But these same statistics should also force those of us interested in racial equality to conduct an honest accounting of the costs and benefits of our current strategies. Even as we continue to defend affirmative action as a useful, if limited, tool to expand opportunity to underrepresented minorities, we should consider spending a lot more of our political capital convincing America to make the investments needed to ensure that all children perform at grade level and graduate from high school — a goal that, if met, would do more than affirmative action to help those black and Latino children who need it the most. Similarly, we should support targeted programs to eliminate existing health disparities between minorities and whites (some evidence suggests that even when income and levels of insurance are factored out, minorities may still be receiving worse care), but a plan for universal health-care coverage would do more to eliminate health disparities between whites and minorities than any race-specific programs we might design.
An emphasis on universal, as opposed to race-specific, programs isn’t just good policy; it’s also good politics. I remember once sitting with one of my Democratic colleagues in the Illinois state senate as we listened to another fellow senator — an African American whom I’ll call John Doe who represented a largely inner-city district — launch into a lengthy and passionate peroration on why the elimination of a certain program was a case of blatant racism. After a few minutes, the white senator (who had one of the chamber’s more liberal voting records) turned to me and said, “You know what the problem is with John? Whenever I hear him, he makes me feel more white.”
In defense of my black colleague, I pointed out that it’s not always easy for a black politician to gauge the right tone to take — too angry? not angry enough? — when discussing the enormous hardships facing his or her constituents. Still, my white colleague’s comment was instructive. Rightly or wrongly, white guilt has largely exhausted itself in America; even the most fair-minded of whites, those who would genuinely like to see racial inequality ended and poverty relieved, tend to push back against suggestions of racial victimization — or race-specific claims based on the history of race discrimination in this country.
Some of this has to do with the success of conservatives in fanning the politics of resentment — by wildly overstating, for example, the adverse effects of affirmative action on white workers. But mainly it’s a matter of simple self-interest. Most white Americans figure that they haven’t engaged in discrimination themselves and have plenty of their own problems to worry about. They also know that with a national debt approaching $9 trillion and annual deficits of almost $300 billion, the country has precious few resources to help them with those problems.
As a result, proposals that solely benefit minorities and dissect Americans into “us” and “them” may generate a few short-term concessions when the costs to whites aren’t too high, but they can’t serve as the basis for the kinds of sustained, broad-based political coalitions needed to transform America. On the other hand, universal appeals around strategies that help all Americans (schools that teach, jobs that pay, health care for everyone who needs it, a government that helps out after a flood), along with measures that ensure our laws apply equally to everyone and hence uphold broadly held American ideals (like better enforcement of existing civil rights laws), can serve as the basis for such coalitions — even if such strategies disproportionately help minorities.
Such a shift in emphasis is not easy: Old habits die hard, and there is always a fear on the part of many minorities that unless racial discrimination, past and present, stays on the front burner, white America will be let off the hook and hard-fought gains may be reversed. I understand these fears — nowhere is it ordained that history moves in a straight line, and during difficult economic times it is possible that the imperatives of racial equality get shunted aside.
Still, when I look at what past generations of minorities have had to overcome, I am optimistic about the ability of this next generation to continue their advance into the economic mainstream. For most of our recent history, the rungs on the opportunity ladder may have been more slippery for blacks; the admittance of Latinos into firehouses and corporate suites may have been grudging. But despite all that, the combination of economic growth, government investment in broad-based programs to encourage upward mobility, and a modest commitment to enforce the simple principle of nondiscrimination was sufficient to pull the large majority of blacks and Latinos into the socioeconomic mainstream within a generation.
We need to remind ourselves of this achievement. What’s remarkable is not the number of minorities who have failed to climb into the middle class but the number who succeeded against the odds; not the anger and bitterness that parents of color have transmitted to their children but the degree to which such emotions have ebbed. That knowledge gives us something to build on. It tells us that more progress can be made.
IF UNIVERSAL STRATEGIES that target the challenges facing all Americans can go a long way toward closing the gap between blacks, Latinos, and whites, there are two aspects of race relations in America that require special attention — issues that fan the flames of racial conflict and undermine the progress that’s been made. With respect to the African American community, the issue is the deteriorating condition of the inner-city poor. With respect to Latinos, it is the problem of undocumented workers and the political firestorm surrounding immigration.
One of my favorite restaurants in Chicago is a place called MacArthur’s. It’s away from the Loop, on the west end of the West Side on Madison Street, a simple, brightly lit space with booths of blond wood that seat maybe a hundred people. On any day of the week, about that many people can be found lining up — families, teenagers, groups of matronly women and elderly men — all waiting their turn, cafeteria-style, for plates filled with fried chicken, catfish, hoppin’ John, collard greens, meatloaf, cornbread, and other soul-food standards. As these folks will tell you, it’s well worth the wait.
The restaurant’s owner, Mac Alexander, is a big, barrel-chested man in his early sixties, with thinning gray hair, a mustache, and a slight squint behind his glasses that gives him a pensive, professorial air. He’s an army vet, born in Lexington, Mississippi, who lost his left leg in Vietnam; after his convalescence, he and his wife moved to Chicago, where he took business courses while working in a warehouse. In 1972, he opened Mac’s Records, and helped found the Westside Business Improvement Association, pledging to fix up what he calls his “little corner of the world.”
By any measure he has succeeded. His record store grew; he opened up the restaurant and hired local residents to work there; he started buying and rehabbing run-down buildings and renting them out. It’s because of the efforts of men and women like Mac that the view along Madison Street is not as grim as the West Side’s reputation might suggest. There are clothing stores and pharmacies and what seems like a church on every block. Off the main thoroughfare you will find the same small bungalows — with neatly trimmed lawns and carefully tended flower beds — that make up many of Chicago’s neighborhoods.