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 n Monday's Washington
Post, columnist William Raspberry writes about the keynote address
delivered on Sunday by the National Urban League's Hugh Price at
the organization's annual conference this year in Washington. That
speech is most interesting when juxtaposed with the Post's
own interpretation of a recent survey on race relations.
The theme of Mr. Price's speech was that African Americans have
won two revolutions — the first, in the 19th century, abolishing
slavery, and the second, in the 20th century, that transformed theoretical
rights into public practice. What's needed now, says Mr. Price,
is a third revolution that will achieve economic development. And,
he declared, "This revolution must emanate from the inside out"
— it cannot be bestowed by outsiders.
Earlier this month, however, the Post made clear that, in
its view, African Americans can hope to make progress if and only
if the white man agrees to award it to them. The Post published
yet more results from a series of survey projects conducted jointly
by it, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University.
This is the eighth; no word on how many there will be. The front-page,
above-the-fold article on this survey — headlined, "Misperceptions
Cloud Whites' View of Blacks" — is perhaps the worst in the
series so far.
The thesis of the article is the following syllogism: (1) white
Americans believe blacks are better off than in fact they are; (2)
white Americans overwhelmingly oppose racial and ethnic preferences
(a.k.a. "affirmative action"); therefore (3) white Americans oppose
affirmative action because they overestimate the progress blacks
have made.
It is, to begin with, not so clear that white Americans really are
so badly misinformed about the status of African Americans today.
For instance, the survey found that 71 percent of whites say that
blacks have "more or about the same opportunities in life than whites
have." It is not Clintonian to point out that whether this belief
is a "misperception" depends on how you define "about the same."
Likewise with the belief by only 20 percent of whites that there
is "a lot of discrimination against African Americans in our society
today," and the belief by more whites than blacks that African Americans
are "just about as well off" as whites when it comes to access to
health care, income, types of jobs, and education. "A lot" and "just
about" are pretty subjective terms. And, looking at the world and
history as a whole, it is not at all clear that the answers given
by most white Americans to these questions are wrong.
But even if it were the case that most white Americans overestimate
the progress that blacks have made, it would not follow that, if
they were better informed, they would change their minds about the
use of preferences. Indeed, the Post's own figures found
that, even among whites "with fewer misperceptions," 90 percent
still opposed considering race or ethnicity in hiring, promotions,
and college admissions, and 84 percent opposed such considerations
in redistricting (among those "with more misperceptions," the numbers
were 97 percent and 94 percent, respectively).
An interesting side note: Polls that even mention affirmative action
are likely to sour respondents' views on African Americans, as sophisticated
surveys by Stanford professor Paul M. Sniderman have shown.
Believing that American society remains hostile to blacks may be
a necessary condition for supporting preferences, but it is certainly
not sufficient. That is, the exhortations of the "diversity" industry
to the contrary notwithstanding, few really believe that racial
and ethnic preferences can be justified on any basis except as a
corrective to past or present discrimination. So if you don't believe
that opportunities are systematically denied any more on the basis
of skin color or ancestry, you are also unlikely to believe in the
use of systematic preferences to favor groups.
And even if you believe that "a lot" of discrimination still exists,
it doesn't follow that you will believe the best way to fight it
is with more discrimination. You might believe, instead, that the
best way to fight discrimination is by enforcing the antidiscrimination
laws on the books. You may also believe that preferences are actually
counterproductive, insofar as they lead to resentment, stigmatization,
lowered standards, a victim mentality among the so-called beneficiaries,
and hypocrisy — in addition to being unfair and setting a dangerous
precedent that discrimination is acceptable so long as it is for
a "good reason" (discriminators always have a "good reason").
Finally, you might believe that the reasons African Americans are
worse off in terms of access to health care, income, types of jobs,
and education have little to do with ongoing discrimination and
will not be addressed by pretending that they are. Perhaps you believe
that lowering illegitimacy rates (seven out of ten black births
are out of wedlock), improving public education through school choice,
and fighting the belief that studying and working hard are "acting
white" would be the better course.
Those are not "misperceptions" — and, in fact, are shared not
only by many whites but by many blacks, Asians, Latinos, and American
Indians as well. They would, in particular, appear to underlie Hugh
Price's theme in his keynote address. Discrimination still exists,
yes, but it is no longer the principal or even a major barrier to
black advancement. Mr. Price has figured that out; the Post's
reporters have not.
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