WHITE & WORRIED

NOTE: The following column originally ran in Chicago's Third Coast Press in 2004.

Hey RaceMan,
Why do blacks receive preferential treatment when it comes to securing jobs?

Worried White Worker

Dear Worried,

The easy answer is another question. “Who says Blacks receive preferential treatment? Where are your facts?

The idea that Black Americans receive preferential treatment in getting jobs is not just wrong. It is exponentially, “The earth is flat” - “There’s no such thing as evolution”- wrong. It’s a kissing cousin to Hitler-Goebbels’ Big Lie (but even more pernicious in its pose as a clueless querie).

In fact my first reaction was to blow the question off as just a racial red herring to sidetrack ol’ RaceMan from solving the world’s problems.

But then I realized that, because of the terrible job our schools and media do in telling us basic facts about race in America, there’s a good chance Worried is sincere.

The PopHistory of America goes something like this:

There were a few mean old Southerners who had slaves (but treated them well), then St. Abe Lincoln (who loved slaves) asked nice White Northerners (who also loved slaves) to fight and die in the Civil War to free them all. Then Martin Luther King marched to Washington and said his "I Have A Dream" Speech and the President, St. John F. Kennedy was so moved that he gave Negros all the good jobs and 40 acres and a mule.

No wonder Worried’s baffled.

So, as a public service, I’ll do a little RaceMan’s Remedial Ed.
Like most “suburban” myths, the one about Blacks getting preferential treatment is based more on a mishmash of feelings, misplaced resentment and misinformation than on facts.

Just one statistic should give you a clue. White unemployment is around 5%. Last time I looked, Black unemployment was about 10.7%. Of course these figures vary slightly day-to-day and expert-to-expert. And with the growing number of "unwhite" folks too miseducated and discouraged to even look for work, the disparity is probably much greater.

The huge wealth gap between "Black" and "White" Americans is even more telling. Experts estimate per capita White American wealth to be seven to ten times that of African-America .
And the only career paths I’ve noticed where "Black" folks are preferred for are as security guards, parking lot attendants, retail stock boys, burger flippers, prison inmates and similar “career opportunities”. I shudder to think what the unemployment rate in Black America would be without Securitas, Walmart and McDonald’s.

Besides, something tells me Worried’s question may be a thinly veiled attempt to express opposition to the idea of affirmative action. Many "Whites" seem to feel that it’s unfair. Even some "Blacks" are opposed to it.

I say the "idea" of affirmative action for a reason. Affirmative action for "Black" America was first proposed as an idea by John F. Kennedy in 1961. It was meant to be an antidote to over three centuries of actual affirmative action for "White" Americans. But like another idea of the era, racial integration, affirmative action has done better in theory than in practice. Even at the height of its popularity it was sporadically practiced - and then mostly in federal government jobs, agencies and programs. The anemic enforcement in the private sector was left to the EEOC (Where anti-affirmative-action baby Clarence Thomas was too busy pursuing Anita Hill to be bothered doing his job). A miniscule number of minorities actually navigated the convoluted litigation system to win judgements against companies dumb enough to get caught being blatantly racist.

But even half-assed affirmative action is better than none. It has made the life chances of African-Americans (and women and other minorities) markedly better than they were before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It’s hard to imagine now, but even the likes of Michael Jordan and Barry Bonds were not allowed to compete with their "White" counterparts only a generation before - when team owners and media moguls decided the color of money was more important than the color of skin. For a nation that was unapologetically a “white man’s country” for most of its history, we’ve come a long way. But for one that holds itself up as a model for the rest of the world to follow, we still have quite a way to go.

For those of us whose talents and skills don’t translate directly into millions of paying customers, AA’s effect has been much less dramatic, Tellingly, the only field (outside of sports and entertainment) where affirmative action seems to come close to living up its billing is in our military, where non-"Whites" get a more or less an equal opportunity to be maimed or killed.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t criticize America because I hate it. I criticize because, in spite of its faults, I believe it there's still a chance we can live up to its over 230 year old promise. But it’s the promise that gives me hope, not the reality. Unless and until this nation comes much closer to living up to our ideals, our future is toast.

I’ve got a suggestion.

Instead of worrying about the folks on the bottom taking your job, get hot and bothered about those at the top who have stolen your country. The minority that has always gotten “preferential treatment” in America are the 1% who own and control most of our wealth and all our politicians.

In fact, a recent book that agrees with me was co-written by the father of the richest man in America, Bill Gates. He and Warren Buffet (the 2nd richest man in America), were so embarrassed by the inequality built into our system that they lobbied against the Bush administration’s efforts to kill the estate tax.

And, please don’t send me letters branding me a communist or a socialist. I know a lot more about Groucho, Zeppo and Harpo Marx than I do about Karl. If I had to give myself a label, I’d call myself a social-capitalist. I’ll tell you exactly what that means as soon as I figure it out.

RaceMan Recommends:

•Wealth and Our Commonwealth by William H. Gates Sr. and Chuck Collins
•State of Black America, 2004 by The National Urban League

A modest attempt at solving America's oldest, biggest problem.

Hi, it's me again. Lowell Thompson, aka RaceMan.

I know it's been a while since you've heard from me, but rest assured that I haven't been sitting on my as....er, uh, I mean laurels. Not that I had many to sit on.

Those of you who know me from the old days - on Salon's Table Talk when it was just getting started in the mid-to-late 90s, or my column in the short-lived paper version of Third Coast Press - welcome back. Those of you who haven't had the pleasure/pain of my pithy, penchant but fair analysis of America's perennial problem, glad to meetcha.

Since I'm old to the web, but new to the blogosphere, please bear with me as I gather my thoughts. It may take a few weeks before I get the hang of this. Meanwhile I'll look for some of my past missives and start posting them.

But be warned. I don't plan to spend my life writing this damn blog. In fact, it may help to think of this more as a slog (Slow Log). I plan to post at my leisure, when I start to receive questions that strike my fancy, have something to say that might help you think about the issue or read or hear something in the media that I can't let stand.

But remember, solving the race problem is just my hobby. I have to spend some time on my day job: saving the world.