Indianapolis Recorder, Indianapolis, Marion County, 9 August 1997 — Page 2
PAGE A2
THE INDIANAPOLIS RECORDER
SATURDAY, AUGUSTS, 1997
EDIfORUlS
The fight to reform IPD starts
A good government job?
By GEORGE WILSON For many African Americans there was a time when a “good government job" meant a reasonably comfortable ride on the road to success. The trip was fairly smooth until some of us wanted promotions. This desire to climb the ladder was met with a concerted effort on the part of some to remove the ladder’s rungs. Now, this issue is being addressed by Congressman Albert Wynn (D-MD), who was recently joined by members of the Congressional Black Caucus and others in launching a crusade to end racial discrimination in the federal work force. Cong. Wynn represents more federal employees than any other member of Congress. More than 72.000 federal government workers live in his district. These days just having the job is not enough, Cong. Wynn said. “People want to move forward. They want to move up into management They are not just satisfied with a “good government job,” Wynn observed. If one needs proof that “Jim Crow" is alive and quite well in the federal work force, consider several points. 1) Senior management positions (GS 13,14, I S and Senior Executive Service), in the government are sorely lacking minority participation. 2) According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, all minorities comprise just 13 percent of GS IS’s. For example, the Department of Agriculture has 1,159 GS IS employees with just 38 African Americans holding those positions. Incidentally, the EEOC currently has a 100,000 case backlog in discrimination cases. The Department of Agriculture has over 1,400 complaints pending. The Interior Department has 774 complaints and the Department of Transportation has 663 complaints. These agencies show a real disdain for Afri-can-American employees and seem to be sending a clear signal that “if you work here, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.” Finally, the Library of Congress employs approximately 2.000 African Americans who have been locked in a bitter struggle with its management over hiring and promotion practices. Things became so bad that African-American employees filed a class action suit against the Library. On the surface, it appeared Blacks won the lawsuit, however, the Library has virtually ignored a court order to stop discriminating. In fact, the employees have fried another suit challenging the way that the Library selects employees. One of the ways, through interviews, have been used to blatantly discriminate. Blacks say. Joyce Thorpe, an attorney employed by the Library of Congress employees, notes that some interviewees are asked questions that others are not. “When you go in there for a job interview, you should be asked the same question as the person who went in before you. That interview protocol makes everything objective, Thorpe said. “The questions should be related to whether or not you can perform the job that you are applying for. You should not be asked if you have a Masters in Spanish or a Ph.D. in engineering if you are applying to be a file clerk in English at the Library of Congress.” The situation at the Library is indicative of a problem that pervades the federal government. African Americans are the last hired and the first fired, or downsized. In addition, if you are able to keep your job, you can rest assured that you will be supervised by someone less qualified than yourself. It appears that the “good government job" has gone the way of the dinosaur. All that is left are memories and the recognition that the federal government is out of the business of providing a nest for employees to spend their working lives. As the government door closes, perhaps the door of increased self-reliance will open. George Wilson is a 16-year Capitol Hill correspondent for the American Urban Radio Network
INDIANAPOLIj RECORDER DIRECTORY
0M0ULATKM
Just
Tellin , it
By AMOS BROWN
Nearly a year after the infa-
mous downtown police brawl, another brawl is about to begin. The fight over what type of civilian oversight of police conduct
our community will have. Last week, a group of citizens
called the Working Group, empowered by the Greater Indianapo1 is Progress Comm ittee, developed 37 recommendations revising the
current Citizen’s Complaint System and Board
of the Indianapolis Police Department.
Within weeks. City County Council Majority Leader Toby McOamroch and Minority Leader Rozelle Boyd will introduce an ordinance encompassing the Working Group’s recommendations. Then the political brawl will
start.
Now, that the Working Group has issued its report, the battle moves to the City-County Council. Immediately after the Meridian Street fracas, Indianapolis citizens - Black and white were ready for change. A year later, passions have cooled, as IPD Chief Michael Zunk has established a perception of a higher standard of discipline within IPD. One weakness in the Working Group’s recommendations was its failure to reconcile the role of the Civilian Merit Board with the Civil-
ian Complaint Board. The Merit Board is a group of citizens, appointed by the mayor and council, who have final authority over discipline given IPD officers. This failure gives the Fraternal Order of Police and sympathetic council mem-
bers a wedge to thwart real reform in civilian
oversight of IPD.
On our Six Thirty PM program on WAV-TV Channel 33, FOP President Sgt. David Young asked “why do we need another group of civilians reviewing police actions, when we currently have a Civilian Merit Board?” The bottom line - are there 13 council votes to pass the Working Group’s reforms? The first hurdle - the Council’s Public Safety Committee, chaired by the normally unsympathetic William Dowden. His committee consists of Republicans Dr. Phil Borst, Carlton Curry, William Schneider, David Smith and Ron Franklin. Democrats are Mary Mori arty Adams and Steve Talley. Franklin and Talley
are Black.
There must be at least two more votes on this committee, to add to Talley, Moriarty Adams
and Franklin to move reform legislation to the full Council. Our community expects ALL 10 Democratic City-County Councilors to vote for IPD reform. But, some sources I talked to say some of the four white Democratic council members’ votes aren’t solid. But assuming all ten Democrats vote for reform, we need at least five GOP votes. That not only puts pressure on Councilman Ron Franklin, but on a solid block of moderately conservative Republicans. These include council men from districts with a growing Black middle class population. They include Curt Coonrod, Phil Hinkle, Cory O’Dell, and James Bradford. Other key Republicans our community should be lobbying - Borst, Curry and yes, the legendary council president Dr. Beurt SerVass. Mayor Goldsmith urged creation of the Working Group. Now he must get personally involved in gamering GOP Council support! If the Jones/Sasso report isn’t to become as irrelevant as Tanselle/Adams or other IPD reforms that occupy dusty archive shelves, the Mayor must roll up his sleeves and fight for these reforms and council votes to pass them! The pressure’s on Mayor Goldsmith and our African-American community to secure the rock-solid support of all 10 council Democrats and to convince at least five Council Republicans that reforming IPD’s complaint process as outlined by the Jones/Sasso Working Group is needed and beneficial to the citizens and police officers of Indianapolis! The fight is on and this time we can’t afford to lose! Heard in the Street The untimely death of Marion County Democratic Partv Chair. Jim Stewart, has thrown the party into a tizzy. With a vacuum in the party’s leadership, will an African-Ameri-can finally step forward to assume the responsibility of leading county Democrats? Or will our timid Black Democratic elected officials again settle for white leadership of the party? The same Black elected officials who are always “talking loud” about “Black Power,” or criticizing Black media for pointing out their shortcomings, are the first to settle for continued plantation politics in the local Democratic party machinery. They either need to step up or step aside and let a younger generation in, who are not afraid to exercise political power! Angered by the Tina Cosby and Sandra Chapman demotions, the Indianapolis NAACP is preparing to look into the matter along with the apparent, to many in our community, systematic removal of African-Americans from the weekday anchor chairs on the city’s TV stations. When will other African-American organizations (like the Coalition of 100 Black Women, 100 Black Men, Black Journalists and Black ministerial associations) follow the NAACP’s lead? See ‘ya next week! Amos Brown’s opinions are not necessarily those of The Indianapolis Recorder. You can contact him at (317) 2939600 or e-mail him [email protected].
NAACP needs help to reverse damage done by the media
PHONE !3 1 7) 924-5143
The media would have you believe the greatest challenge to the recent NAACP convention in Pittsburgh is an old debate over busing and the integration of public schools. A far bigger problem, in my view, is how to reverse the damage done by the media on issues of affirmative action. The results, manifest widely, are the passage of laws, court decisions and governmental and corporate actions that have caused reductions in opportunities for nonwhite Americans that could grow to social disasters. The NAACP needs help in countering the massive propaganda, made to look less poisonous by having it mouthed by Blacks like Ward Connerly of California, that non-whites are great beneficiaries of “reverse racism.”The entire civil rights community needs to understand and then broadcast widely facts such as those contained in a New York University Law Review. article by Linda Wightman about who gets into law school on what credentials. Wightman, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, surveyed the records of 90,335 college graduates who generated 416,003 applications for admission to 173 law schools for die 1990-91 application year. She found that of the 50,640 applicants admitted to at least one law school 3,435 were Blade, but only 711 Blacks would have been admitted if colleges looked only at undergraduate grade point averages (GPAs) and at LSAT scores. Were the Blacks given favorit-
ism just for being Black? No. Wightman found 6,321 of the whites admitted would never have gotten into law school if only their GPA and LSAT scores had been considered. The fact is law schools and all odier professional institutions also look at what this law review article
cited as “letters of recommendation, activities, significant nonacademic or professional achievement, and for qualities including rigor of thought, maturity, judgment, motivation, leadership, imagination and social achievement.” Of the applicants Wightman studied, more than 300 Blacks had GPA and LSAT numbers indicating that they were frilly qualified, but they were not admitted to any school. Conneriy has cited the huge drop in Black and Hispanic enrollment in California and Texas law schools as “proof’ that unqualified people previously were admitted under affirmative action. Wightman’s
survey shows just the opposite — that those without high grades and test scores who are admitted on the basis of other criteria perform almost precisely as well as those with the high numbers. She says 78 percent of the Blacks with low numbers graduated from their law schools, and that there was “little or no difference in the likelihood of passing the bar examination” between students with high grade point averages and LSAT scores and those accepted after consideration of other good qualities. It is a tragedy the NAACP alone does not have enough resources to get that message to all America. O 1997 King Features Synd., Inc.
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