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one-third white.iv We know that "[s]egregation by race is strongly associated with concentrated poverty and many forms of social inequality."v
We've tried segregation, and it doesn't work.
Governor Jeb Bush's notion of school reform is going to send black children to reform schools. His exit tests threaten to bar third-graders from advancing to fourth grade and high school seniors from graduation. Florida loses nearly half of its Black and Hispanic students before they graduate.vi
Which brings us to Jeb Bush's One Florida Initiative -- the first time any state's governor abolished affirmative action in higher education, government employment, and state contracting.
Maybe that's why he's not here -- this time, the Supreme Court didn't bail him out.
The Bush brothers are big on preemption. First Governor Jeb Bush became the only governor to carry out a preemptive strike on affirmative action, and then President George Bush carried out a preemptive strike on Iraq, the only President in our nation's history to attack a country which did not threaten or attack us first. Both strikes were unnecessary and unwise.
The NAACP tried unsuccessfully to block the One Florida Initiative, which has turned out to be an abysmal failure. In higher education, race-conscious undergraduate admissions were replaced with the Talented 20 Program. "There is little evidence," despite Governor Bush's premature pronouncements to the contrary, that the Talented 20 Program "has done anything to change the admissions prospects for Florida's public high school students."vii
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Despite this, the President praised his little brother's Talented 20 Program, along with similar programs in Texas and California, as "race neutral alternatives" to affirmative action in the Michigan affirmative action cases.viii These percent plans, which guarantee admission to state universities for a fixed percentage of the state's top high school graduates, suffer from numerous deficiencies, not the least of which is that they depend for any success on continued racial segregation in high schools. In the process, they encourage students to remain in low-performing segregated schools and discourage them "from taking challenging classes that might lower their grade point averages."ix
And percent plans do nothing to increase minority enrollments in private colleges or graduate and professional schools.
The Administration's brief, of course, discussed none of these infirmities in urging the Supreme Court to consider such "race neutral" plans as a viable alternative to affirmative action.
You know the Bush Administration likes to use Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice as human shields against any criticism of its record on civil rights. After all, the President is proud of saying, his Administration is more diverse than any in history - except the one that preceded it.
But the day after the administration filed its brief in the Michigan cases, Ms. Rice issued a rare statement on a domestic issue, saying, "[I]t is appropriate to use race as one factor among others in achieving a diverse student body."x
And Ms. Rice has acknowledged that affirmative action was responsible for her employment at Stanford University.xi
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Secretary Powell, for his part, has long been an outspoken advocate for affirmative action, and specifically said he hoped Michigan would prevail in court.
Happily, Secretary Powell got his wish. The Supreme Court held, for the first time, held "that student body diversity is a compelling state interest that can justify the use of race in university admissions."xii
The Court struck down the points but upheld the principle. Since the opponents kept telling us that this was all about principle, I'd say we won!
The Supreme Court gave legal sanction to what we knew to be morally, socially, and educationally correct.
We urge all the states which have abandoned race-conscious affirmative action to come back into the Union. We're going to monitor their commitment to the Supreme Court's endorsement of race as a tool in achieving diversity.
Governor Bush, are you listening? We will be heard!
In dissent Justice Clarence Thomas, affirmative action's poster child, opined that "every time the government ... makes race relevant to the provision of burdens or benefits, it demeans us all."xiii
If only he had said that to the first President Bush and, from the lofty perch of principle, declined his nomination to the Supreme Court.
Justice Thomas begins his dissent in the Michigan case by invoking Frederick Douglass for the proposition that black people do not need the government's "interference" and want to be "let alone."xiv
Justice Thomas ought to recall that Frederick Douglass also said this:
"If the American people could build a schoolhouse in every valley; a church on every hilltop ... and supply them with a teacher and preacher respectively and welcome the descendants of the former slaves to all the moral and
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[W]e are not far distant from an overtly discriminatory past, and the effects of centuries of law-sanctioned inequality remain painfully evident in our communities and schools."
"In the wake 'of a system of racial caste only recently ended,' large disparities endure."xvii
In her ruling Justice Ginsburg acknowledged what we know to be true:
"Unemployment, poverty, and access to health care vary disproportionately by race. Neighborhoods and schools remain racially divided. African-American and Hispanic children are all too often educated in poverty-stricken and under performing institutions. Adult African-Americans and Hispanics generally earn less than whites with equivalent levels of education. Equally credentialed job applicants receive different receptions depending on their race. Irrational prejudice is still encountered in real estate markets and consumer transactions." xviii
She could have mentioned payday lending. Two years ago, our North Carolina State President and Board member Skip Alston rightly called it "exploitation, pure and simple. Tolerating this practice is unworthy of a society that claims to value its most vulnerable."xix
By convention resolutions in 2000 and last year and by a Board resolution this year, we've set binding policy on this issue for the NAACP from the smallest to largest Branches to the national staff. We despise this predatory practice that targets the poor, especially blacks. Charging annual interest rates of 390%, these companies prey on the weak, trapping them in unending cycles of debt. We won't take their money, and we'll do our best to stop them from taking money from others.
We will be heard!
Justice Ginsburg could have included the gross racial inequalities in our criminal justice system. As Richard Pryor said, "justice is just us!"
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Although whites and blacks use illegal drugs at roughly the same rate, 55% of all those in jail or prison nationwide for drug violations are black and 30% are Latino.
An estimated 12 percent of black men between the ages of 20 and 34 are incarcerated, the highest rate ever measured.xx Among white men in the same group, the rate is 1.6 percent.
Racial disparities exist throughout the criminal justice system, including in the imposition of the death penalty.
Florida's death row population trails only California and Texas. At least in Florida, the sun recently has shone on wrongful capital convictions. The largest number of cases in which somone was exonerated after being condemned to death row have occured here in the Sunshine State.
Racial disparities also exist throughout our economic system. In 2001, for example, a college-educated white man earned an average salary of $65,000, while black and Hispanic men earned 30% less. The typical white family has a net worth more than eight times larger than that of its black counterpart.
Into this mass economic inequality marches the President for the rich.
The civil rights community was absolutely right when we warned that great harm would come from the foolish, risky tax bill of 2001 that gave millions to the rich. It has become clear that our warnings were absolutely right.
It did not stimulate economic growth. It did not provide tax relief for most Americans. In fact it succeeded only in fulfilling the worst predictions of those of us who opposed it - it squandered a once-in-a-lifetime budget
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