29. Color Blind
ties in which they are written off even before their character has been shaped.
WE MUST REPLACE A PRESUMPTION THAT MINORITIES WILL FAIL WITH AN EXPECTATION OF THEIR SUCCESS: When doing research with young drug dealers in California, anthropologist John Ogbu found himself both impressed and immensely saddened.  Those guys have a sense of the economy. They have talents that could be used on Wall Street,  he remarked.  They have intelligence but not the belief that they can succeed in the mainstream.  Somewhere along the line, probably long before they became drug dealers, that belief had been wrenched out of them.
Creating an atmosphere in which people learn they cannot achieve is tantamount to creating failure. The various academic programs that do wonders with  at-risk  youths share a rock-hard belief in the ability of the young people in their care. These programs manage to create an atmosphere in which the  success syndrome  can thrive. Instead of focusing so much attention on whether people with less merit are getting various slots, we should be focusing on how to widen  and reward the pool of meritorious people.
WE MUST STOP PLAYING THE BLAME GAME: Too often America s racial debate is sidetracked by a search for racial scapegoats. And more often than not, those scapegoats end up being the people on the other side of the debate.  It s your fault because you re a racist.   No, it s your fault because you expect something for nothing.   It s white skin privilege.   It s reverse racism.  And on and on it goes. American culture, with its bellicose talk-show hosts and pugnacious politicians, rewards those who cast aspersions at the top of their lungs. And American law, with its concept of damages and reparations, encourages the practice of allocating blame. Although denying the past is dishonest and even sometimes madden-lng, obsessing about past wrongs is ultimately futile.
Certainly, loudmouths will always be among us and will continue to say obnoxious and foolish things, but it would be wonderful if more of those engaged in what passes for public scourse would recognize an obvious reality: It hardly maters who is responsible for things being screwed up; the only re evant question is,  How do we make them better?"
WE MUST DO A BETTER JOB AT LEVELING THE PLAYING FIELD: As long as roughly a third of black Americans sit on the bottom of the nation s
economic pyramid and have little chance of mov-,. ing up, the United States will have a serious racial cold 'ts hands. There is simply no way around that reality. It is pointless to say that the problem is class, not d   race and class are tightly linked.
ne ^e past several decades, Americans have wit-equaT 311 es teric debate over whether society must provide It i  PPortunity or somehow ensure equality of result, cent 0Wever> something of a phony debate, for the two cons are not altogether separate things. If America was, in som  PJ^rling equality of opportunity, then we would have sent	C^oser t0 equality of racial result than we do at pre-
ly be d Pr hlem is that equality of opportunity has general-and e?. ehned quite narrowly such as simply letting blacks pes take the same test, or apply for the same job.
Wealth    PPortunity is meaningless when inherited (and e 1S 3 determinant of what schools one attends Ven whether one goes to school), what neighborhoods
one can live in, and what influences and contacts one is exposed to. In Black Wealth, White Wealth, sociologists Melvin Oliver and Tom Shapiro pointed out that most blacks have virtually no wealth even if they do earn a decent income. Whites with equal educational levels to blacks typically have five to ten times as much wealth, largely because whites are much more likely to inherit or receive gifts of substantial unearned assets. This disparity is a direct result of Jim Crow practices and discriminatoiy laws and policies.
America is not about to adopt any scheme to redistribute resources materially. What Americans must do, however, if we are at all serious about equality of opportunity, is to make it easier for those without substantial resources to have secure housing outside urban ghettos, to receive a high-quality education, and to have access to decent jobs.
WE MUST BECOME SERIOUS ABOUT FIGHTING DISCRIMINATION: In their rush to declare this society colorblind, some Americans have leaped to. the conclusion that discrimination has largely disappeared. They explain away what little discrimination they believe exists as die fault of a few isolated individuals or the result of the oversensitivity of minorities.
Making discrimination a felony is probably not a solution, but more aggressive monitoring and prosecution especially in housing and employment situations would not be a bad start. Just as one cannot get beyond race by treating different races differenfly, one cannot get beyond discrimination by refusing to acknowledge it. One can get beyond discrimination only by fighting it vigorously wherever it is found.
WE MUST KEEP THE CONVERSATION
GOING: Dialogue clearly is no cure-all for
<	racial estrangement. Conversations, as
opposed to confrontations, about race are -	inevitably aimed at a select few those
who make up the empathic elite. Yet, limited as the audience may be, the ongoing discourse is crucial. It gives those who are sincerely interested in examining their attitudes and behavior sm opportunity to do so, and, in some instances, can even lead to change.
WE MUST SEIZE OPPORTUNITIES FOR INTERRACIAL COLLABORATION: Eventhose who have no interest in talking   about the so-called racial situation can, through the process of working with (and having to depend on) people of other races, begin to see beyond skin color. Conversation, in short, has its limits. Only through doing things together-things that have nothing specifically to do with race- will people break down racial barriers. Facing common problems as community groups, as work colleagues, or as classmates can provide a focus and reduce awkwardness in a way that simple conversation cannot.
WE MUST STOP LOOKING FOR ONE J SOLUTION TO ALL OUR RACIAL PROB-
I EMS; Meetings on racial justice often resemble nothing so much as a bazaar filled with peddlers offering the all-purpose answer The reality is that the problem has no single or simple solution If there is one answer, it lies m recognizing how complex the issue has become and in not using that complexity as an excuse for inaction. In short, if we are to achieve our country we must attack the enemy on many fronts.
Ellis Cose
145
5. AFRICAN AMERICANS
ed minorities and women exist, they say, corporations will reward them because they will recognize that it is wi in their economic interest to do so. That may well be true, u i is also true that effective executives are trained, not bom. They come about because companies make an investment m them, in their so-called human capital, and nurture their careers along and if corporations only see the potential m white men, those are the people in whom the investments are likely to be made.
Our problems, including our racial problems, belong to us  not to our descendants
John Kotter, a Harvard Business School professor and author of The General Managers, discovered that effective executives generally benefited from what he called the  success syndrome.  They were constantly provided with opportunities for growth: They never stagnated for significant periods of time in jobs where there were few growth possibilities.  The executives also, to be blunt about it, are often people of relatively modest intellectual endowment. They succeed largely because they are chosen for success.
A true meritocracy would do a much better job of evaluat-mg and choosing a broader variety of people. It would chal
lenge the very way merit is generally imputed anc people ample opportunity to develop and to pr selves, it would create a truly level playing field.
Simply eliminating affirmative action would not a true meritocracy about. Indeed, a large part of affirmative action is so appealing to so many pec a meritocracy that fully embraces people of color of reach; and affirmative action is at least one get people to accept the fact that talent comes in one color.
Yet, by its very nature, affirmative action is   Wouldn t it be better, argue a growing number cans, to let it die in peace? A chorus of conserva even invoke the dream of Martin Luther King Jr. t( case.
King would probably be more astonished than hear that conservatives now claim him as one of that they have embraced his dream of a color-b and invoke it as proof of the immorality and unt of gender and racial preferences. But even if he of trouble accepting his status as a general in the v affirmative action, he would appreciate the jok would realize that it is the fate of the dead to bt angels to the living. King no doubt would be have new friends in his fight for justice, but he proach them with caution. After sharing his disaj over past alliances with people whose comr change did not match his own, King would addn associates bluntly.  All right,  he might say,  I why you oppose affirmative action. But tell m your plan? What is your plan to cast the slums o on the junk heaps of history? What is your progra form the dark yesterdays of segregated educatii bright tomorrows of high-quality, integrated What is your strategy to smash separatism, to d crimination, to make justice roll down like watei eousness flow like a mighty stream from every c: statehouse in this great and blessed nation?  He pause for a reply, his countenance making it un clear that he would accept neither silence nor swe as an answer.
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Article 30
ernative rocenlrisms
THREE PATHS HOT TAKEN YET
.re,	M  * 	*
 M to toe M MS* Mm* * f *   Americans this M.k Ms MS C  is dead to Mtog l>tot
SM^Se O SM adorn to^ Me boys Ml girls   ". "'X   , a kM  /     social P"^Z .X Matos oar citos. And to My demised by black polilical leaders .so
" Mny mpormnins of maulers M	era if
mong fellow blacks a frantic attempt to but f interracial t comes at the expense of truth, self-improvement, a armony	ay
It doesn t have to be this way. African Americans a fhealthy and inspiriting traditions upon which to dra	i^20s
gainst despair and dependence. A full two generations ovelist Jessie Fauset brought to life characters w o <; P * f the contemporary dilemma.  It comes to every co omments one of her protagonists,  when he thinks, s well fall back; there s no use pushing on. A coore $ anl make any headway in this awful country. Of co dlacy. And if a fenow sticks it out he finally gets pa * ^ore it has worked considerable confusion in his life-
The forgotten Fauset is one of three African America n the suite of essays that follows. The others are the fam looker T. Washington and the novelist-folklorist Zora ton. In very different ways, each embodies a tradition	ft
American blacks today might draw proud sustenance a nthout resorting to historical distortions or group-agat nimosity.
Of our trio, only the practical, gritty Washington offered himself as a political leader. The irrepressible Hurston, a libertarian Republican, was an enthusiastic supporter of Senator Robert A. Taft for her party s presidential nomination, however. Fauset preferred art to politics; a friend and ally of NAACP leader W. E. B. DuBois, she occupied an anomalous position within that organization as a kind of tony Washingtonian (of the Booker T. variety).
Welfare checks and gerrymandered black congressional districts were of no interest to this trinity. Surveying the state of Potomac blacks during Reconstruction, Booker T. Washington fretted thai  among a large class there seemed to be a dependence upon the Government of every conceivable thing.... How many times wished then, and have often wished since, that by some power o magic I might remove the great bulk of these people into the countr districts and plant t