outside the U.S.Supreme Court on April 1, 2003. On June 23, the court upheld the use of race as a factor inlaw-school admissions at the University of Michigan. (AP Photo/Teru Iwasaki)

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Race in America

THE ISSUESWhen Joe Moore got

out of jail in June,the 60-year-old

hog farmer told reporters, “Ijust want to go home, look atTV and stay out of trouble.”After her release, Kizzie White,26, hugged her two childrenand said, “I’m going to be thebest mother I can to them.” 1

Moore and White wereamong the more than three-dozen, mostly black residentsof the West Texas town ofTulia convicted of drug crimesfour years ago solely on thenow-discredited testimony ofan undercover police officerwidely labeled as a racist.

Many white Americansbelieve that race no longermatters in America, now thatpublic schools have been in-tegrated, blacks can vote andrace-based job and housingdiscrimination are illegal. Yet racial in-cidents like Tulia continue to erupt,periodically shattering Americans’ com-placency about race and signaling tomany observers that racist sentimentsstill linger in some psyches.

Often the eruptions spill into thestreets — usually in response to al-legedly racist police actions — suchas the riots that broke out in Cincin-nati in April 2001 or in Benton Har-bor, Mich., this past June.

Lately, some of the incidents — par-ticularly in the South — appear to rep-resent a longing by some for the pre-1960s era of segregation. In Georgia thisspring, white high-school students helda prom at which African-American stu-dents pointedly were excluded — a yearafter the school’s first integrated prom.That followed the downfall last fall ofSen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, who wasforced to resign as majority leader after

saying America would have been bet-ter off if then-Gov. Strom Thurmond ofSouth Carolina had won the presiden-cy in 1948, when he was an ardent seg-regationist.

And some of the racially tinged in-cidents have been particularly conscience-searing: the murder of James Byrd Jr.,chained behind a truck in Jasper, Texas,and dragged to death; the broomsticksodomizing of Haitian immigrant AbnerLouima and the shooting of unarmedAfrican immigrant Amadou Diallo byNew York policemen; the beating in LosAngeles of Rodney King.

Such cases bring into dramatic focusthe often diametrically opposing waysin which whites and blacks view racerelations in America, especially whenthe criminal-justice system is involved.Many whites saw the acquittal of O.J.Simpson in the murder of his ex-wifeNicole Simpson and her friend Ron Gold-

man as a miscarriage of jus-tice, while blacks generallyviewed it as a triumph overracist police tactics. Similarly,blacks in Tulia celebrated therelease of their fellow citizensas righting a racial injusticewhile whites continued to ques-tion the prisoners’ innocence.

And even the SupremeCourt’s landmark approval re-cently of the University ofMichigan’s use of affirmativeaction in law-school admis-sions was viewed differentlyby some blacks and whites(see pp. 603, 612).

But many Americans —whites as well as blacks —say the nation’s racial prob-lems go beyond racial prefer-ences and the criminal-justicesystem. They say discrimina-tion still exists despite civil-rights laws, undercutting blackseducationally and economical-ly. Although African-Ameri-cans have made economic,

political and social progress over the lastfour decades, by several objective mea-sures they are trailing whites:

• Median income among black menis only 73 percent as high as thatof white men, and only 84 per-cent for black women comparedwith white women. 2

• Blacks are 60 percent less likelythan whites to receive access tosophisticated medical treatmentssuch as coronary angioplasty andbypass surgery. 3

• Minorities are far more likely topay higher, “predatory” mortgagerates than whites. 4

• A majority of black studentsscore below the basic level infive out of seven subject areason the National Assessment ofEducational Progress (NAEP) tests,compared to only about 20 per-cent of white students. 5

BY ALAN GREENBLATT

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Benny Robinson hugs his daughter Jada after he andother African-Americans in Tulia, Texas, were released

from prison in June. Some three-dozen residents —mainly blacks — were convicted of drug charges basedon the now-discredited testimony of a racist policeman.

Although African-Americans have made economic,political and social progress over the last four decades,

such incidents periodically erupt, shattering Americans’ complacency about race.

596 CQ Researcher

• One in five black men spends partof his life in prison — seven timesthe rate for whites. 6 Blacks are 13percent of the U.S. population, butmake up more than 40 percent ofthe prisoners on Death Row. 7

Meanwhile, some social criticswarn that Latinos and Arabs increas-ingly experience discrimination in theUnited States. Latinos, expected to be-come the nation’s largest minority groupin the next few years, struggle withlevels of poverty and education sim-ilar to those of blacks. And Arabs andcivil-liberties advocates say the na-tion’s war on terrorism subjects Mid-dle Easterners to widespread harass-ment. (See sidebar, p. 612.)

Some social scientists say that civil-rights laws are working and that blacks’lack of achievement is often due to lackof hard work and criminal behavior, not

racism. Moreover, they point to progressin a number of areas, including the re-cent decision by New Jersey to stopracial profiling by its state troopers.

Gary Orfield, co-director of the Har-vard Civil Rights Project, says the racialdivide still appears to be widest inpublic education. Despite decades ofcourt-ordered school integration, morethan one in six black children attendsa school comprised of 99-100 percentminority students; by comparison, lessthan 1 percent of white public-schoolstudents attend such schools.

Many observers have expected theRepublican Party to adopt a more con-ciliatory stance toward blacks, whooverwhelmingly favor Democrats inelections for all levels of office. In-deed, a day after 12 of the Tulia de-fendants were released from prison,the Bush administration barred feder-

al officers from using race or ethnic-ity as a factor in conducting investi-gations (except in cases involving ter-rorism or national security). 8

But some African-American leadersquestion the Bush administration’s com-mitment to fighting racism. “Bush rep-resents anathema to our struggle forsocial justice,” says civil-rights activistJesse Jackson. “He would not permit[Secretary of State Colin] Powell to goto the U.N. conference on racism inSouth Africa; he has sought to stockthe courts with anti-civil rights judges;he is anti-affirmative action. . . . Weare simply on different teams.” 9

Less than a month after Lottstepped down, President Bush spokeout against the University of Michi-gan’s use of racial preferences.

Bush’s supporters, however, say hehas appointed as many women and

RACE IN AMERICA

White Students Are the Most Isolated

Note: Figures are for the 2000-2001 school year.

Source: Erica Frankenberg, Chungmei Lee and Gary Orfield, “A Multiracial Society With Segregated Schools: Are We Losing the Dream?” Harvard University Civil Rights Project, January 2003.

Racial Composition of Schools Attended by the Average . . .

The average white student in the United States attends a school made up of 80 percent whites. Similarly, most black students attend schools in which the majority of their fellow students are the same race as themselves. Asians are the most integrated in American schools.

White Student Black Student Latino Student Asian Student

WhiteBlackLatinoAsianNative American

79.7%

8.6%

7.6%

54.3%

11.4%

30.9%

3.1% 0.9% 2.9% 0.5%

12.0%53.7%

4.9% 0.8%

28.6%

12.0%

19.3%

22.2%

45.8%

0.7%


minorities to top government jobs asBill Clinton, whose administration wasthe most racially diverse in history.“The president is very committed todiversity of thought, of professionalbackground, of geography, ethnicityand gender,” said Clay Johnson, whocoordinated appointments for Bush.By March 2001, he noted, 27 percentof Bush’s selections were women, and20 to 25 percent were minorities. 10

Like many conservatives, Bush be-lieves that the interests of blacks, aswell as whites, are best served byrace-neutral policies. “As we work toaddress the wrong of racial prejudice,we must not use means that createanother wrong, and thus perpetuateour divisions,” he said.

Indeed, Heather Mac Donald, a se-nior fellow at the Manhattan Institute,says “the white establishment is doingeverything it can to hire as many blackemployees as it can. If you are a blackhigh-school student who graduates withmodest SATs today, you’re going tohave colleges beating down your doorto try and persuade you to come.”

But David Wellman, a white pro-fessor of community studies at theUniversity of California, Santa Cruz,sees an opposite reality. “Race notonly matters, but whites have an ad-vantage because blacks have a disad-vantage,” says Wellman, co-author ofthe forthcoming book WhitewashingRace. “That’s the dirty little secret thatnobody wants to talk about anymore.

“Everyone wants to believe thatracism has been essentially solvedthrough legislation,” he insists. “Un-fortunately, when you look at the ev-idence in terms of education, crimeand welfare, it’s just shocking how im-portant race continues to be.”

Some scholars argue that, absent overtdiscrimination, blacks must share muchof the blame if their circumstances arenot equal to whites. “The grip of theCult of Victimology encourages the blackAmerican from birth to fixate upon rem-nants of racism and resolutely down-

play all signs of its demise,” writes JohnMcWhorter, a professor at the Univer-sity of California, Berkeley. 11

Faith Mitchell, deputy director ofthe National Research Council’s Divi-sion on Behavioral and Social Sciences,acknowledges that her fellow African-Americans have made much progress— but only to a point. “Yes, you havea growing black middle class,” shesays, “but it’s still disproportionatelysmall relative to the rest of the blackpopulation. The lower class is grow-ing faster.” 12

As blacks and whites examine racerelations in the United States, here aresome of the questions they are asking:

Is discrimination still a problemin the United States?

In 1988, when a residential treat-

ment center opened in Indianapolisfor convicted child molesters, neigh-bors accepted it with little comment.But three years later, when it was con-verted into a facility for homeless vet-erans — half of them black — neigh-borhood whites vandalized a car andburned a cross.

“An all-white cadre of child moles-ters was evidently acceptable,” wroteRandall Kennedy, a black Harvard law-school professor, “but the presence ofblacks made a racially integrated groupof homeless veterans intolerable!” 13

The Indianapolis case was unusu-ally overt, says Leonard Steinhorn, anAmerican University professor and co-author of the book By the Color of OurSkin: The Illusion of Integration andthe Reality of Race. Most opposition to

Re-Segregation Increasing in Southern Schools

By 1988 — after decades of court-ordered desegregation — the South had become the country’s most integrated region, with 43.5 percent of black students attending majority-white schools. But by 2000 the percentage had dropped to 31 percent, following the abandonment of busing and other school-desegregation efforts in the 1990s.

Source: Southern Education Reporting Service

Black Students in Majority-White Southern Schools(by percentage, 1954-2000)

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RACE IN AMERICA

E ven at age 100, Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., was alightning rod for debates about racism. In Washington,powerful Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott lost his job as major-

ity leader last year for waxing nostalgic for segregation at a 100thbirthday party for Thurmond, who died recently. Lott told the cel-ebration he wished the centenarian had won the presidency backin 1948, when he ran as a segregationist.

And in South Carolina this spring, GOP state legislators an-gered some of their Democratic colleagues by including sev-eral pictures of a young Thurmond in the state legislative man-ual. “Nobody could dispute the fact that Strom Thurmond wasprobably the No. 1 racist Dixiecrat of the day,” says state Sen.Robert Ford.

Ford, an African-American and veteran of the civil-rightsmovement, believes Thurmond sincerely tempered his viewson race later in his career. Still, Fordtook to the Senate floor to expresshis dismay over the pictures of ayounger, unreconstructed Thurmondin the manual.

Several Republican legislators saidFord was making a big deal out ofnothing, or, worse, that he was un-necessarily criticizing a man reveredas an icon throughout South Caroli-na. “They don’t want to hear any-thing negative about Strom Thur-mond,” Ford says. “They are livingin another world.”

In fact, whites in the state literal-ly do live in a different world. Be-cause of redistricting maneuvers, SouthCarolina blacks live in predominant-ly black political districts. Converse-ly, most districts are so dominated bywhites that politicians representingthose districts have no practical in-centives to consider the needs or his-torical sensitivities of African-Ameri-cans. This political segregationencourages both black and white politicians to pick fights overracially charged matters — such as disputes about pictures ofThurmond or whether to allow the Confederate flag to fly overstate buildings — because they get high-profile coverage backhome.

“On both sides of the aisle, they log onto largely symbol-ic issues,” says Dick Harpootlian, who recently stepped downas chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party.

“If you want to get re-elected and you’re black, you don’twant to talk to white voters,” Harpootlian says. “If you’re whiteand running for re-election, you don’t want to talk to blacks.

We’ve institutionalized this idea that race predominates overany other interest.”

The Voting Rights Act of 1982 encouraged some blacks tojoin with Republicans to create majority-black districts after the1980 and 1990 censuses — mostly in the South. The deal al-lowed African-Americans to create districts that would likelyelect blacks. For Republicans, concentrating black voters intoa relatively few districts weakened Democratic candidates’ chancesin neighboring districts.

Partly as a result, there are about 600 black state legislatorsin the United States today — twice as many as there were in1970. But now that Democrats are losing power in the South,black legislators in the South are in the dubious position ofbecoming more important in a national party that has becomeless powerful.

“African-Americans now have a seatat the table but no plate, no forks andnothing to eat,” Harpootlian says. “African-Americans have no influence in our leg-islature now — zero, nada, none.”

Although today there are more blackelected officials at all levels of govern-ment than in earlier years, the trend ap-pears to have peaked, at least for now.Over the last 40 years, only one African-American has been elected governor —L. Douglas Wilder of Virginia — and onlytwo blacks have been elected to the U.S.Senate — Edward W. Brooke, R-Mass.,and Carol Moseley Braun, D-Ill.

Blacks have enjoyed the most realpolitical power at the city level — buteven that power is receding. New York,Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver, Oakland,Cleveland, St. Louis, Baltimore, Seattle,Minneapolis, Dallas and numerous othercities had black mayors during the 1980sand ’90s but have white mayors today.

University of Maryland political scien-tist Ronald Walters says that as increasing

numbers of blacks moved out of the center cities, whites havegained the upper hand because they vote in greater numbers.“It’s sort of a cycle of expectations that didn’t pan out,” Walterssays. “There was a lot of euphoria around the first generationof black mayors and what they could accomplish.”

But just as blacks were taking the reins of power, Walterspoints out, urban populations began declining, and aid to citiesbegan drying up. “The irony was that they couldn’t accomplisha whole hell of a lot. The whole conservative movement atthe state and national level robbed them of the ability to domuch.”

Are Blacks Losing Political Clout?

Former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, D-Ill.,one of only two blacks ever elected to theU.S. Senate in modern times, is seeking

the Democratic presidential nomination.

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racial integration is much more subtle,he says. “Today, a black person movesin and most white people accept it, oreven like it,” Steinhorn says. “But oneor two families get nervous and moveout. More blacks may move in, be-cause they see that the first blacks havebeen accepted. Then a couple morewhites say we better move.

“It’s a slow and gradual phenome-non, not the spontaneous, overnightreaction we saw in the past,” Stein-horn explains. Even if the African-Americans share the same socioeco-nomic footing as the whites, mostwhites will not stay in a neighborhoodonce it becomes more than 10 to 15percent black, he says.

But some observers argue that seg-regation today is more a matter ofchoice than of bigotry. “White flightis just as widespread as ever,” saysJared Taylor, editor of American Re-naissance magazine, who has beendescribed as a white nationalist. “Evenif few people acknowledge it, peopleprefer the company of people likethemselves, and race is an importantingredient. Given the chance, theyspend their time in homogeneousgroups. It is part of human nature.”

Taylor’s sentiments are echoed byCarol Swain, a black professor of lawand political science at Vanderbilt Uni-versity. “Clearly, discrimination exists,and in very subtle ways,” she says,but it is “human nature for people tofavor their own group.” Indeed, many“black separatists” argue that African-Americans can achieve more by run-ning their own businesses in their owncommunities, rather than seeking op-portunities among whites.

“I would prefer to see more inte-gration,” says Bob Zelnick, chairmanof the Boston University journalismdepartment and a member of the con-servative Citizens’ Initiative on Raceand Ethnicity. “But I don’t think it’s amark of failure if people prefer to liveamong their own kind. There’s some

lingering discrimination [in the UnitedStates], but I think the determined mid-dle-class or upper-middle-class minor-ity family that seeks to live in a whiteneighborhood can do so.”

Zelnick is “not overly concerned”about segregated patterns of residen-tial living, but only “so long as youhave real opportunity for African-Amer-icans to get access to educational op-portunity and institutions of higherlearning, and as long as you have ac-cess to employment opportunities aftercollege or high school.”

But others are quick to point outthat educational opportunities are not,in fact, allocated evenly to all races.They cite a recent decision in whichthe New York Court of Appeals foundthat the city’s longstanding system ofproviding less money to inner-cityschools than to wealthier suburbanschools violates the state Constitutionbecause it deprives students of an equaleducation. The court gave the state 13months to change the funding formulasthat provide less money for urban stu-dents — a common practice in Amer-ican school districts. 14

Meanwhile, Harvard history Pro-fessor Stephan Thernstrom says stud-ies show residential segregation hasbeen declining since the 1960s. “[Seg-regation] is now at the lowest levelsince 1920,” he says. Real estateagents and home sellers are more in-terested in closing the deal than en-gaging in discrimination. If residentialsegregation exists, he says, it’s large-ly a matter of choice.

But some racial separation may notbe by mutual choice. A recent UrbanInstitute analysis of home-loan appli-cations in Chicago and Los Angelesfound that information was withheldfrom blacks and Hispanics in “statisti-cally significant patterns of unequaltreatment” that “systematically favorwhites.” 15 In another study, African-American women had access to abouthalf as many rental properties as whitemales because of disparities in the in-formation the women received. 16

Meanwhile, Southern public schoolsare “re-segregating.” According to re-searchers at the Harvard Civil Rights Pro-ject, the proportion of black students inmajority-white Southern schools has

Continued from p. 597

Most Inmates Are Black, Hispanic

Minorities represented nearly two-thirds of the 1.8 million American men over age 18 in local jails and state or federal prisons in 2002.

Note: American Indians, Alaska Natives, Asians, Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders are included in the total.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2002,” April 2003

Men in U.S. Jails and Prisons(as of June 30, 2002)

Percentage of Percentage of Race Inmate Total in U.S. Population

White 630,700 34.0% 75.0%

Black 818,900 44.0 13.0

Hispanic 342,500 18.5 12.0

Total 1,848,700

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reached its lowest level since 1968. 17

(See graph, p. 597.)Moreover, American University’s

Steinhorn says, many forms of de factodiscrimination still are practiced today,such as requiring black job applicants— but not whites — to take writing

tests; department store security guardsfollowing blacks more closely thanwhites; and drug stores failing to carryAfrican-American hair-care products todiscourage their patronage.

“It doesn’t have to be legalized, high-profile segregation to be meaningful,”

Steinhorn says. “This is the stuff of life.If it’s death by a thousand cuts, that’sas powerful as being told you haveto sit at the back of the bus.”

Are blacks still economically disad-vantaged due to racism?

Nearly everyone agrees that blacks,generally, are far better off financial-ly than they were 40 years ago. Butblacks still hold a fraction of whites’accumulated assets. For instance, theproportion of blacks that own theirown homes has doubled since 1940,but it is still about a third below therate for whites. 18

Are these financial disparities be-tween the races due to racism or tosocioeconomic factors and differencesin education levels? Steinhorn and oth-ers say the persistent separation of theraces has negative financial conse-quences for blacks. Segregation, forinstance, can prevent blacks from hav-ing access to the social networks thatcan lead to good jobs. Some econo-mists also argue that urban blacks suf-fer from “spatial mismatch” — unequalaccess to suburban jobs located nearwhite residential areas. High crime ratesalso hamper black wealth creation.

“Crime depresses the property val-ues in cities and neighborhoods thatblacks tend to live in,” says George R.La Noue, a political scientist at the Uni-versity of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Much of the racial disparity inwealth is the result of the historicallegacy of segregation, according toSteinhorn and others. Black familiessimply have not had time to accruewealth to match the generations of in-herited property and other assets en-joyed by whites. Blacks also have aharder time investing in major assets,such as real estate.

“There is no question that minori-ties are less likely than whites to ob-tain mortgage financing and that, ifsuccessful, they receive less generousloan amounts and terms,” concludeda 1999 Urban Institute study. 19

RACE IN AMERICA

Predatory Lending on the Rise

The number of subprime home-mortgage loans — or loans with high interest rates, exorbitant fees and harmful terms — has skyrocketed in recent years. The increase in these so-called predatory loans has been most dramatic in minority communities, particularily among Latinos. At the same time, the number of prime, or lower-rate, loans decreased for blacks but increased for whites and Latinos. Subprime loans are intended for people who are unable to obtain a conven-tional prime loan at the standard bank rate. The loans have higher interest rates to compensate for the potentially greater risk that these borrowers represent, but Fannie Mae (Federal National Mortgage Association) estimates that as many as half of all subprime borrowers could have qualified for a lower-cost mortgage. Elderly homeowners, communities of color, and low-income neighborhoods are the most severely affected by such practices. Subprime loans represented 9 per-cent of all conventional home-purchase loans in the U.S. in 2001.

Source: ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), “Separate and Unequal: Predatory Lending in America,” November 2002

Increases in Subprime and Prime Lending, 1995-2001

0

200

400

600

800

1,000

-100-6%

Black

8%

White

65%

Latino

686%

415%

882%SubprimePrime

Percentage


Education is perhaps the biggestfactor affecting black incomes. Blacksconsistently trail behind whites on stan-dardized tests, and people who achievehigher test scores usually can com-mand higher salaries.

But the University of California’sMcWhorter says the disparity in edu-cation levels can’t be attributed solelyto racism. “A cultural trait is the drivingfactor in depressing black scholarly per-formance,” he writes. “A wariness ofbooks and learning for learning’s sakeas [being] ‘white’ has become ingrainedin black American culture.” 20

Harvard’s Thernstrom, co-author ofa forthcoming book on racial dispar-ities in education, No Excuses: Closingthe Racial Gap in Learning, says theeducation gap largely explains the in-come gap. Too many studies unfairlycompare income levels for blacks andwhites who have completed the samelevel of education, he argues. But blacksscore more poorly on standardizedtests than whites at the same gradelevel, indicating that they are not re-ceiving the same level of instruction.

“When you measure educationalachievement — not by the time you’vespent under a school roof, but by whatyou know — the disparity in racialincome mostly disappears,” he says.“People of different races with equallevels of cognitive skills have earnedabout the same amount of money inour society for the past 25 years. Evenif employers aren’t discriminating atall on the basis of race, they are pay-ing higher-skilled workers more.”

Thernstrom believes that blacks’ poortest scores are not so much due toracism but to flaws in K-12 public ed-ucation in general. He says concen-trating efforts on improving schoolswould aid education in general whilealso aiding blacks and other minorities.

“In a society committed to equalopportunity, we still have a raciallyidentifiable group of educational have-nots — young African-Americans andLatinos,” write Thernstrom and his

wife and co-author, Abigail Thernstrom,a senior fellow at the Manhattan In-stitute and a member of the U.S. CivilRights Commission. “They place someblame on members of these groupsfor failing to place an emphasis oneducation and for a cultural work ethicthat sometimes equates achievementwith “acting white or selling out.”

But the Thernstroms place heavierblame on schools for failing to adaptto group cultural differences and fornot demanding high standards fromtheir students. “Plenty of white andAsian kids are also being shortchanged,”they write, “but it is the black andHispanic [statistics] that suggest ap-palling indifference.” 21

Many people on the other side,however, citing the recent New Yorkappeals court decision, point out thatAmerican school-funding policies —

which unlike any other industrializedcountry are based on property values— are clearly lopsided against poor-er school districts, which often aremade up primarily of blacks, Latinosand other minorities.

However, William E. Spriggs, exec-utive director of the National UrbanLeague’s Institute for Opportunity andEquality, says even highly educatedblacks suffer higher unemploymentrates than whites. “Year after year, theunemployment rate for [black] collegegraduates has continued to climb,”Spriggs says, “whereas for whites, it’sbeen fairly stable.”

But the disparities don’t end there,adds Spriggs, a former president ofthe black National Economics Associ-ation. Blacks with the same skills aswhites earn 10 to 20 percent less, hesays. “Every hour at work, to make80 cents on somebody else’s dollar isa huge disadvantage,” he says. “Youcan’t start the race 20 percent behind.”

William Rodgers, an economics pro-fessor at the College of William andMary in Williamsburg, Va., and formerchief economist at the Department ofLabor in the Clinton administration,agrees that economic disparities can-not be explained entirely by differencesin education. “Even if they come inwith skills and education like their whitecounterparts, minorities are still expe-riencing labor-market discrimination,”he says, with blacks receiving fewercallbacks and job offers.

The University of Maryland’s La Noueadmits that racism and discriminationpersist, but he says other factors —such as limited educational opportuni-ties — also can affect members of allraces. Thus he opposes trying to alle-viate income disparities through racialquotas or special race-based programs,because he says they are unfair towhites with limited opportunities.

For the same reason, La Noue op-poses government programs that setaside a certain percentage of contractsfor minority-owned companies. “Too

Whites Earn the Most

The average white worker made $126 a week more than the average black worker in 2002, and $201 a week more than the average Hispanic.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Median Weekly Income(by race, in 2002)

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

$700

$498

$423

$624

White Black Hispanic

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often in this area, wecreated race-based solu-tions that are not reallycongruent with the prob-lems we’re trying tosolve, and based on grossgeneralizations that allpeople of one race areprivileged and all peo-ple of another race aredisadvantaged,” he says.

Is the criminal-justice systemracially biased?

Black comedianRichard Pryor used to jokeabout going to court seek-ing justice in America.“And that’s exactly whatI saw,” he said. “Just us.”

Indeed, blacks com-prise 13 percent of thecountry’s population butmore than 40 percent ofthe U.S. prison popula-tion, according to theWashington-based Sen-tencing Project. A blackmale born in 1991 standsa 29 percent chance ofspending time in prison,compared with 4 percentfor white males. In 1995,one in three black men between theages of 20 and 29 was either in prison,on probation or on parole. 22

Many African-Americans argue thatmore blacks are in jail because policeand prosecutors target blacks. Many blackssay they have been pulled over for the“crime” of “driving while black.” “Noth-ing has poisoned race relations more,”writes Harvard’s Kennedy, “than racial-ly discriminatory policing, pursuant towhich blacks are watched, questionedand detained more than others.” 23

Lawsuits challenging the constitution-ality of racial profiling have led to set-tlements in California, Maryland and otherstates, many of which have revised theirpolicies for stopping motorists. 24 In

March, New Jersey became the first stateto ban profiling. 25 And in June, Presi-dent Bush banned racial profiling at thefederal level — except in cases involv-ing terrorism and national security.

But the Manhattan Institute’s MacDonald, author of Are Cops Racist?says police don’t target blacks becauseof race. “It’s not racism that sends po-lice departments into black neighbor-hoods,” she says. “It’s crime.”

Merely comparing numbers of stopsand arrests with raw census data is anexercise in false logic, she argues. “Theway the anti-police activists are spin-ning numbers is very clever,” Mac Don-ald says. Comparing arrest records forblacks and whites is just as spurious as

complaining that too few se-nior citizens are arrested, de-spite the fact that they don’tcommit as many violentcrimes as younger people,she says.

Complaints about profil-ing, Mac Donald warns, canmake police officers wary ofgoing after black offenders,for fear of exceeding theirallowable quota of African-American arrests. In Cincin-nati, where police changedtheir tactics after blacks ri-oted in 2001, arrests droppedby 30 percent in 2002, buthomicides reached a 15-yearhigh, she notes. 26

In a widely cited study,Michael Tonry, director ofthe University of Cam-bridge’s Institute of Crimi-nology, maintains thatmore blacks are locked upbecause they commit more“imprisonable crimes.” 27

Perhaps more poignantly,Jesse Jackson once said,“There is nothing morepainful for me at this stagein my life than to walkdown the street and hearfootsteps and start to think

about robbery and see it’s somebodywhite and feel relieved.” 28

Still, some critics say when blacksdo commit crimes, they can’t get a fairshake from the criminal-justice system.Although even critics of the systemadmit that data is scarce comparinghow blacks and whites are sentencedfor committing the same crimes, theUniversity of California’s Wellman citesstudies in Georgia and New York thatshow racial differences in the prisonterms imposed for similar offenses.

Members of the CongressionalBlack Caucus — including Rep. JohnConyers, D-Mich., the ranking Demo-crat on the Judiciary Committee —

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Demonstrators reflect both sides of the affirmative-action debatefollowing the Supreme Court’s June 23 ruling supporting the

University of Michigan’s use of race as a factor in admissions.


College and university officials expect few changes in ad-missions practices following the Supreme Court’s quali-fied approval of affirmative action. But opponents of af-

firmative action vow to continue their fight in court and elsewhere.Most undergraduate and graduate schools with race-con-

scious admissions policies use an individualized applicationprocess akin to the University of Michigan Law School’s sys-tem approved by the high court on June 23, education offi-cials and experts say. They add that only a few schools awardall minority applicants a fixed, quantitative bonus similar to thepoint system used at Michigan’s undergraduate college, whichthe court found unconstitutional.

The court’s ruling “has the effect of defining current prac-tices as constitutional,” says Barmak Nassirian, associate execu-tive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrarsand Admissions Officers. “There are very few institutions thatwould be negatively affected by the undergraduate decision.”

The head of the conservative public-interest law firm thatrepresented unsuccessful white applicants to Michigan, how-ever, says the court’s action will make it more difficult for uni-versities to use racial preferences by precluding the mechanis-tic formulae that he believes are common. Terence Pell,president of the Washington-based Center for Individual Rights,warns universities not to use the rulings as a “fig leaf” to pre-serve the status quo.

“Some schools are determined to continue to take race intoaccount, and it’s business as usual for them,” Pell said afterthe court’s decisions. The center plans to monitor responses tothe decisions, Pell said, and challenge any schools claiming toreview applicants individually but still using a “mechanistic”formula to favor minority candidates. 1

Immediately after the rulings, Michigan President Mary SueColeman greeted reporters at the Supreme Court with a broadsmile. “This is a wonderful day,” she said, adding that the un-dergraduate college would be able to change its system tocomply with the court’s decision by the fall. 2

The court’s 6-3 ruling in the undergraduate case — Gratzv. Bollinger — faulted the College of Literature, Science andthe Arts for awarding minority applicants a fixed bonus of 20points out of a maximum score of 150, with 100 points need-ed to qualify for admission. By contrast, the 5-4 majority in thelaw-school case — Grutter v. Bollinger — found that the ad-missions process used by the law school was constitutional be-cause officers considered race or ethnicity as only one factorin trying to achieve a “critical mass” of minority candidatesneeded for a diverse student body.

Nassirian says the rulings will speed a movement alreadyunder way among colleges and universities toward what admis-sions officers call “full-folder review” of applicants. “Most appli-cants want to be treated fairly,” he says, “and they don’t wantto be eliminated on the basis of two or three data elements.”

But Bradford Wilson, executive director of the National As-sociation of Scholars, in Princeton, N.J., notes that the under-graduate college defended its fixed-bonus system on thegrounds that individualized review was impossible given itslarge volume of applications. “I just don’t see how it’s possi-ble to do what the Supreme Court called meaningful, individ-ualized review without having a virtual army of [undergradu-ate] admissions officers reviewing applicants,” says Wilson, whosegroup opposed both Michigan admissions procedures.

The court’s rulings came after a period of retrenchment onaffirmative action in some states, including three with big pub-lic-university systems: Texas, California and Florida. Texas hadto suspend racial preferences in admissions after a March 1996federal appeals-court decision in a suit against the Universityof Texas Law School. 3 California voters approved an initiativein November 1996, Proposition 209, which barred considera-tion of race or national origin in admissions. And in February2000, Gov. Jeb Bush, R-Fla., adopted a so-called “One Flori-da” program that similarly ended the use of race in admissionsat state universities.

In Texas, Larry Faulkner, president of the university’s Austincampus, said the school would resume some form of racialadmissions policies for the class entering in fall 2004. 4 Uni-versity of California President Richard Atkinson, however, saidthe school would continue to comply with the state’s initiativebarring race-based admissions. In Florida, Bush also reaffirmedthe policy against considering race in university admissions.

All three states also adopted so-called percentage plans for stateuniversities to admit any high-school graduate with a class rankabove a fixed cutoff point — the top 10 percent, for example, inTexas. In a brief opposing the Michigan admissions policies, theBush administration endorsed the ostensibly race-neutral alterna-tive to racial preferences. Percentage plans are designed to creatediversity by ensuring representation from all schools, includingthose that are predominantly black or Hispanic.

But in her majority opinion in the Michigan law-school case,Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said such approaches “may pre-clude” individualized assessment of applicants and prevent uni-versities from achieving diversity in other respects besides race.

— Kenneth Jost

1 Quoted in Diana J. Schemo, “Group Vows to Monitor Academia’s Re-sponses,” The New York Times, June 24, 2003, p. A22. For other statementsand materials, see the center’s Web site: www.cir.org.2 For the text of a letter on the ruling that Coleman sent to the universi-ty community and other materials, see the university’s Web site:http://www.umich.edu/~urel/admissions/.3 The case is Hopwood v. University of Texas Law School, 78 F.3d 392.(5thCir. 1996). The ruling, which the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review,also covered the states of Louisiana and Mississippi.4 Reaction from the three states is compiled in Jeffrey Selingo, “DecisionsMay Prompt Return of Race-Conscious Admissions at Some Colleges,” TheChronicle of Higher Education, July 4, 2003, p. S5.

Few Changes Seen in Racial Admissions Plans

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often complain that sentencing guide-lines are much harsher for crack co-caine, predominantly used and sold byblacks, than for powder cocaine, usedprimarily by whites. But critics of thatargument note the Black Caucus pushedhard for tough laws against crack pre-cisely because it is a scourge in pre-dominantly black communities. 29

But the biggest disparities result be-cause of where police concentrate theirenforcement efforts, says Mark Mauer,assistant director of the Sentencing Pro-ject. “Drug use and abuse cuts acrossrace and class lines, but drug-law en-forcement is primarily located in theinner cities,” Mauer says. Moreover, hepoints out, white suburban teenagerscaught with drugs might be sent totreatment programs instead of beingprosecuted, but similar treatment isn’toffered to blacks: “In a low-incomecommunity, those resources aren’t pro-vided to the same extent, so [drug pos-session] is much more likely to be de-fined as a criminal-justice problem.”

Critics of the criminal-justice systemalso argue that street crimes are pros-ecuted more harshly than white-collarcrimes, which primarily are committedby whites. But that’s because tax fraudand securities abuse are less of a so-cietal concern than armed robbery,says Harvard sociologist ChristopherJencks. “Given a choice, almost every-one would rather be robbed by a com-puter than at gunpoint,” he writes. 30

Racial disparities also exist in theuse of the death penalty, according toa recent Maryland study. It found thatblacks who murdered whites were farmore likely to face the death penaltythan either white killers or blacks whokilled other blacks. 31 A court-ap-pointed committee in Pennsylvania an-nounced in March that the state shouldhalt executions pending a study of racialbias. 32 Several other states have com-missioned studies to determinewhether the death penalty is appliedmore often or unfairly to blacks.

“Generally, discrimination based onthe race of the defendant has tremen-dously declined,” says David Baldus, aUniversity of Iowa law professor whohas studied racial bias in the deathpenalty. “But discrimination based onthe race of victim has continued.”

BACKGROUNDRoad to Emancipation

B y 1619, the first African slaves hadbeen brought to Virginia, and by

the 1640s slavery was well-established,mostly in the Southern colonies. Be-tween 1680 and 1750, the colonies’blacks — who were virtually all slaves— grew from just under 5 percent ofthe population to more than 20 per-cent. 33 As slavery grew, so did the re-pressiveness of racial laws governingnon-slaves. In the early 18th century,free blacks endured higher taxes andmore severe criminal punishments thanwhite colonials, with several Southernstates denying them suffrage.

However, whites turned to blacksfor support in their war against theBritish during the American Revolution.In part, this was a natural outgrowthof the egalitarian ideals that had be-come the rallying call for the Ameri-cans — even though the ContinentalCongress had struck anti-slavery lan-guage from Thomas Jefferson’s draft ofthe Declaration of Independence.

“How is it that we hear the loud-est yelps for liberty among the driversof Negroes?” mocked British authorSamuel Johnson. 34

But British commanders hadpromised freedom to any slave whofought on their side, so the Americansmatched the offer. By 1775, GeorgeWashington, who had originally op-posed recruiting black soldiers, wrote:

“Success will depend on which sidecan arm the Negroes the faster.” 35

By war’s end, most colonies and theContinental Congress were enlistingblacks, with the understanding that free-dom would be their reward for fight-ing. Thousands served as soldiers andlaborers, while thousands more tookadvantage of the confusion of war toflee from white masters in the South.

But the promises of freedom turnedout, in many cases, to be empty ones.After the war, most of the New Englandstates banned slavery, but the Southernstates, of course, continued the practice.

Many of the economic gains madeby blacks during the war were short-lived, and their political and legal sta-tus soon slipped as well. The FugitiveSlave Law of 1793 pledged the aid offederal courts in returning escaped slavesto their masters. With fear of slave re-volts growing, abolitionism never tookroot in the South, and by the early19th century several Northern stateshad disenfranchised free blacks.

A number of frontier states barrednot just slaves but all blacks, purelyout of racial hatred, as contemporarydebates made clear. Then a new Fugi-tive Slave Act in 1850 expanded therole of the federal government in thesearch for escaped slaves.

Life for freed blacks was tenuous, in-deed, a situation made abundantly clearby the Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scottdecision. The infamous ruling determinedthat runaway slaves like Scott remainedthe property of their masters, even afterthey had escaped to free states. Thecourt also said persons of African de-scent could never become citizens withthe right to sue, and overturned banson slavery in the frontier territories.

In early 1861, Congress approved aconstitutional amendment protecting theinstitution of slavery, but it was neverratified by the requisite three-quarters ofthe states. The measure apparently wasdesigned to allay Southerners’ fears thatthe 1860 election of President Lincoln

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Chronology1940s-1950sWorld War II and its aftermathpresage big changes for African-Americans as the migrationnorth intensifies and the civil-rights movement takes off.

1941World War II causes an immediateshortage of industrial labor at home,increasing the migration of SouthernAfrican-Americans to Northern urbanareas.

1947Jackie Robinson joins the BrooklynDodgers, becoming the first blackto play Major League Baseball.

July 26, 1948President Harry S Truman ends racialsegregation in the armed forces.

1954The Supreme Court’s landmarkBrown v. Board of Education rulingoverturns the previous “separate butequal” policy in public education.

1955Rosa Parks refuses to give up herseat on a city bus to a whiteman, sparking the Montgomery,Ala., bus boycott. The Rev. Dr.Martin Luther King Jr. emerges asa civil-rights leader.

•

1960s The civil-rightsmovement prompts Congress toenact legislation aimed at end-ing discrimination.

1961President John F. Kennedy usesthe term “affirmative action” forthe first time, ordering federalcontractors to give preferentialtreatment to minorities in hiring.

1963Dr. King gives his stirring “I Havea Dream” speech at the LincolnMemorial in Washington.

1964The Civil Rights Act prohibits jobdiscrimination based on race, sexor national origin.

1965President Lyndon B. Johnson signsthe Voting Rights Act. In Septemberhe orders federal contractors to ac-tively recruit minorities.

1968Dr. King is assassinated, touchingoff race riots in many U.S. cities.

•

1970s-1980sNew policies like affirmativeaction are adopted, promptinga backlash among whites.

1970President Richard M. Nixon requirescontractors to set goals for minorityemployment.

1978In University of California Regentsv. Bakke, the Supreme Court rulesthat universities can use race as afactor in admissions, but may notimpose quotas.

1980Affirmative-action foe Ronald Reaganis elected to the presidency. TheJustice Department begins attackingracial quotas.

•

1990s-2000sAs affirmative action is chal-lenged in the courts, racist-

tinged incidents continue toshock the nation.

1991Black motorist Rodney King iskicked and beaten by white LosAngeles police officers; their ac-quittal in 1992 touches off majorrioting. Eventually they are con-victed of civil-rights violations.

1993Supreme Court rules in Shaw v.Reno that race cannot be used asthe “predominant” factor in draw-ing political districts.

1996Voters in California approveProposition 209 outlawing the useof race or gender preferences atall state government institutions.

1998Three white men in Jasper, Texas,drag black James Byrd Jr. to deathbehind their pickup truck. Twoare sentenced to death; a third issentenced to life in prison.

2002Sen. Trent Lott says the countrywould have been better off if then-segregationist Gov. Strom Thurmondhad been elected president in 1948;after outcry, Lott steps down asSenate majority leader.

Jan. 15, 2003President Bush announces that hisadministration sides with affirma-tive-action opponents against Uni-versity of Michigan admissionspolicies.

June 2003Supreme Court upholds the Uni-versity of Michigan’s qualified useof race as a factor in admissions. .. . Blacks riot in Benton Harbor,Mich., to protest allegedly racistpolice tactics.

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— who had advocated banning slaveryin the territories — threatened slaveryin the South. Unconvinced, 11 South-ern states seceded from the Union, be-ginning in 1861. The country was soonat war.

Rise of ‘Jim Crow’

O n Jan. 1, 1863, Lincoln issuedhis Emancipation Proclamation,

freeing all slaves in the territories andBorder States. Although Lincoln hadnot wanted to make slavery the cen-tral issue of the conflict between theNorth and the South, the Confedera-cy still focused on it. Even before is-

suing the proclamation, Lincoln — likeWashington — recognized that puttingblacks to use as soldiers had become“a military necessity.”

After the North’s victory, Congresspassed the 13th, 14th and 15th amend-ments to the Constitution, which va-cated the Dred Scott decision and gaveblacks citizenship and the vote. South-ern states wishing to rejoin the Unionhad to ratify the amendments.

After an anti-abolitionist assassi-nated Lincoln in 1865, his successorswere reluctant to advocate further civilrights for blacks, and the SupremeCourt did little to encourage en-forcement of the civil-rights laws thatexisted.

In fact, emboldened by court in-terpretations that elevated states’ rights

above those of blacks, Southernstates passed a series of so-called JimCrow laws stripping blacks of statureand legal protections. Named after aminstrel character, the legislation wascarefully written in race-neutral lan-guage to pass constitutional muster.Most infamously, the Supreme Courtin 1896 upheld segregation laws, rul-ing in Plessy v. Ferguson that “sepa-rate but equal” accommodations didnot intrinsically benefit one race overanother.

Oklahoma soon required “separatebut equal” telephone booths. NewOrleans kept black and white pros-titutes segregated. Florida and NorthCarolina made it illegal for whites toread textbooks that had been usedby blacks. 36 Meanwhile, throughout

RACE IN AMERICA


I f you want to rile up black folk,” says jazz singer ReneMarie of Atlanta, Ga., “wave the Confederate flag, sing‘Dixie’ or say ‘nigger.’ ”

Marie notes that the words to “Dixie” are not objectionablein and of themselves. But they hold negative connotations forher fellow African-Americans because it was the South’s CivilWar anthem and was sometimes sung by white Southerners inreaction to the civil-rights movement. Marie wants to reclaim“Dixie” to protest her feelings of being excluded from main-stream Southern culture even though she was born in the re-gion. “That song talks about longing for the South. Well, a ma-jority of black people are from the South — they should beable to express those feelings, too.”

Marie’s emotionally vulnerable version, though, speaks todifferent memories of the Old South. On stage, she seguesfrom “Dixie” into “Strange Fruit,” the graphic song about lynch-ing made famous by jazz singer Billie Holiday. But with itspounding rhythm and wrenching cries, Marie’s rendition is moreaggressive than Holiday’s.

Marie remembers being nervous about how audiences wouldrespond to the medley, particularly black listeners. Now, whenshe starts “Dixie,” her fans applaud. Still, the combined effectof the two songs is harrowing, an angry reminder of the ugli-er legacies of the South.

Some black performers and other African-Americans havesought to reconfigure the meaning of “nigger,” which Los An-geles prosecutor Christopher Darden famously called the “filth-iest, dirtiest, nastiest word in the English language” during theO.J. Simpson murder trial. It has been “a familiar and influen-

tial insult” at least since the 1830s, writes Harvard UniversityProfessor Randall Kennedy in his recent book about the hate-ful word. 1

Today, many blacks use the term to mean “friend” or sim-ply to signify a black person. 2 “When we call each other ‘nig-ger,’ it means no harm,” says the rap star and actor Ice Cube.“But if a white person uses it, it’s something different, it’s aracist word.” 3

Black comedian Chris Rock jokes about the differences be-tween black people and “niggers,” yet follows that up with astory in which he punches a white fan for repeating the samematerial. For blacks, whites using the word are offering an in-sulting reminder that they are perceived as inferior, a caste ata level to which whites can never sink. (Sen. Robert C. Byrd,D-W. Va., who as a young man belonged to the Ku Klux Klan,had to apologize for twice referring to “white niggers” duringa Fox TV appearance in 2001.)

Over the past year, local governments from Baltimore to SanJose have passed resolutions denouncing the use of the word. 4

Indeed, it remains such a potent insult that some white peopleclaim not to be racist just because they refrain from saying it. Amobster who referred to blacks as “spades,” “shines” and “coons”insisted to author Studs Terkel that he was nonetheless not aracist. “Did you ever hear me say ‘nigger’? Never!” 5

Whites and blacks also remain in conflict over the Confed-erate flag. For African-Americans, the “stars and bars” are a re-minder not only of the South’s fight to preserve slavery but alsoits resistance to desegregation. Some states returned to wavingConfederate flags, or added aspects of it to their official state

The N-Word and Other Racist Symbols


the first half of the 20th century, South-ern schools for blacks received onlya fraction of what was spent to ed-ucate whites. As Mississippi Gov. JamesK. Vardaman put it in 1909, “Moneyspent today for the maintenance ofpublic school for Negroes is robberyof the white man, and a waste uponthe Negro.” 37

In many places, blacks were sys-tematically deprived of the right to vote,and between the post-Civil War Re-construction period and the turn ofthe century their turnout dropped 90percent or more in some Southernstates. The Supreme Court, increas-ingly influenced by Justice (and ex-klansman) Edward White, was deaf tothe loudest complaints about voting-rights abuses.

Some Southern leaders even braggedabout the region’s concerted efforts tomarginalize — and even eliminate —blacks. “We have done our level best,”said Ben Tillman of the South Caroli-na Constitutional Convention. “We havescratched our heads to find out howwe could eliminate the last one ofthem. We stuffed ballot boxes. We shotthem. We are not ashamed.” 38

By the turn of the century, lynchingswere more common in some years thanlegal executions. In a recent history oflynching, author Philip Dray notes thatmore than 3,400 blacks were lynchedbetween 1882 and 1944. “Is it possiblefor white America to really understandblacks’ distrust of the legal system, theirfears of racial profiling and the police,without understanding how cheap a

black life was for so long a time in ournation’s history?” Dray asks. 39

Blacks began to move north search-ing for better jobs and more politicalopportunity. Racial tensions during theeconomic upheaval that followed WorldWar I led to riots in 1919 in abouttwo-dozen Northern cities. But whiteswere unable to drive the blacks out,despite dozens of fire-bombings ofblack homes.

Instead, beginning in the 1920s, whitesleft the cities in droves, a phenomenoncalled “white flight.” Jobs often followedthe whites to the suburbs. By 1940, 80percent of the country’s urban blackslived in segregated neighborhoods, com-pared to less than a third in 1860. 40

Meanwhile, none of the five DeepSouth states — home to 40 percent of

flags, during the 1950s and ’60sto symbolize their defiance ofcivil-rights pressures.

Since 1999, the National As-sociation for the Advancementof Colored People (NAACP) hasorganized economic boycottsof states that fly the Confeder-ate flag. South Carolina hassince taken the flag down fromits Capitol, while Mississippi vot-ers opted to keep it flying. InGeorgia, Republican Gov.Sonny Perdue was elected lastfall largely on his pledge to letvoters decide whether to re-store the Confederate cross tothe state flag. 6

Many Southern whites arguethat the Confederate flag, whichsome Southerners call the “bat-tle flag,” is not meant to be racist,but represents their heritage andis an expression of pride.

“Actually, in the South thebattle flag is so ubiquitous it doesn’t have a single meaning,”says William Rolen, Southern-heritage defense coordinator forthe Council of Conservative Citizens in Tennessee. Not only isthe emblem found on countless bumper stickers, but Confed-

erate flag T-shirts marketed to chil-dren are million-sellers. But dozensof Southern school districts havebanned them. 7

“It’s just totally inconceivable thatany other group that stood for some-thing so vile and was defeatedwould be given this place of honor,”says William Spriggs, executive di-rector of the National UrbanLeague’s Institute for Opportunityand Equality, referring to Southerncapitals that fly the flag. “One couldnot imagine that the mayor of Pariswould fly a Nazi flag because theGermans ruled France for part ofWorld War II.”

1 Randall Kennedy, Nigger: The Strange Ca-reer of a Troublesome Word (2002), p. 4.2 Clarence Page, “A Word That Wounds— If We Let It,” Chicago Tribune, Oct.12, 1997, p. 25.3 Quoted in Kennedy, op. cit., p. 41.4 Sarah Lubman, “Black Activists in S.J.Mount Campaign to Eliminate Slur,” San Jose

Mercury News, Jan. 28, 2003, p. A1.5 Studs Terkel, Race: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About theAmerican Obsession (1992), p. 5.6 See “Phew,” The Economist, May 3, 2003, p. 33.7 “Dixie Chic,” People, March 10, 2003, p. 100.

Georgia voters will decide in March whether torestore the traditional Confederate battle symbol(shown above in the 1956 flag) to the state flag.

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the nation’s black population — hadeven a single black policeman. 41

Civil-Rights Era

A s in the Revolutionary and Civilwars, the pressures of World War

II helped move desegregation forward.In 1941, as thousands of African-Amer-icans were planning to march on Wash-ington to protest hiring discriminationin the defense industries, PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt signed an exec-utive order barring such discriminationand creating a FairEmployment Prac-tices Committee(FEPC) to investigatesuch complaints. (Al-though the plannedmarch was can-celed, the idea wasto re-emerge in 1963,providing the occa-sion for civil-rightsleader Martin LutherKing Jr.’s celebrated“I Have a Dream”speech.)

Meanwhile,Southern blacks con-tinued migrating bythe millions to North-ern cities in searchof factory jobs; morethan 3 mi l l ionAfrican-Americans moved north between1940 and 1960. 42

In 1948, President Harry S Truman— bowing to pressure from blacks,whom he needed for political support,and his personal revulsion at how someblack veterans were physically attackedwhen they returned home from thewar — signed an executive order de-segregating the armed services. His ac-tion, coupled with a strong civil-rightsplank in the Democratic Party’s pres-idential platform that year, promptedmany Southerners to walk out of the

Democratic convention to protest theparty’s new commitment to civil-rights.South Carolina Gov. Strom Thurmondthen ran for president as the nomineeof the States’ Rights Party, better knownas the Dixiecrats, as an opponent ofintegration. Thurmond carried fourSouthern states.

On May 17, 1954, in the landmarkBrown v. Board of Education decision,the U.S. Supreme Court unanimouslydeclared that separate educational fa-cilities are “inherently unequal” andthus violate the Constitution’s 14thAmendment, which guarantees all cit-izens “equal protection under the law.”

The court ordered schools to be de-segregated “with all deliberate speed.”But the South was recalcitrant. Sever-al years after the decision, less than2 percent of Southern black studentsattended integrated schools. 43

But if Southern whites were defi-ant, so, increasingly, were Southernblacks. In 1955 in Montgomery, Ala.,Rosa Parks refused to give up her busseat to a white man. Her arrest sparkeda bus boycott led by King, whicheventually prompted a Supreme Courtdecision banning segregation on buses.

Other blacks pressed their demandsfor equal rights through lunch-countersit-ins, marches and “freedom rides.”They were met with violence, as wereorders to desegregate schools. In 1957President Dwight D. Eisenhower fed-eralized the Arkansas National Guardto force the entry of nine black stu-dents into Little Rock’s Central HighSchool. Five years later, President JohnF. Kennedy made the same decision inresponse to white violence when JamesMeredith became the first black to en-roll in the University of Mississippi.

On June 11, 1963, after a confrontationover Gov. George Wallace’s refusal to

allow black students toregister at the Universityof Alabama, Kennedy an-nounced in a televised ad-dress that he would pushCongress to pass a civil-rights bill that had beenlanguishing for years. Aswas often the case duringthe 1960s, Kennedycouched the importanceof the bill in terms of im-proving America’s imageabroad — an importantstrategic consideration dur-ing the Cold War.

Five months laterKennedy was assassinat-ed, and President Lyn-don B. Johnson vowedthat passing the civil-rightsbill would be a fitting

memorial. Johnson eventually outlast-ed the filibuster — the obstructionisttactic typically employed by Southernsenators — against such bills. 44 TheSenate voted to close debate and passedthe most important piece of civil-rightslegislation in the nation’s history —the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — out-lawing discrimination in employmentand public accommodations. 45

However, King and others contin-ued a series of non-violent protests inthe South, including a 1965 march fromSelma to Montgomery, Ala., to protest

RACE IN AMERICA

AFP

Photo

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his stirring “I Have aDream” address during the March on Washington in August 1963.

The assassination of the civil-rights leader five years later touched off race riots in many cities.


state and local discrimination againstblacks seeking the right to vote. Theywere met by state troopers wieldingcattle prods, nightsticks and rubberhoses wrapped in barbed wire.

In response, Johnson proposed alaw to “strike down restrictions to vot-ing in all elections — federal, stateand local — which have been usedto deny Negroes the right to vote.”The Voting Rights Act, cleared by Con-gress in 1965, outlawed literacy testsand similar qualification devices usedto keep blacks off the rolls. Johnsonsigned the bill in full knowledge thatit might weaken his party in the South.

That same year, Johnson orderedfederal contractors to take “affirmativeaction to ensure that [black] applicantsare employed.” He had declared ear-lier, “You do not take a person who,for years, has been hobbled by chainsand liberate him, bring him up to thestarting line in a race and then say,‘you are free to compete with all theothers.’ ” 46

After King was assassinated in 1968,blacks rioted in 125 cities, mostly inthe North. Within days, Congress passedan open-housing law — the FairHousing Act — which had previous-ly languished, but included no en-forcement provisions. 47

A Dream Deferred?

T he Johnson administration provedto be the high-water mark for

civil-rights legislation, although new ver-sions of the Civil and Voting Rights actshave since been passed.

By the 1970s, de jure (legal) segre-gation was finished, voting rights forblacks were secure for the first time inU.S. history and economic improvementsfor many blacks had become irreversible.By 1970, 22 percent of black men and36 percent of black women were hold-ing white-collar jobs — four to six timesthe percentages, respectively, in 1940.

But some of the laws had little orno enforcement power. The rigor withwhich anti-discrimination laws wereenforced would vary from one ad-ministration to the next. Meanwhile,the focus of anti-discrimination effortsbroadened to include women, His-panics, Native Americans and theyoung. (The voting age was loweredfrom 21 to 18 in 1970 as part of aVoting Rights Act extension.)

One of the major controversies be-tween the races during the 1970s con-cerned the attempt to force integrationby busing children out of their homeneighborhoods in order to balance schools’racial demographics. Some of the stiffestresistance occurred in the North, notablyin Boston, where a photograph of awhite crowd holding a black man andattempting to impale him with an Amer-ican flag won a Pulitzer Prize. The focusof numerous court challenges, busing hassince been discontinued.

Since the 1970s, Johnson’s predic-tion about Southern whites bolting theDemocratic Party has largely come true.President Richard M. Nixon, a Re-publican, initially opposed the 1970Voting Rights extension, responding topressure from Southerners objecting toaspects of the law that applied onlyto their region. In the face of a grow-ing political backlash against race-basedpreferential treatment in education oremployment, the once solidly Demo-cratic South has turned to a modernRepublican Party that favors color-blindpolicies of equal opportunity for all.Beginning in 1968, working-class whitesbegan to abandon the Democrats inpresidential politics, and the partywould go on to lose four out of thenext five presidential contests.

Republicans aggressively encouragedthe exodus of disaffected white vot-ers from the Democratic Party. In1980, GOP presidential nominee RonaldReagan was accusing “strapping youngbucks” and Cadillac-driving “welfarequeens” of abusing the welfare sys-tem. “If you happen to belong to an

ethnic group not recognized by thefederal government as entitled to spe-cial treatment, you are the victim ofreverse discrimination,” he said. 48

Reagan slashed funding for federalequal-protection agencies, but his ad-ministration was unable to limit affir-mative-action programs. Meanwhile, in1996, a federal court ruled that theUniversity of Texas law school couldnot use affirmative action to create adiverse student body. That same year,California voters barred the state fromusing race as a factor in employment,contracts or university admissions. Blackfreshman enrollment dropped through-out the University of California sys-tem, but has since recovered exceptat the flagship Berkeley campus. 49

Even many African-Americans worrythat affirmative-action programs haveprimarily helped the most affluentblacks instead of the neediest. And thepolicy has not lowered poverty ratesamong African-Americans: Since 1970,the overall poverty rate for blacks hasnot budged, dragged down by ever-burgeoning numbers of householdsheaded by single women. 50

Persistent Poverty

B oth liberal and conservative writ-ers blame persistent poverty on

high rates of unwed pregnancy, par-ticularly among teenagers. But whileliberals generally blamed the pregnan-cies on poverty, conservatives blamedwhat they felt were wrong-headed wel-fare policies that rewarded out-of-wed-lock births, perpetuating cycles of pover-ty from generation to generation. In1996, Congress changed the welfarelaw to limit the lifespan of benefits andrequire recipients, including mothers,to work. Republicans claim that thenew law has done more to lift blackfamilies out of poverty than any of theJohnson-era Great Society programs. 51

Continued on p. 611

610 CQ Researcher

RACE IN AMERICA

I rini Bekhit was born in Egypt, but she feels right at homeat the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) in Newark.When her fellow students socialize, some separate along

racial or ethnic lines, but Bekhit says most students are work-ing so hard they don’t have time for the racial rivalries that markmany other campuses. Even many of the fraternities are racial-ly mixed. “Everyone here is so different, it becomes a non-issue,” Bekhit says. “You get used to it just from walking around.”

U.S. News & World Report magazine ranked NJIT the eighth-most-diverse doctorate-granting campus in the nation. 1 Theschool is 20 percent Asian, 9 percent black, 9 percent Hispanicand 18 percent foreign-born. Dean of Students Jack Gentul saysthe school has fewer racial problems than New York Univer-sity — which has the country’s largest proportion of interna-tional students — where he ran diversity programs for 15 years.

“The degree of integra-tion here is much greater,and I don’t know why,” headmits. “I would certainlyget another Ph.D. if I couldexplain it well. I wish Icould bottle it.”

Most successfully inte-grated institutions work hardto create and maintain aninclusive atmosphere. Thearmed services, desegregat-ed by President Harry STruman in 1948, are oftentouted as an exceptionallystrong example of integra-tion — and one of the rareplaces in American life wherewhites routinely take ordersfrom blacks.

“There are aspects of military culture that were conduciveto change despite massive resistance,” says Sherie Merson, co-author of a study of military integration. Those aspects includethe military’s culture of meritocracy; its sense of shared pur-pose, to which individuals subordinate their individual identi-ties; and its command-and-control structure, which can imposeprograms over the objections of those individuals.

Moreover, the Department of Defense diligently runs racial-awareness programs to keep biases from coloring decisions.“What really makes the difference is the training we give. Ithelps officers realize they have to treat each person fairlyand with respect, and they don’t allow any embedded bias-es to cause them to treat one person better than another,”says Capt. Robert Watts, commander of the Defense EqualOpportunity Management Institute.

Weldon Latham, who runs the corporate-diversity practice at

Holland & Knight, one of the nation’s biggest and most diverselaw firms, says that although blacks are still underrepresentedin corporate America, many big companies have taken majorstrides toward integrating their work forces. “The enlightenedCEOs get it — and get it for the right reason, the same reasonthey get everything else — the bottom line,” Latham says.

America’s shifting demographics and the ever-increasing pur-suit of markets overseas have made it advantageous for com-panies to have staffs that match, to some extent, the profile oftheir customers, he points out.

Yet even organizations that strive to recruit blacks find thatracial disparities can slip back into their midst. Blacks have neverbeen as well represented in the military officer corps as amongenlisted personnel, and even their share of the enlisted ranks hasbeen slipping in recent years as the job market has improved.

Affluent Shaker Heights, Ohio,is often touted for having buckedthe trend toward residential seg-regation that is pronounced inthe Cleveland area. The city haslong devoted about a half-mil-lion dollars annually to provid-ing low-interest loans to peoplewilling to buy houses in neigh-borhoods where their race is un-derrepresented. “Shaker Heightshas been as aggressive as anyplace in trying to address theissue,” says Ronald Ferguson, whoteaches at Harvard University’sKennedy School of Governmentand is senior research associateat Harvard’s Weiner Center forSocial Policy. “It’s trying to main-

tain racial and, to a lesser degree, socioeconomic diversity.”Yet city officials say their vaunted loan program has found

fewer takers of late, largely because interest rates are so lowgenerally. As a result, locals worry about the re-segregation ofmany blocks. They are especially concerned that white parentshave begun pulling their children from the public schools.

NJIT’s Gentul finds it heartening to know that in little pock-ets effort at racial integration and understanding can work. ButHarry Holzer, a labor economist at Georgetown University, findshimself discouraged by the fact that such situations are diffi-cult to replicate, or sustain. “You can end your career with abroken heart,” he says, “because there are great model pro-grams here or there, and you try to re-create them or bringthem up to scale, and they fail.”

1 “Step 2: Choose the Right School,” U.S. News & World Report, Sept. 13,2002, p. 45.

Fostering Integration on Campus and Beyond

The U.S. armed services, desegregated by President Harry STruman in 1948, are generally considered a strong

example of successful integration.

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Despite persistent poverty, a blackmiddle class has arisen, primarily the re-sult of public and nonprofit-sector em-ployment, with middle-class blacks dis-proportionately entering jobs ingovernment, the postal service, teachingand social work. In 2000, African-Amer-icans made up 35 percent of the na-tion’s postal clerks and 25 percent ofthe social workers, but only 5 percentof the lawyers and engineers and 4 per-cent of the dentists. 52 Yet, even criticsof affirmative action agree that it helpedaccelerate, albeit slowly, the entry ofAfrican-Americans into the professionalclass.

In 1990, concerned that a series ofSupreme Court rulings had weakenedemployment-discrimination law, Congresspassed a tough, new Civil Rights Act tocounteract the decisions. After lengthynegotiations and a major fight over theappointment of African-American ClarenceThomas to the Supreme Court, an ini-tially reluctant President George Bushsigned the new law in 1991. 53 The lawexpanded the anti-discrimination law tocover women and the disabled, as wellas racial groups, and boosted the powerof the Equal Employment OpportunityCommission (EEOC).

The Supreme Court was heavily in-volved in racial politics during the 1990sas well. The Justice Department had in-terpreted the 1982 Voting Rights Act tomean that, whenever possible, legislativedistricts with a high likelihood of elect-ing blacks or other minorities should bedrawn. After the redistricting cycle of theearly 1990s, this led to large increases inthe numbers of African-Americans elect-ed to Congress and state legislatures.

However, the Supreme Court tookexception to the Justice Department’searlier interpretation. In cases involvingmajority-minority congressional districts,the court ruled in the 1990s that suchdistricts violated the 14th Amendmentrights of white voters and said racecould not be used as a “predominant”factor in drawing legislative districts. 54

In another voting-rights controversy, theU.S. Civil Rights Commission investi-gated hundreds of complaints stem-ming from the 2000 presidential elec-tion alleging racial discrimination inFlorida and elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the age-old debate con-tinues about the harmful effects thelegacy of slavery might be having ontoday’s African-Americans. Since 1989,Rep. Conyers repeatedly has introducedlegislation calling for reparations —payments to the descendants of slaves— sparking controversy in the statesand on college campuses. 55

With racial discrimination outlawedby the federal government, the polit-ical goals of blacks seeking to improvetheir standing in society became lessclear. An age-old split widened be-tween African-Americans who favoredconfrontation or reparations and thosewho favored individual improvement.As a result, many observers argue thatblack conservatives have “sold out”;others say civil-rights activists contin-ue to be pessimistic about race rela-tions to serve their own cause.

In essence, the “double-conscious-ness” for black Americans that the cel-ebrated civil-rights leader and authorW.E.B. Du Bois wrote about a centu-ry ago — “to be both a Negro andan American, without being cursedand spit upon by his fellows, withouthaving the doors of opportunity closedroughly in his face” — continuestoday. 56

CURRENTSITUATION

Affirmative-Action Ruling

T he Supreme Court’s June 23 de-cisions involving two University

of Michigan admissions policies turnedon the question of whether racial pref-erences are discriminatory toward othergroups, such as whites.

Minority Homeownership Lags

Despite increases in minority homeownership during the 1990s, large gaps remain between whites, blacks and Hispanics. Nearly three-quarters of whites owned homes in 2002, compared with less than half the blacks and Hispanics.

Sources: The White House (www.whitehouse.gov); U.S. Census Bureau

U.S. Homeownership Rates(percentage of each race that owns a home)

Whites 74.3%

Blacks 48.0

Hispanics 47.6

U.S. 68.0


612 CQ Researcher

By a 5-4 vote in Grutter v. Bollinger,the court granted continuing legal favorto the law school’s practice of affir-mative action. The case centered ona challenge to the law school’s poli-cy of using race as a “plus factor” inaccepting students. The court foundthat using race as one factor amongmany in determining individual ad-missions was acceptable.

But in Gratz v. Bollinger, by a 6-3vote, the justices found unconstitutionalthe undergraduate school’s practice ofgranting 20 points, on a 150-point scale,to blacks and Latinos just because oftheir race. Quantifying race as a uni-versal value, the court said, was un-acceptable.

“In order to cultivate a set of lead-ers with legitimacy in the eyes of thecitizenry,” wrote Justice Sandra Day

O’Connor in the majority opinion inGrutter, “it is necessary that the pathto leadership be visibly open to tal-ented and qualified individuals of everyrace and ethnicity.” The law schoolengages in a “highly individualized,holistic review of each applicant’s file,”she wrote, in which race counts as afactor but is not used in a “mechan-ical way.” For that reason, O’Connorexplained, the policy was in keepingwith a 1978 court ruling on affirma-tive action that permits using race asa “plus factor.”

The court’s ruling that decisions canbe made based on race as long asthey are not done in a purely quan-titative manner struck some observersas hazy. But the biggest complaintswere lodged by those who thoughtthe court had given credence to the

notion that members of some racesshould be granted advantages that arenot enjoyed by all.

“Racial classifications in the UnitedStates have a long and ugly history,”wrote U.S. Civil Rights CommissionerThernstrom. “Racial subordination wasall about double standards, with dif-ferent entitlements depending on yourracial identity. Nevertheless, the high-est court in the land has now em-braced them. It is a bleak day in Amer-ican constitutional law.” 57

Affirmative-action supporters, how-ever, echoed O’Connor’s assertion thatcreating a diverse leadership classthrough more racially balanced ad-missions to top universities was a so-cietal good worth preserving. For them,the court’s decision was a cheeringanswer to a long series of attacks on

RACE IN AMERICA

F or Yashar Zendehdel, an Iranian student at the Univer-sity of Colorado, confusion over the number of acade-mic credits he listed on his immigration paperwork led

to a harrowing 26 hours in a federal jail. He was eventuallycleared of any wrongdoing, but remains furious that he wastreated like a criminal. 1

“I couldn’t believe it,” Zendehdel said. “It was awful. I havenever been to jail before. Government officials are wastingAmerican people’s tax money, my time, their time.” 2

“Discrimination against Arab-Americans and those perceivedto be Arab-American has been a much bigger problem” sincethe Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks by 19 Arab Muslims, saysLaila Al-Qatami, of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Com-mittee. “We’ve seen a lot more discrimination and hate-crimecases and a greater variety of cases.”

In 2001, the FBI recorded 481 attacks against Middle East-erners, Muslims and Sikhs, compared with 28 attacks reportedthe previous year. 3 Job-discrimination complaints from Mus-lims roughly doubled after Sept. 11, from 542 in 2001 to 1,157in 2002, according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportuni-ty Commission. 4

And despite President Bush’s declaration that Islam is a “re-ligion of peace,” some prominent politicians and religious lead-ers have made inflammatory remarks about Islam and Muslims.The Rev. Franklin Graham, son of the Rev. Billy Graham, calledIslam “a very evil and wicked religion.” Jerry Vines, former pres-ident of the Southern Baptist Convention, denounced the Islamicprophet Muhammad as a “demon-possessed pedophile.” 5

And Rep. John Cooksey, R-La., recommended that airline per-sonnel selectively question Arab passengers. “lf I see someonewho comes in that’s got a diaper on his head and a fan beltwrapped around the diaper on his head, that guy needs to bepulled over,” Cooksey told a Louisiana radio interviewer. 6

Moreover, some of the government’s post-9/11 anti-terror-ism programs have exacerbated Arabs’ feelings of persecutionand discrimination. The FBI began monitoring American mosquesand encouraging thousands of Arab-Americans to undergo vol-untary interviews. Many were arrested when they showed up.Recently, the FBI interviewed 5,000 Iraqis in the U.S. in an at-tempt to pre-empt terrorism related to the war in Iraq. 7

The new National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS)— created by Attorney General John Ashcroft under a congres-sional mandate — required tens of thousands of mostly Arab andMuslim men living in the United States to be fingerprinted by thegovernment during so-called special-registration sweeps. 8

The program also has begun registering foreigners at U.S.borders who meet government criteria as potential threats orpersons of interest. So far, the programs have documented vis-itors from 155 countries, says Jorge Martinez, a Justice De-partment spokesman.

In some instances, large Arab turnouts at registration loca-tions have overloaded officials and forced them to detain hun-dreds of people until they could be fully documented, com-plains James Zogby, president of the Washington-based ArabAmerican Institute.

“If you take all these pieces and you put them together, it

Anti-Arab Sentiment on the Rise


affirmative action, including state-bal-lot initiatives banning the practice inCalifornia and elsewhere.

“A diverse and racially integratedcampus benefits all students and ul-timately, all of America,” says MarcMorial, president of the National UrbanLeague. “The court clearly upheld theargument that the government has acompelling interest in promoting di-versity in education and the work-place.”

Thus, the notion of helping mem-bers of minority groups, such as blacksand Latinos, through some formalprocess rather than relying on “color-blind” admissions and hiring policies,is, legally, here to stay. However, O’-Connor also expressed the hope thatrace-based admissions policies wouldno longer be necessary in 25 years.

Advocates of such policies point topublic universities in California, Flori-da and Texas that have devised newformulas for continued minority en-rollment after dumping affirmative ac-tion. Admission is either guaranteedto the top students from each highschool, including those where stu-dents are predominantly minorities, orthey seek out low-income students,who are disproportionately black orLatino. The university systems havemaintained or even increased their mi-nority enrollments, except at their flag-ship campuses. 58

The cases in many ways demon-strate the shifting political dynamicswhen race is at issue. When the courtconsidered affirmative-action policiesin University of California Regents v.Bakke in 1978, hardly any corpora-

tions engaged in the issue. In the Michi-gan case this time, however, a groupof five-dozen Fortune 500 companiesfiled an amicus brief with the court,arguing that diverse campuses betterprepare future workers for a globaleconomy, especially in a country whosedemographic trends suggest that whitesno longer will account for a majorityof the population by 2050.

Three days after the Michigan ruling,the Supreme Court used a Georgia case,Georgia v. Ashcroft, to signal a new di-rection in the ways blacks and otherminorities can be represented political-ly. For the past 20 years, Justice De-partment officials have interpreted theVoting Rights Act to mean that when-ever a legislative district could be cre-ated with a majority of minority voters,

Continued on p. 616

produces a lot of fear in the Arab-American community,” addsAl-Qatami.

Others say the registration programs are tantamount to racialprofiling, a practice recently banned by the Bush administra-tion. “The NSEERS program and special registration was a dis-aster,” Zogby says, “and it clearly targeted Muslims and Arabs.”

But the Justice Department insists registration programs onlytargeted people from countries that sponsor terrorism or harborAl-Qaeda members. “The registration programs have absolutelynothing to do with race or religion,” Martinez says. “People fromcertain countries were registered because they presented a high-er national-security threat, and it’s just coincidence that thosecountries happen to be a majority Arab and Muslim.”

Others doubt the efficacy of registration programs. “So far,registration programs haven’t netted much,” Al-Qatami says. “Ifwe just focus on certain ethnic or racial characteristics, we’regoing to miss other people who also commit crimes and terror-ism,” such as Richard Reid — the British Al-Qaeda sympathizerconvicted of trying to destroy an airliner with a shoe bomb.

Government officials counter that national security trumpsconcerns over racial profiling. “When it relates to a national-security investigation, efforts to identify terrorists may includefactors like race and ethnicity,” Martinez says.

On a more positive note, law enforcement has won praise forprosecuting backlash crimes against Arab-Americans. Martinez notesthe Justice Department has investigated more than 500 allegedbacklash crimes, and 13 have been prosecuted successfully.

“Clearly, after Sept. 11 there was a directive that the gov-

ernment would take backlash crimes against Arab-Americans andMuslims seriously in an effort to stem hate crimes,” Zogby says.

To strengthen ties with the Arab community, the FBI recentlyestablished an Arab-American Advisory Committee in Washingtonsimilar to committees in several other cities. 9 “Both law enforce-ment and the Arab-American community believe that a commu-nity-policing situation was the ideal way to break down the bar-riers of mistrust,” says Zogby, a member of the D.C. advisorycommittee. “We’ve been able do some good stuff together.”

Others are more cautious. “Some positive things have comeout of the experience,” Al-Qatami says, “but we still have along way to go.”

— Benton Ives-Halperin

1 Eric Hoover, “Closing the Gates: A Student Under Suspicion,” The Chron-icle of Higher Education, April 11, 2003, p. 12.2 Maria Bondes, “Foreign Students to Leave U. Colorado?” Colorado Daily,Jan. 7, 2003.3 Darryl Fears, “Hate Crimes Against Arabs Surge, FBI Finds,” The Wash-ington Post, Nov. 26, 2002, p. A2.4 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission fact sheet, June 11, 2003.5 Laurie Goodstein, “Seeing Islam as ‘Evil’ Faith, Evangelicals Seek Con-verts,” The New York Times, May 27, 2003, p. A1.6 “National Briefing South: Louisiana: Apology From Congressman,” The NewYork Times, Sept. 21, 2001, p. A16.7 “Under Suspicion,” The Economist, March 29, 2003.8 Patrick J. McDonell, “Nearly 24,000 Foreign Men Register in U.S,” Los An-geles Times, Jan. 19, 2003, p. A22.9 Alan Lengel and Caryle Murphy, “FBI, Arab Community Join Forces WithPanel,” The Washington Post, March 29, 2003, p. B1.

yes noDAVID W. DEBRUINATTORNEY, JENNER & BLOCK

EXCERPTED FROM A BRIEF FILED IN THE U.S. SUPREME COURT,GRUTTER V. BOLLINGER, FEB. 18, 2003.

diversity in higher education is a compelling govern-ment interest not only because of its positive effectson the educational environment itself, but also because

of the crucial role diversity in higher education plays in prepar-ing students to be the leaders this country needs in business,law and all other pursuits that affect the public interest. . . .

[B]y enriching students’ education with a variety of perspec-tives, experiences and ideas, a university with a diverse stu-dent body equips all of its students with the skills and under-standing necessary to succeed in any profession. Those skillsinclude the ability to understand, learn from, and work andbuild consensus with individuals from different backgroundsand cultures. . . .

There are several reasons for the importance of maintainingdiversity in higher education. First, a diverse group of individ-uals educated in a cross-cultural environment has the ability tofacilitate unique and creative approaches to problem-solvingarising from the integration of different perspectives.

Second, such individuals are better able to develop productsand services that appeal to a variety of consumers and to mar-ket offerings in ways that appeal to those consumers. Third, aracially diverse group of managers with cross-cultural experi-ence is better able to work with business partners, employeesand clientele in the United States and around the world.Fourth, individuals who have been educated in a diverse set-ting are likely to contribute to a positive work environment, bydecreasing incidents of discrimination and stereotyping.

Overall, an educational environment that ensures participa-tion by diverse people, viewpoints and ideas will help pro-duce the most talented workforce. The thrust of the govern-ment’s position is that it is permissible to take affirmativesteps to ensure educational diversity — a goal that itself in-cludes consideration of race. The United States defends partic-ular admissions programs it prefers in Texas, Florida and Cali-fornia explicitly on the ground that those programs allegedlycontinue to produce, at least in raw numbers, the same racialand ethnic diversity in enrollment.

Institutions of higher learning must be allowed to preparestudents to thrive in an increasingly diverse environment. Thebest way to do this is to ensure that students learn in an en-vironment of diversity, including racial and cultural diversity.Accordingly, institutions of higher learning should be able touse “competitive consideration of race and ethnic origin” inpursuit of a diverse student body.

GEORGE W. BUSHPRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

EXCERPTED FROM REMARKS MADE ON JAN. 15, 2003

our Constitution makes it clear that people of all racesmust be treated equally under the law. Yet we knowthat our society has not fully achieved that ideal. Racial

prejudice is a reality in America. It hurts many of our citizens. Asa nation, as a government, as individuals, we must be vigilant inresponding to prejudice wherever we find it. Yet, as we work toaddress the wrong of racial prejudice, we must not use meansthat create another wrong, and thus perpetuate our divisions.

America is a diverse country, racially, economically and eth-nically. And our institutions of higher education should reflectour diversity. A college education should teach respect andunderstanding and goodwill. And these values are strength-ened when students live and learn with people from manybackgrounds. Yet quota systems that use race to include orexclude people from higher education and the opportunities itoffers are divisive, unfair and impossible to square with theConstitution. . . .

The University of Michigan has established an admissionsprocess based on race. At the undergraduate level, African-American students and some Hispanic students and NativeAmerican students receive 20 points out of a maximum of150, not because of any academic achievement or life experi-ence, but solely because they are African-American, Hispanicor Native American. To put this in perspective, a perfect SATscore is worth only 12 points in the Michigan system. Stu-dents who accumulate 100 points are generally admitted, sothose 20 points awarded solely based on race are often thedecisive factor.

At the law school, some minority students are admitted tomeet percentage targets while other applicants with highergrades and better scores are passed over. This means that stu-dents are being selected or rejected based primarily on thecolor of their skin. The motivation for such an admissionspolicy may be very good, but its result is discrimination, andthat discrimination is wrong.

Some states are using innovative ways to diversify their stu-dent bodies. Recent history has proven that diversity can beachieved without using quotas. Systems in California and Flori-da and Texas have proven that by guaranteeing admissions tothe top students from high schools throughout the state, in-cluding low-income neighborhoods, colleges can attain broadracial diversity. In these states, race-neutral admissions policieshave resulted in levels of minority attendance for incomingstudents that are close to, and in some instances slightly sur-pass, those under the old race-based approach.

614 CQ Researcher

At Issue:Should colleges be allowed to use race as a factor inadmissions?

noyes


At Issue:Is the Confederate flag a racist symbol?

yesSANFORD CLOUD, JR.PRESIDENT AND CEO, NATIONAL CONFERENCEFOR COMMUNITY AND JUSTICE

EXCERPTED FROM THE NCCJ WEB SITE, DATED 2002

historically, the Confederate flag was a symbol duringthe Civil War of the Confederate States of America,which defended the rights of individual states that

maintained their economy through slave labor. Although theCivil War ended 138 years ago, the battle over the legacy ofslavery, segregation and civil rights continues.

Through the years, the Confederate flag has taken on addi-tional negative connotations because it was used as a symbolof resistance during the civil-rights movement and is currentlya prominent symbol of active white-supremacist groups. Thisis not to say that all individuals who bear the Confederateflag are racist. However, the symbolic meaning of the flag isthat of white domination and Southern pride.

Some people assert that the Confederate flag is a symbolof their heritage; however, for many people of color and reli-gious minorities across the United States and other communi-ties around the world, it represents hatred, bigotry, racism,and anti-Semitism. This symbol is a very powerful nonverbalcommunication tool that, according to the Anti-DefamationLeague (ADL), generates deep meaning, intent and significancein a compact, immediately recognizable form. Members ofracist organizations often use the symbol along with morespecific images associated with their groups. Independentracists can avoid association with a specific group, and per-haps prosecution of that group by law enforcement, by optingfor more universal racist symbols.

The National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ)maintains that the Confederate flag is a visible, confrontationalracist symbol that represents racial oppression, segregation andslavery. As noted by Kweisi Mfume, president and CEO of theNational Association for the Advancement of Colored People,“The [Confederate] flag is representative of an era that epito-mized everything that was wrong and inhumane in this coun-try and should be stripped of any sovereignty context andplaced into a historical context.” NCCJ concurs with this senti-ment and calls for the removal of the Confederate flag fromall public properties with allowances for its usage in appropri-ate historical and educational contexts.

All people of goodwill need to recognize that the Confed-erate flag . . . is an attack on the freedoms of our nation.Similarly, racism has no boundaries, and this issue cannot beconfined to the Southern states. NCCJ therefore calls on allresidents of the United States to actively oppose the usage ofthe Confederate flag and denounce it as a visible public state-ment that is offensive in nature.

WILLIAM ROLENDIRECTOR AND SOUTHERN HERITAGE DEFENSECOORDINATOR, COUNCIL OF CONSERVATIVECITIZENS

WRITTEN FOR THE CQ RESEARCHER, MAY 2003

for thirty years, the 1956 Georgia flag flew peacefullyover every public building in the state. Not many peo-ple seemed disturbed by the large Confederate portion of the flag, which was put there in 1956 to honor the

Southern soldiers who had fought and died defending Georgiaagainst the atrocities of Gen. Sherman.

Then in 1991, the NAACP national convention passed aresolution condemning the Confederate flag as racist. Fromthat year on, the Confederate flag and other Confederate iconshave been subjected to relentless vitriolic wrath. One by one,Confederate flags have been removed, banned or desecratedsimply because threats from the NAACP terrify the politicalstatus quo in virtually every Southern state.

The problem with the Confederate flag does not involve il-licit connections with the klan or any other “guilt by associa-tion” flummery. The NAACP took aim at the Confederate flagbecause the emblem is revered by most Southerners. Confed-erate flag decals stick on every type of vehicle from trucks totricycles. Confederate-flag clothing, from Dixie Outfitter T-shirtsto G.R.I.T.S. (Girls Raised In The South) swimsuits are ordi-nary sights. The images of celebrities like Elvis and HankWilliams are superimposed on Confederate flags sold at truckstops and souvenir shops. Only a very jaundiced eye seesracism lurking behind every Southern-cross belt buckle andbandana worn on race day at Talledega.

Certainly, the Confederate flag honors the Southern soldierand the memory of generals Lee, Jackson, and Beauregard.More significantly, the Confederate flag represents the continu-um of Southern experience. Does the flag have a racial di-mension? Yes, but the racial connotations are no more nega-tive than the FUBU (For Us, By Us) clothing that is designed,marketed and intended only for blacks.

The Confederate flag is not an aggressive symbol. No oneis trying to hoist the Confederate colors over the Capitol ofVermont, nor are Confederate flag ski jackets a fashion state-ment on the slopes of Aspen. The Confederate flag is largelya regional phenomenon, and one of multiple interpretations.The NAACP, however, allows for only one, narrow viewpoint.

The time has come to honor and respect the Confederateflag for all the sacrifices Southerners have made over the last20 years to display the symbol with honor, dignity and pride.And a word of caution to the NAACP: The harder you try topull it down, the higher it will fly.

616 CQ Researcher

RACE IN AMERICA

such districts should be created. Major-ity-minority districts have led to moreblack and Latino representation in both

Congress and state legislatures over thepast dozen years.

But some blacks and Democrats ar-gued that majority-minority districts ac-

tually weaken political representationfor blacks: By “packing” most blackvoters within racially separate districts,politicians from neighboring “bleached”(all-white) districts have no natural in-centive to represent black interests.The state of Georgia created a mapof state Senate districts that broke upsome majority-black districts, in favorof creating more districts in whichblacks could compete politically.

It’s now widely believed that blackpoliticians can win office in districts whereblacks make up less than a majority ofthe electorate. Giving blacks a real op-portunity, rather than an assured win, isgood enough to protect their interestsin the current racial climate, accordingto Swain of Vanderbilt Law School andother black scholars.

The Justice Department opposedGeorgia’s map, but the high court up-held the plan, 6-3. Writing for the ma-jority, Justice O’Connor wrote that “var-ious studies have suggested that the mosteffective way to maximize minority vot-ing strength may be to create” districts“where minority voters may not be ableto elect a candidate of choice but [can]play a substantial, if not decisive role,in the electoral process.”

Bush Administration

M any people predicted that afterLott lost his Senate leadership

post for pro-segregationist remarks, theRepublicans might show an increasedinterest in ’60s-style civil-rights legis-lation. That has not been the case.With the momentum for race-specificprograms slowing, the CongressionalBlack Caucus and African-Americanadvocates have begun focusing onseeking equal treatment under lawsand programs that apply to all Amer-icans, advocating increased fundingfor domestic priorities like educationand health. Meanwhile, Republicanscontinue to argue that race-neutral,


Police Tactics Spark Riots

The racially tinged incidents that periodically break out across thecountry are often provoked by outrage in the black community overpolice tactics that are seen by many African-Americans as heavy-handed and racist. At least five homes were torched and up to 15people injured during a riot in Benton Harbor, Mich., in mid-Junefollowing the death of a black motorcyclist during a police chase (top).Police arrest a demonstrator during a protest march outside Cincinnatiin June 2001. (bottom). The march followed riots sparked by the fatalshooting of an unarmed black man by a white policeman.

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market-based proposals will work bet-ter than further government intrusionsinto private-sector practices.

President Bush opposes race-specificgovernment-aid programs. Afterschoolprograms that get federal aid are oftenin minority neighborhoods, because theyare targeted at poor districts. In his fis-cal 2004 budget, Bush proposed cuttingfederal grants to afterschool programsby 40 percent, to $600 million. It ap-pears that Congress will fund the grantsat last year’s level of $1 billion, but thatis still well below the $1.75 billion au-thorized by Bush’s No Child Left Behindeducation-reform law.

In response to the Supreme Court’saffirmative-action decisions and O’Con-nor’s comments about the need for af-firmative action fading after 25 years, Bushsaid he was glad that the court sharedhis vision of a color-blind America.

On June 17, Bush announced a newpolicy designed to severely curtail racialprofiling by federal law-enforcement of-ficers. Agents running auto-theft or druginvestigations, for instance, cannot stopblack or Latino motorists based on the“generalized assumption” that membersof those racial or ethnic groups aremore likely to commit such crimes.

If a specific description identifies asuspect as black, however, the agentscan target blacks as part of their search.The new policy also exempts national-security cases in “narrow” circum-stances. Immigration officers, for exam-ple, can continue to require registrationby visitors from Middle Eastern coun-tries thought to foster terrorism.

Skeptics, though, wonder whethercash-strapped states and the federal gov-ernment will pick up a larger tab forfunding anti-poverty programs and othermeasures that apply not only to blacksbut also to a much-expanded pool ofdisadvantaged citizens of all races.

At a recent forum, Stephen Gold-smith, a special adviser to the president,said, “There is now a broad consensusthat a work-based benefit system is wherewe want to be.” But he acknowledged

that even if there is consensus aboutwork being the best way to help low-income Americans, there isn’t agreementabout how much money to provide forsuch a system. 59

As Congress prepares to consider itslatest reauthorization of the welfare-re-form law, black and Latino activists areconcerned that states are not properlymonitoring civil rights in the law’s as-sistance programs. They want Congressto beef up enforcement, claiming thatAfrican-American and Hispanic womenhave not been given support servicesequal to members of other races.

Similarly, as Congress prepares to reau-thorize the Workforce Investment Act of1998, which consolidated dozens of job-training programs into block grants tothe states, members of the CongressionalBlack Caucus are concerned that thelaw’s data-collection requirements makeit harder to determine whether African-Americans are being discriminated against.

Some black advocates claim thatblacks, Asians and Hispanics are beingsteered toward less-useful training —into areas such as résumé writing —rather than more potentially lucrativeoccupational job training.

Action in the States

C alifornia, Maryland and New Jer-sey have recently revised their

racial-profiling policies in an effort todiscourage bias among their troopers.Mac Donald, at the Manhattan Insti-tute, argues that the increasing num-ber of states and cities requiring po-lice to record interactions with civilianson the basis of race will have a “chill-ing effect . . . on legitimate policework,” as police officers avoid “all butthe most mandatory and cursory in-teractions with potential minority sus-pects.” 60 Nevertheless, about 20 otherstates are either setting up commissionsto study racial profiling or consideringlegislation to curb the practice.

Meanwhile, as part of the ongoingdebate about whether the descendantsof slaves should receive reparations,several states also are considering es-tablishing commissions to determinethe effects of slavery on contempo-rary African-Americans.

In some states, the most pressing racialissues are largely symbolic. In his suc-cessful campaign for governor of Geor-gia last year, Republican Sonny Perduepromised voters a referendum on restor-ing a Confederate emblem to the stateflag that had been removed in 2001.

California voters next year will voteon the “Racial Privacy Initiative,” whichwould prohibit state and local agencies,such as schools and the Department ofMotor Vehicles, from asking peopleabout their racial identities or includingvoluntary racial check-off boxes ontheir forms. The goal is to end policiesof racial classification that serve to sep-arate people into different categories.

Critics worry that blocking racial-datacollection will make it harder to trackcivil-rights abuses and may also ham-per medical research. The initiative’smain sponsor is conservative activistWard Connerly, who also sponsoredCalifornia’s 1996 initiative ending stateaffirmative-action programs.

OUTLOOK

Lingering Problems?

T he nation’s historic blend of Eu-ropean colonialists, displaced Na-

tive Americans, African slaves and im-migrants from around the world hasmade for an often-volatile racial mix.Given current predictions that by 2050no racial group will comprise a ma-jority of the population, racial relationsare expected to evolve in complexways.

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Optimists believe that the demo-graphic changes, along with the changesin social norms that make open dis-crimination against blacks taboo, willeventually lead to a society that is lessdivided and concerned about race. “Itmay be no accident,” says Harvard’sThernstrom, “that the first state to barracial preferences by constitutionalamendment, California, is also the statewith the most complex racial mix.”

But even some optimists say racismwill remain potent for a long time. “Hope-fully, we’ve set in motion enough pos-itive activities where we do ultimatelyget to a color-blind society,” says Wel-don Latham, corporate-diversity directorat the giant Holland & Knight law firm.“But it’s many decades from now.”

Similarly, while University of Califor-nia, Berkeley psychologist Jack Glasersees racism declining, “Sadly, I can’t imag-ine that it will ever go away,” he says.“People are pretty hard-wired to seethings in categories. You can put peo-ple into very arbitrary groups, and theyknow it’s arbitrary, but they will stillshow favor to members of their group.”

During his recent tenure as presidentof the American Bar Association (ABA),Oklahoma City attorney William G. Paulmade diversity his top priority because,he said, his profession is 92.5 percentwhite. He has been heartened by thescholarship fund the ABA establishedand by data showing that blacks andother minorities are better representedin law schools than they are, as yet, inthe legal profession itself.

“I didn’t find anyone voicing any op-position,” recalls Paul, who is white. Yethe admits that habits and the status quoare so ingrained that achieving equali-ty even in his high-profile profession is“going to require a multi-decade effort.”

Indeed, the most pessimistic observersof race relations predict that there couldyet be a new backlash against blacksand minorities, mirroring the historicsetbacks blacks faced following theRevolutionary and Civil wars. “I don’treally think the white population is going

to lose its powers or prestige becauseits numbers are going down,” says TwoNations author Andrew Hacker.

Even without ill will or consciousdiscrimination, recent history suggeststhat institutions long dominated bywhites will continue to be dominatedby whites, with few exceptions. “Ifyou assume attitudes and expectationsare institutionalized,” says Mitchell, ofthe National Research Council, “timewon’t make a difference.”

Notes

1 Lee Hockstader, “For Tulia 12, ‘It Feels SoGood,’” The Washington Post, June 17, 2003,p. A1.2 Andrew Hacker, Two Nations: Black & White,Separate, Hostile, Unequal (3rd ed. 2003, orig-inally published 1992), p. 111.3 Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “Cultural Issues PoseObstacles in Cancer Fight,” The New YorkTimes, March 14, 1998, p. A1.4 Margery Austin Turner and Felicity Skid-more, ed., “Mortgage Lending Discrimination:A Review of Existing Evidence,” The UrbanInstitute, June 1999, p. 1.5 Stephan Thernstrom and Abigail Thernstrom,America in Black and White: One Nation, In-divisible (1997), p. 222. See “The Nation’s Re-port Card,” National Assessment of Educa-tional Progress, National Center for EducationStatistics. http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/.6 Hacker, op. cit., p. 222.7 Thernstrom and Thernstrom, op. cit., p. 274.8 Eric Lichtblau, “Bush Issues Racial Profil-ing Ban But Exempts Security Inquiries,” TheNew York Times, June 18, 2003, p. A1.9 Quoted in Bettijane Levine, “Harry Bela-fonte won’t retreat from slavery remarks,”Chicago Tribune, Oct. 23, 2002, p. 1.10 See Ellen Nakashima and Al Kamen, “BushOfficial Hails Diversity,” The Washington Post,March 31, 2001, p. A10.11 John McWhorter, Losing the Race: Self-Sab-otage in Black America (2000).12 For background, see David Masci, “TheBlack Middle Class,” The CQ Researcher, Jan.23, 1998, pp. 49-72.13 Randall Kennedy, Nigger: The Strange Ca-reer of a Troublesome Word (2002), p. 27.14 See Greg Winter, “State UnderfinancingDamages City Schools, New York Court Finds,”

The New York Times, June 27, 2003, p. A1.For background on school funding issues, seeKathy Koch, “Reforming School Funding,” TheCQ Researcher, Dec. 10, 1999, pp. 1041-1064.15 Office of Policy Research and Development,“All Other Things Being Equal: A Paired TestingStudy of Mortgage Lending Institutions,” U.S. De-partment of Housing and Urban Development,April 2002, p. 10, http://www.huduser.org/Publi-cations/PDF/aotbe.pdf.16 Douglas S. Massey and Garvey Lundy, “Useof Black English and Racial Discrimination inUrban Housing Markets: New Methods and Find-ings,” Urban Affairs Review 36 (2001): 470-96.17 Erica Frankenberg, Chungmei Lee andGary Orfield, “A Multiracial Society With Seg-regated Schools: Are We Losing the Dream?”Harvard University Civil Rights Project, Jan-uary 2003, p. 28, http://www.civilrightspro-ject.harvard.edu/research/reseg03/AreWeLos-ingtheDream.pdf.18 Thernstrom and Thernstrom, op. cit., p. 199.19 Turner and Skidmore, op. cit.20 McWhorter, op. cit.21 Thernstrom and Thernstrom, op. cit.22 Mark Mauer, “The Crisis of the YoungAfrican-American Male and the Criminal Jus-tice System,” testimony submitted to the U.S.Commission on Civil Rights, April 15-16, 1999.23 Randall Kennedy, Race, Crime, and theLaw (1997), p. x.24 For background, see Kenneth Jost, “Polic-ing the Police,” The CQ Researcher, March17, 2000, pp. 209-240.25 David Kocienewski, “New Jersey AdoptsBan on Racial Profiling,” The New York Times,March 14, 2003, p. B5.26 The Associated Press, “Cincinnati PoliceWant Community Pact Ended,” The Wash-ington Post, April 30, 2003, p. A8.27 Michael Tonry, Malign Neglect: Race, Crime,and Punishment in America (1995), p. 79.28 Quoted in Kennedy 1997, p. 15. See ClarencePage, “Message to Jackson: The Word Is Crime,Not Black Criminals,” Chicago Tribune, Jan.5, 1994, p. 15.29 See Kennedy 1997, pp. 370 ff.30 Quoted in Kennedy 1997, p. 14.31 Adam Liptak, “Death Penalty Found MoreLikely If Victim Is White,” The New YorkTimes, Jan. 8, 2003, p. A12.32 Henry Weinstein, “Panel Urges Halt to Ex-ecutions in Pa.,” Los Angeles Times, March 5,2003, p. 15.33 Philip A. Klinkner with Rogers M. Smith,The Unsteady March: The Rise and Declineof Racial Equality in America (1999), p. 12.

RACE IN AMERICA


34 Quoted in Philip S. Foner, From Africa to theEmergence of the Cotton Kingdom (1975), p. 303.35 Quoted in Klinkner and Smith, op. cit., p. 18.36 Lerone Bennett, Jr., Before the Mayflower:A History of Black America (5th ed., 1984;originally published 1962), p. 257.37 Quoted in Thernstrom and Thernstrom,op. cit.38 Quoted in Bennett, op. cit.39 Philip Dray, At the Hands of Persons Unknown:The Lynching of Black America (2002), p. iii.40 Klinkner and Smith, op. cit.41 Thernstrom and Thernstrom, op. cit.42 Ibid., p. 79.43 Gerald N. Rosenberg, The Hollow Hope: CanCourts Bring About Social Change? (1991), p. 50.44 Thurmond had led a record-breaking fili-buster of 24 hours and 18 minutes againstthe Civil Rights Bill of 1957.45 Congress and the Nation, Vol. 1, p. 1635.46 Congress and the Nation, Vol. 2, p. 356.47 Niel J. Smelser, William Julius Wilson andFaith Mitchell, eds., America Becoming: RacialTrends and Their Consequences, Vol. 1(2001), p. 321.48 Quoted in Klinkner and Smith, op. cit.49 Carol Pogash, “Berkeley Makes Its Pitchto Top Minority Students,” Los Angeles Times,April 20, 2003, Part 2, p. A6.50 Thernstrom and Thernstrom, op. cit.51 For background, see Sarah Glazer, “WelfareReform,” The CQ Researcher, Aug. 3, 2001, pp.601-632.52 Hacker, op. cit., p. 130.53 Congress and the Nation, Vol. VIII, p. 757.54 For background see Jennifer Gavin, “Re-districting,” The CQ Researcher, Feb. 16, 2001,pp. 113-128.55 For background, see David Masci, “Repa-rations Movement,” The CQ Researcher, June22, 2001, pp. 529-552.56 W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk(1933).57 Abigail Thernstrom, “Court Rulings AddInsult to Injury,” Los Angeles Times, June 29,2003, p. M1.58 Mitchell Landsberg, Peter Y. Hong and Re-becca Trounson, “ ‘Race-Neutral’ UniversityAdmissions in Spotlight,” Los Angeles Times,Jan. 17, 2003, p. 1.59 Quoted in David Callahan and Tamara Draut,“Broken Bargain: Why Bush May Be Destroy-ing A Hard-Won Consensus on Helping thePoor,” The Boston Globe, May 11, 2003, p. H1.60 Heather Mac Donald, “A ‘Profiling’ Pall onthe Terror War,” The Washington Post, May5, 2003, p. A21.

FOR MORE INFORMATIONAmerican Civil Rights Institute, P.O. Box 188350, Sacramento, CA 95818; (916)444-2278; www.acri.org. A group dedicated to educating the public about programsthat promote race and gender preferences.

Center for Equal Opportunity, 14 Pidgeon Hill Dr., Suite 500, Sterling, VA 20165;(703) 421-5443; www.ceousa.org. A think tank promoting color-blind policies.

Center for Individual Rights, 1233 20th St., N.W., Suite 300, Washington, DC 20036;877-426-2665; www.cir-usa.org. A public-interest law firm that has challenged affirmative-action policies.

Centre for New Black Leadership, 202 G St., N.E., Washington, DC 20002;(202) 546-9505; www.cnbl.org. An advocacy organization supporting policies that“enhance the ability of individuals and communities to develop market-oriented,community-based” solutions to economic and social problems.

The Civil Rights Project, 125 Mt. Auburn St., 3rd Floor, Cambridge, MA 02138;(617) 496-6367; www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu. A Harvard-affiliated think tank.

Joint Center for Economic and Policy Studies, 1090 Vermont Ave., N.W., Suite1100 Washington, DC 20005; (202) 789-3500; www.jointcenter.org. Founded totrain black elected officials, it studies issues of importance to black Americans.

Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, 1629 K St., N.W., 10th Floor, Washing-ton, DC 20006; (202) 466-3311; www.civilrights.org. A coalition of 180 national or-ganizations promoting civil-rights legislation and policy.

The Manhattan Institute, 52 Vanderbilt Ave., 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10017;(212) 599-7000; www.manhattan-institute.org. A think tank that fosters “greatereconomic choice and individual responsibility.”

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 4805 Mt. HopeDr., Baltimore, MD 21215; (877) NAACP-98; www.naacp.org. Century-old organizationcommitted to improving the civil rights of African-Americans and other minorities.

National Conference for Community and Justice, 475 Park Ave. South, 19thFloor, New York, NY 10016; (212) 545-1300; www.nccj.org. Formerly the NationalConference of Christians and Jews, it fights bias and racism in America.

National Urban League, 120 Wall St., 8th Floor, New York, NY, 10005; (212) 558-5300; www.nul.org. Consortium of community-based organizations that promotesaccess to education, economic activity and civil rights among African-Americans.

Southern Poverty Law Center, 400 Washington Ave., Montgomery, AL 36104; (334)956-8200; www.splcenter.org/splc.html. A group that fights discrimination through edu-cational programs, litigation and its maintenance of the Civil Rights Memorial.

U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 624 Ninth St., N.W., Washington, DC 20425;(202) 376-7700; www.usccr.gov. Government agency that investigates complaintsabout discrimination.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

About the AuthorAlan Greenblatt is a staff writer at Governing magazine. He previously cov-ered elections, agriculture and military spending for CQ Weekly, where hewon the National Press Club’s Sandy Hume Award for political journalism.He graduated from San Francisco State University in 1986 and received amaster’s degree in English literature from the University of Virginia in 1988.

620 CQ Researcher

Books

Correspondents of The New York Times, How Race IsLived in America, Times Books, 2001.A collection of the Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning series of re-

porting about how issues of race still affect American society.

Hacker, Andrew, Two Nations: Black & White, Separate,Hostile, Unequal, 3rd ed. 2003 (originally published 1992).A political scientist finds race to be an “obdurate” prob-

lem, portraying an America in which blacks and whites arestill separate and unequal, with illustrations drawn largelyfrom census figures.

Kennedy, Randall, Nigger: The Strange Career of aTroublesome Word, Pantheon, 2002.A Harvard Law School professor examines the history and

usage of “the paradigmatic slur” and what it expresses aboutracial enmities.

Kennedy, Randall, Race, Crime, and the Law, Pantheon,1997.The Harvard law professor analyzes issues at the intersection

of race and the criminal-justice system, including anti-drug laws,the death penalty and jury selection.

Klinkner, Philip A., with Rogers M. Smith, The UnsteadyMarch: The Rise and Decline of Racial Equality in America,University of Chicago Press, 1999.The authors survey African-American rights from Colonial

times to the late 1990s and conclude that each period ofadvancement for blacks has been followed by a lengthybacklash. Klinkner teaches government at Hamilton College;Smith teaches race and politics at Yale University.

McWhorter, John, Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in BlackAmerica, Free Press, 2000.A linguistics professor at the University of California,Berkeley

argues that African-Americans cling to a “Cult of Victimology”that keeps them fixated on racism at the expense of makingimprovements in their own lives.

Patterson, Orlando, The Ordeal of Integration: Progressand Resentment in America’s “Racial” Crisis, Civitas/Coun-terpoint, 1997.A Harvard sociologist examines the state of progress among

Afro-Americans and the impact various ideologies have onpublic policy.

Smelser, Neil J., William Julius Wilson and Faith Mitchell,eds., America Becoming: Racial Trends and Their Con-sequences, Vols. I and II, National Academy Press, 2001.

Essays from a National Research Council conference onrace cover trends in housing, labor, income, justice and otherissues.

Steinhorn, Leonard, and Barbara Diggs-Brown, By theColor of Our Skin: The Illusion of Integration and theReality of Race, Dutton, 1999.Two American University professors — one white, one

black — conclude that America has not successfully inte-grated.

Thernstrom, Stephan, and Abigail Thernstrom, Americain Black and White: One Nation Indivisible, Simon & Schus-ter, 1997.The authors trace the history of U.S. race relations and po-

litical, social and economic trends since the civil-rights move-ment. They argue that race-neutral policies are a better curefor society’s ills than race-conscious ones. Stephan Thern-strom teaches history at Harvard; Abigail Thernstrom is a se-nior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Reports and Studies

Frankenburg, Erika, Chungmei Lee and Gary Orfield, “AMultiracial Society With Segregated Schools: Are We Losingthe Dream?” Civil Rights Project, January 2003;http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/research/reseg03/AreWeLosingtheDream.pdf.Harvard researchers find that schools are re-segregating,

with most whites attending predominantly white schools andmany blacks and Hispanics attending “apartheid schools”with almost entirely minority student bodies.

Office of Policy Research and Development, All OtherThings Being Equal: A Paired Testing Study of MortgageLending Institutions, U.S. Department of Housing andUrban Development, http://www.huduser.org/Publica-tions/PDF/aotbe.pdf, April 2002.The report concludes that blacks and Hispanics often re-

ceive less favorable treatment than whites when applyingfor mortgages.

Rawlston, Valerie A., and William E. Spriggs, “Pay Equi-ty 2000: Are We There Yet?” National Urban League In-stitute for Opportunity and Equality, April 2001;http://www.nul.org/departments/inst_opp_equality/word/reports_statistics/pay_equity_report.doc.A study of federal contractors finds that women and mi-

norities make about 73 cents for every dollar earned by non-Hispanic white men, in large part due to differences in thetypes of work they do. White men are still paid more, how-ever, for doing the same jobs.

Selected Sources

Bibliography


Affirmative Action

Eastland, Terry, “Friends of Discrimination,” The WeeklyStandard, March 31, 2003.Some conservatives think the American educational estab-

lishment is weighing in on behalf of affirmative action.

Fears, Darryl, “At U-Michigan, Minority Students FindAccess — and Sense of Isolation,” The Washington Post,April 1, 2003, p. A3.The affirmative-action debate has produced intense dis-

cussions and emotions at school campuses across the U.S.

Greenhouse, Linda, “Justices Back Affirmative Action by5 to 4, But Wider Vote Bans a Racial Point System,” TheNew York Times, June 24, 2003, p. A1.The Supreme Court upheld affirmative action and endorsed

the importance of racial diversity on school campuses inachieving a more equal society.

Hebel, Sara, “‘Percent Plans’ Don’t Add Up,” The Chron-icle of Higher Education, March 21, 2003, p. 22.Some state colleges are admitting students based on their

class rank, in an effort to circumvent the affirmative-actiondebate, but critics are skeptical of rank-based programs.

Hong, Peter Y., “College Diversity Feared at Risk,” LosAngeles Times, April 10, 2003, p. B1.Some college administrators fear that an erosion of affirmative-

action laws would undermine the diverse campus experiencethey have worked to create.

Joyce, Amy, “A Boost for Workplace Diversity,” The Wash-ington Post, June 29, 2003, p. F6.The business world is likely to feel the effects of the

Supreme Court’s endorsement of affirmative action.

Knickerbocker, Brad, “Evolution of Affirmative Action,”The Christian Science Monitor, June 24, 2003, p. A1.Is 40 years enough time to have pushed affirmative action

as a means of ending discrimination? It depends how onedefines the action and determines the goal.

Lemann, Nicholas, “Ideas and Trends: Beyond Bakke,”The New York Times, June 29, 2003, p. D4.The Supreme Court’s affirmative-action decision did not

have the usual trumpet-blare characteristics of a judicial land-mark.

Lemann, Nicholas, “The Long March,” The New Yorker,Feb. 10, 2003, p. 86.President Bush has made a point of avoiding a frontal as-

sault on affirmative action.

Montgomery, David, “Seeking Symphony In Two Movements;Blacks and Whites Are Marching, But Not in the Same Di-rection,” The Washington Post, April 12, 2003, p. C1.In many recent anti-war demonstrations, people who were

protesting the war were often in favor of affirmative action.

Taylor, Stuart, Jr., “Myths and Realities About AffirmativeAction,” National Journal, April 12, 2003.According to some studies, most of the students who lose

out because of racial preferences are not white; they’re Asian-American.

Wilgoren, Jodi, “Where Race Matters,” The New YorkTimes, April 13, 2003, p. A20.At the Michigan law school, the impact of affirmative ac-

tion is at once obvious and invisible, an effect subtly thread-ed through the fabric of campus life.

Arab-American Discrimination

“Immigrants Sue Over Detentions After Checking In,”The New York Times, Dec. 25, 2003, p. A16.A coalition of Muslim-American groups sued the govern-

ment after hundreds of immigrant men were arrested anddetained while trying to register with authorities.

Pierre, Robert E., “Anti-Islam Message Left During Search,Family Says,” The Washington Post, July 23, 2002, p. A5.Two Muslim advocacy groups charged that law-enforcement

agents searching for terrorism leads left racial epithets in thehomes of D.C.-area Muslims.

Rosenzweig, David, “Ruling Lets Arab American Sue Airline,”Los Angeles Times, Oct. 12, 2002, p. B2.A Los Angeles federal judge ruled that airlines cannot dis-

criminate against passengers on the basis of race, ethnicityor national origin.

Sachs, Susan, “For Many American Muslims, Complaintsof Quiet but Persistent Bias,” The New York Times, April25, 2002, p. A16.From perceived prejudice in the workplace to a height-

ened sense of anxiety at home, the events of Sept. 11 con-tinue to reverberate in the lives of American Muslims.

Sheridan, Mary Beth, “Backlash Changes Form, NotFunction,” The Washington Post, March 4, 2002, p. B1.The spate of violent hate crimes against Muslims, Arabs

and Sikhs reported in the weeks after Sept. 11 has largelyended.

Stewart, Jocelyn Y., “Groups Fight Increase in Bias AgainstArabs,” Los Angeles Times, July 8, 2002, p. B3.Some Arab-American advocates worry that a private post-

The Next Step:Additional Articles from Current Periodicals

622 CQ Researcher

RACE IN AMERICA

Sept. 11 backlash against Arabs is taking place in people’shomes and private lives.

Swarns, Rachel L., “Arab-Americans Gather to BuildTheir Civil Rights Activism,” The New York Times, June14, 2003, p. A12.For nearly two years, many Arab immigrants have been

consumed by despair as they have watched the deportationsthat have accompanied the hunt for terrorists.

Confederate Flag Controversies

Ellingwood, Ken, “A Flag Vote Is Run Up a Pole in Georgia,”Los Angeles Times, Feb. 13, 2003, p. A18.The governor of Georgia, acting on a campaign vow, wants

a referendum to give voters a say on the Confederate flag’sprominence in the state.

Herbert, Bob, “The Other Trent Lotts,” The New YorkTimes, Dec. 23, 2002, p. A25.A New York Times columnist expresses dismay over the

confederate flag that is reportedly on display in Sen. GeorgeAllen’s, R-Va., living room.

Nagourney, Adam, “Confederate Flag Boycott Tests Can-didates’ Resolve,” The New York Times, Feb. 7, 2003,p. A16.Democrats campaigning in South Carolina are trying not to

run afoul of a boycott intended to force the removal of aConfederate flag from the Statehouse grounds.

Death Penalty and Racial Justice

Bach, Amy, “Unforgiven,” The Nation, Jan. 21, 2002, p. 22.Convicted murderer Wilbert Rideau is facing his fourth trial,

after narrowly avoiding the death penalty decades ago.

Glaberson, William, and Benjamin Weiser, “Decisions onDeath Cases Raise Questions of Race,” The New YorkTimes, Feb. 14, 2003, p. B2.All the cases in the New York region in which Attorney

General John Ashcroft has ordered prosecutors to seek thedeath penalty involve black or Hispanic defendants.

Liptak, Adam, “Suspension of Executions Is Urged forPennsylvania,” The New York Times, March 5, 2003, p.A16.A panel investigating Pennsylvania’s capital punishment sys-

tem concluded that the process was not operating fairly.

Rimer, Sara, “In Dallas, Dismissal of Black Jurors Leadsto Appeal by Death Row Inmate,” The New York Times,Feb. 13, 2002, p. A24.According to his legal team, a death-row inmate in Dallas

recently appealed his sentence because black people had beenunfairly removed from his jury pool.

Savage, David G., “Justices Show Intolerance for RacialBias in Jury Selection,” Los Angeles Times, Feb. 26, 2003,p. A12.The high court criticized federal and state judges in Texas for

ignoring evidence in a capital case that blacks were willfullyexcluded from juries.

Education and Labor Disparities

Banks, Sandy, “Debate on Black Students Rages,” LosAngeles Times, Dec. 1, 2002, p. B2.A Pasadena teacher’s note blaming disruptive African-Americans

for low test scores has stirred anger, pain and soul-searchingamong parents and teachers.

Fears, Darryl, “Disparity Marks Black Ethnic Groups, Re-port Says; African Americans Trail Immigrants in Income,Education,” The Washington Post, March 9, 2003, p. A7.Black people who immigrate to the United States tend to

earn more money and have a slightly higher level of edu-cation than native-born black Americans.

Lee, Felicia R., “Why Are Black Students Lagging?” TheNew York Times, Nov. 30, 2002, p. B9.The persistent academic gap between white and black stu-

dents has touched off difficult and often ugly debates in ed-ucational and parental communities.

Morse, Jodie, “Learning While Black,” Time, May 27,2002, p. 50.Most people are familiar with racial profiling on the roads,

but some educators fear minority kids also being unfairlysingled out for discipline in schools.

Orfield, Gary, and Susan E. Eaton, “Back to segregation,”The Nation, March 3, 2003, p. 5.Recent statistics reveal that America’s schools are now in their

twelfth year of a continuing process of racial re-segregation.

Hispanics and Discrimination

Fox, Sue, “Mi Casa No Es Su Casa,” Los Angeles Times,Nov. 21, 2001, p. A1.Fair-housing agencies report a surge in discrimination by

immigrant landlords from many Latino nations who refuseto rent outside their ethnic group.

Moreno, Sylvia, “Hispanics Still Face Prejudice In Dis-trict,” The Washington Post, May 5, 2002, p. C1.The Latino community still faces discrimination and viola-

tions of civil rights in the Washington, D.C., area, accordingto a series of reports.

Rodriguez, Gregory, “Demographic Changes Upset Affir-mative Action,” Los Angeles Times, Jan. 26, 2003, p. M3.Rapidly growing factions in the Latino population are be-

ginning to question the motives behind affirmative action.


Rosenzweig, David, “Latino Voter Lawsuit Rejected,” LosAngeles Times, June 13, 2002, p. A1.Election discrimination against Latinos in Southern Califor-

nia has dropped off sharply as the Latino community hasgrown in size and strength.

Sangillo, Gregg, “Who’s Hispanic?” The National Journal,June 8, 2002.According to some experts, the word “Hispanic” is an in-

herently ambiguous — and, these days, a highly political —word with no fixed cultural or ethnic moorings.

Housing Discrimination

Gordon, Rachel, “Fed Sues S.F. Public Housing Authority,”The San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 19, 2002, p. A1.The U.S. Department of Justice sued San Francisco’s public-

housing agency for knowingly allowing its tenants to be vic-tims of racial harassment.

Henriques, Diana B., “Lehman Aided in Loan Fraud, JurySays,” The New York Times, June 17, 2003, p. C1.A California jury concluded that Lehman Brothers, a New

York-based investment bank, backed an aggressive home-equity lender, First Alliance Corp., despite warnings aboutits loan practices.

Stewart, Jocelyn Y., “Sterling Hit With Bias Suit,” LosAngeles Times, Feb. 7, 2003, p. B1.A recently filed lawsuit contends that black, Latino and dis-

abled tenants were discriminated against at two propertiesin Los Angeles.

Minority Contracting

Nakashima, Ellen, “Bush Weighs Help For Minority Firms;New Rules Would Ease Bidding For U.S. Jobs Being Pri-vatized,” The Washington Post, Sept. 6, 2001, p. A1.

The Bush administration is considering a change in contract-ing rules that would make it easier for women and minority-owned businesses to get federal contracts.

Reiterman, Tim, “Probe Into PUC Contracts Sought,” LosAngeles Times, July 29, 2002, p. B5.Minority- and veteran-owned firms in California claim they

were excluded from $100 million worth of energy conser-vation outreach work.

Straight, Susan, “Encouraging Minority-Owned Firms,”The Washington Post, May 13, 2002, p. E1.The Bush administration is sponsoring a business devel-

opment program that sets aside a portion of governmentcontracting money for minority-owned businesses.

Racial Profiling

Dolan, Maura, and John M. Glionna, “CHP Settles LawsuitOver Claims of Racial Profiling,” Los Angeles Times, Feb.28, 2003, p. A1.The California Highway Patrol has promised to deal with

racial profiling — officers will no longer pull over driversbased only on hunches.

Kocieniewski, David, “Study Suggests Racial Gap inSpeeding in New Jersey,” The New York Times, March21, 2002, p. B1.Two years ago the Justice Department forced New Jersey

officials to adopt new policies to discourage racial profilingby state troopers.

Schulte, Brigid, “Md. Settles Lawsuit Over Racial Profiling;Traffic Stops by State Police To Receive More Monitoring,”The Washington Post, April 3, 2003, p. B1.Maryland approved a legal agreement that is expected to

provide safeguards against police discrimination during routinetraffic stops.

CITING THE CQ RESEARCHER

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MLA STYLE

Jost, Kenneth. “Rethinking the Death Penalty.” The CQ Researcher, 16 Nov. 2001: 945-968.

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CHICAGO STYLE

Jost, Kenneth. “Rethinking the Death Penalty.” CQ Researcher, November 16, 2001, 945-968.

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CHILDREN/YOUTHCyber-Predators, March 2002Preventing Teen Drug Use, March 2002Sexual Abuse and the Clergy, May 2002

CRIMINAL JUSTICERethinking the Death Penalty, Nov. 2001Intelligence Reforms, January 2002Cyber-Crime, April 2002Corporate Crime, October 2002

EDUCATIONTeaching Math and Science, Sept. 2002Homework Debate, December 2002Charter Schools, December 2002

ENVIRONMENTThreatened Fisheries, August 2002Bush and the Environment, October 2002Crisis in the Plains, May 2003NASA’s Future, May 2003Reforming the Corps, May 2003

HEALTH CARE AND MEDICINEObesity Epidemic, January 2003Medical Malpractice, February 2003Organ Shortage, February 2003Drug Company Ethics, June 2003Increase in Autism, June 2003Fighting SARS, June 2003

LEGAL ISSUESAbortion Debates, March 2003Torture, April 2003

MODERN CULTUREGambling in America, March 2003Movie Ratings, March 2003Mothers’ Movement, April 2003Unemployment Benefits, April 2003

POLITICS/GOVERNMENTConfronting Iraq, October 2002Presidential Power, November 2002Stimulating the Economy, January 2003

Oil Diplomacy, January 2003Future of NATO, February 2003Trouble in South America, March 2003North Korean Crisis, April 2003

TRANSPORTATIONAuto Industry’s Future, January 2000Auto Safety, October 2001Future of the Airline Industry, June 2002Future of Amtrak, October 2002SUV Debate, May 2003

Future Topics

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Water Shortage

Rebuilding Iraq

CQ Researcher Link 9.1: Race in America - Sage Publications

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