Muncie Times, Muncie, Delaware County, 23 December 2010 — Page 11

The Muncie Times • December 23, 2010 • Page 11

continued from page 9 Trice Edney Wire. From health care, to women’s pay equity, to so-called green jobs that benefit African Americans to millions of dollars for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, it appears that the Obama accomplishments were overlooked in the Nov. 2 election. That’s when a groundswell of passionate conservative voices appeared to drown out his and other Democratic activists, resulting in a Republican majority in the previously Democratic-led House. “We’ve done Pell grants and probably the average college student has no idea of what we’ve been able to do. A part of our job is to get information out,” Cleaver said. Cleaver will replace the power-packed outgoing CBC Chair Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) whose term ends in January. As the new chair of the CBC , founded in 1971, he sees a daunting challenge ahead to walk the fine line between the aisles. Republicans are expected to create bottlenecks in an attempt to stop an Obama re-election in 2 years. “We operate with no illusion that this session of Congress will be very difficult for Democrats and our agenda. And there are issues that are unique to African Americans,” Cleaver said. He gave as an example the fact that the U. S.

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Senate has passed legislation to pay billions of dollars long owed to black farmers in the Department of Agriculture race discrimination case. Despite admonition from President Obama, that bill could easily fail in a Republican-dominated House. “We realize that if we have to reintroduce that legislation in the 112th Congress, we would have to do so with support from Republicans,” Cleaver said. “That means we’ve got to think in terms of coalitions. We would have permanent interests and not necessarily permanent friends. Our permanent interests will require that we work with Republicans and we have no reservations about doing that.” Cleaver is no stranger to bridging antagonizing interests. His 5th Congressional District of Missouri is 17 percent black. Yet, he has been twice elected mayor of Kansas City and to Congress four times by an overwhelmingly white electorate. He says, “[This] means when I address issues that are uniquely black, there is nothing wrong with it.” One of those issues he hopes to espouse will be the continued high unemployment rate among blacks. “The mantra for the Black Caucus will be jobs, jobs, jobs,” he says. Despite his promise to build coalitions, and even compromise in some

instances, he says he and the 44-member caucus that he will lead will never compromise the interests of African Americans. He assured, “We will do nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing that would cause us to abandon our mission, which is to protect the interest of African Americans and to provide them legislatively with opportunities and to move them into every realm of American life.” Affirmative action losing out to diversity in academia, industry The word “diversity” has popular appeal, maybe more so these days than “affirmative action.” But who knew diversity and affirmative action are in conflict at many businesses and colleges? Shirley Wilcher does. The executive director of the American Association of Affirmative Action says human resources professionals who are members of the Washington, D.C.-based organization report that vaguely-defined diversity programs are crowding out or taking priority over affirmative action. The Harvard-trained lawyer, who interned at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, knows well the difference between superficial efforts and the sound practices that make workplaces fairer. During the Clinton administration, she directed the Office of

Federal Contract Compliance Programs, the U.S. Labor Department agency that enforces Lyndon Johnson’s Executive Order requiring federal contractors to take affirmative action to ensure they have diverse workforces. “We’ve kind of lost in private industry. They use the term ‘diversity’ now, have a lot of diversity programs,” Wilcher says. “But if they don’t deal with the issue of opportunity in terms of hiring and promotions, the representation of women and minorities in the workplace, you might as well call them ‘Kumbaya programs,’ as far as I’m concerned. Because they won’t really address the issue of getting people in the door and retaining them because they’re qualified and simply deserve a chance.” Too many of those programs, she says, do nothing more than make employees feel good; to cite two examples: Black History Month celebrations or speeches about how diversity improves the bottom line. Her blunt assessment: “Maybe they’re good for morale, but they make no change, so therefore they make no difference.” Karen Jackson-Weaver, an associate dean of academic affairs and diversity at Princeton University, points to the need to “change cultures and climates” in academic departments, where

faculty members recommend who to hire or grant tenure. It is conceivable that making these senior white professors more aware of other cultures could counteract a tendency to devalue scholarship about them and, as a result, to vote against many minority candidates for teaching jobs or promotions. Wilcher concludes that companies and college have not figured out how to coordinate conventional affirmative action steps with the new-style diversity programs. At some companies, she says the chief diversity officer is paid more than the affirmative action officer, whose duties may be limited to producing a plan for increasing the numbers of minority employees. “When they do that, they miss the whole point,” she says. “First it’s the plan, but it’s a plan of action, to try to do something with the numbers.” Other companies and colleges have different organizational models. The affirmative action officer may report to the human resources director, instead of the CEO or college president, as previously, reducing the officer’s clout and independence. Or that person has additional responsibilities for diversity programs, while still producing affirmative action plans and handling equal opportunity complaints. “Sometimes what continued on page 13