Indianapolis Recorder, Indianapolis, Marion County, 8 July 1995 — Page 2

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THE INDIANAPOLIS RECORDER

SATURDAY, JULYS, 1996

IMTOWAU African summit a bridge between U.S. f African Blacks DAKAR, Senegal — The greatest gathering of African government officials and AfricanAmerican civil rights, government and business leaders was held in early May in this West African country, under the banner of “Building a bridge of togetherness.” More than 3,000 delegates from the African continent and America “joined hands and minds” under the words and leadership of American civil rights leader the Rev. Leon H. Sullivan and Abdou Diouf, president of the Republic of Senegal, with the stated objectives of promoting trade and investment among Americans, government and individuals in more than 40 countries. The joining of hands and minds included trade and development discussions focused on information and technology transfers, education for more Blacks, the dynamics of population growth, conflict resolutions, HIV/AIDS containment and agricultural development. Former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy said that Blacks in Africa and in America should take better advantage of trade agreements that most developed countries already enjoy together. Former California congressman Mervyn Dymally, who has formed an international trading company, said, “Scores of trading programs already exist that Blacks have not taken sufficient advantage of.” The summit, the third between Blacks in the U.S. and in Africa, is designed to increase cooperation between Black Americans and the African continent. U.S. Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown represented President Bill Clinton at the summit, meeting with more than 20 African heads of state here. On opening day, African-American delegates outnumbered representatives from African countries, but that numerical imbalance was expected to tip the other way when a thousand more Africans were scheduled to arrive in the middle of the week. A large cross-section of African-American leaders in various fields were at the summit. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Rev. A1 Sharpton and Dr. Benjamin Chavis Jr. were among the more wellknown leaders of various civil rights organizations here. Mayor Marion Barry of Washington, D.C. and Mayor Johnny Ford of Tuskegee, Ala., joined hands with mayors from Dakar, Gary, Ind. and others from cities and towns around the world. Black political leaders from American city, state and national legislatures were here, meeting with their counterparts from Senegal, Gambia, Togo and other African countries. The summit ended May 6 with many “determined to create a world with better understanding between people of color,” Sullivan said.

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Struggle against racism never ending

1 remember when I was young and we believed that once those old-timers, steeped in Jim Crowism and die-hard segregation, died off, racism would go away. Were we ever naive. Were we ever wrong. In the past few days, two stories have proven that. Those stories have shown that the struggle against racism is a never-ending process and one that we, as a nation, must take very seriously for every generation. Those who believe that racism is an issue of the past are sadly mistaken. Both stories involve high school seniors, the future leaders of their communities. One is the story of the seniors in Greenwich, Conn, who put a coded message in their yearbook which read “Kill all the niggers” and then bragged about it. Five young men,

most of them scheduled to go on to college in the fall, were proud they were able to fool school administrators and make a racist threat. Five young men, part of a supposedly liberal community, used their yearbook to spew racial hatred. When interviewed on television, some Greenwich residents said they believed it was only a prank. But the students could have chosen to write a coded message which poked fun at something else, if they were interested in a

school prank. Others said that they believed this was an isolated event. But how do they know? A similar event occurred in New York City when four high school seniors placed an antiSemitic note under their Jewish teacher’s classroom door with a swastika, the word "Hitler,** and a vulgar personal insult on H. It seems they were angry because she had cancelled a class trip because of lack of student response. Just as racism is still alive and well in the next generation of leaders, so, too, it seems is anti-Semitism. In the Greenwich case, the administration took immediate action. The students were not allowed to take their final exams, not allowed to participate in their graduation ceremony. Indeed, law enforcement officials are investigating whether this should be considered a hate crime and thus whether to prosecute the young men. The young men also have agreed to attend a special class on racism led by the Congress of Racial Equality, which will include having them get to know some Black people. In the New York City case, the students were suspended, barred from the school prom, the yearbook party, the senior class trip and graduation. Each student was requited to perform 15 hours of community service. In addition, one student, who was a member of the student government, was removed from her post. Another was removed from the varsity baseball team. Likewise, after a police department investigation, the four students responsible were arrested for this bias crime. The principal also enlisted the aid of the National Council of Christians and Jews and the AntiDefamation League to educate the entire school community about the horrors of bigotry and anti-Semitism. Racism and anti-Semitism are not diseases carried in our DNA. They are not inherited from one generation to another. They are learned attitudes and behaviors. Every family, every school, every church temple or mosque, and every community organization has a responsibility to help educate our young people about racism before racist acts occur. Every leader — political, faith, social or community — has a responsibility to speak out against hate-based crimes. We can’t pretend that racists are a phenomena of the past and that Skinheads, racist militia groups and the KKK don’t exist today. We can’t allow young people to believe that acting out racist beliefs is acceptable behavior. The old racists might have died, but their racism did not.

America must affirm affirmative action

Think back to what the nation looked like in 1954, the year of the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision which outlawed school segregation. Blacks in big corporations back then seldom rose above secretary messenger. Think, even of the complexion of police and fire departments back then. While many small employers remain resistant, our advances, overall, are abundantly clear. As the Wall Street Journal observed in an editorial: “Affirmative action began as a way to give minorities and women an opportunity to compete. A walk through any campus or workplace will show it has worked. This is the important legacy of affirmative action.” These gains in higher education and white-collar employment account for the welcome growth of the Black middle class. There’s no question in that individual motivation and improved education, coupled with the advent of anti-bias laws, help explain this progress. But it’s also a fact that institutions with choices about whom to select have been inclusive in their admissions or employment practices. It may be impossible to prove cause and effect. But the phenomena of affirmative action and the growing AfricanAmerican middle class clearly have coincided. That’s correlation enough in my book. To judge by all the strident talk radio shows and hysterical

magazine covers, affirmative action explains all that ails America’s suddenly insecure white males. It’s the cause of college rejections, shrinking wages and vanishing jobs. Yes, the economic prospects of white males are dimmer now than those of their parents 30 years ago. And the economic prognosis

for their children is further source of worry. The very same is true of all American workers, be they African American, members of another minority group or women. Why, besides their purported political clout, should white males’ claim be accorded greater urgency or credibility than that of other apprehensive Americans? All that solicitude toward anxious white males suggests that African Americans have somehow gained the upper hand. What unfair advantage have we gained over whites? As American University economics Professor Barbara Bergmann notes, "Blacks are such a small fraction of the

population that the lost opportunities to white men are really minuscule.” It isn’t as though African Americans have achieved parity in, much less more than our proportionate share of, the opportunity structure. For a myriad of reasons, from faulty schooling at the front end to persistent discrimination, African Americans still trail whites in every barometer that matters. African Americans still earn only 69 percent of what white males earn to perform the same job. The task of making our multi-ethnic society genuinely inclusive is hardly done. This is why we must affirm affirmative action.

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