Affirmative discrimination : jobs (Episode 6 of 13); The law and society

Given preferential treatment in jobs housing and education to compensate for three centuries of slavery exploitation and deprivation. Should society compensate for its discrimination against Negroes by initiating a policy of discrimination for their benefit. Or is a policy of reverse discrimination however well-meaning equally racist. This is how Kaufman speaking from the Center for the Study of democratic institutions in Santa Barbara. The studies of the center. Now the main activity of the fund for the Republic are directed at discovering whether and how a free and just society may be maintained under the new conditions of the 20th century. During 1963 the entire summer was spent on the center's Continuing Study of Law jurisprudence and the Bill of Rights. The interest of the center is to examine how law affects political developments in a democracy and how political developments Aphex law. The effect of one upon the other can be seen in what is happening to negroes in America. In the past 50 years Negroes have made more progress toward legal equality

as a result of the interpretation of law by courts then as the result of acts of legislatures. Today many Negro leaders are looking for legislative redress and assistance because they feel they have exhausted the resources of the courts. We know where we want to go says Lauren Miller and a CPA attorney. But we have run out of law. One reason for running out of law is that the constitutional guarantees apply only to persons and not to groups or races. Another reason is that the Constitution is supposed to be colorblind to pass laws to compensate Negroes for past inequities would be a return to racism argues this body of opinion since it would call for judgments made on the basis of race and color. One reply to this argument is given by Whitney M. Young Jr. executive director of the National Urban League the Negro is asking for special effort not

special privileges. He is asking for the kind of assistance at home which through the Marshall Plan we gave to war torn countries abroad. We prefer says Mr. Young that our recommendations be seen as corrective measures that must be taken if equal opportunity is to have meaning. The scales of equal opportunity are now heavily weighted against the negro and cannot be corrected in today's technological society simply by applying equal weights. These words of Whitney Young's echo the words written much earlier by the first Justice Harlan of the United States Supreme Court in his dissent in the civil rights cases of 1875 he said my brother and say that when a man has emerged from slavery and by the aid of beneficence legislation has shaken off the inseparable concomitants of that state. There must be some stage in the progress of his elevation when he takes the rank of a mere citizen and ceases to be the special favorite of the laws and when his rights

as a citizen or a man are to be protected in the ordinary modes by which other men's rights are protected. It is I submit scarcely just to say that the colored race has been the special favorite of the laws. The statute of 1875 now adjudged to be unconstitutional is for the benefit of citizens of every race and color. What the nation through Congress has sought to accomplish in the reference to that race is what had already been done in EVERY STATE OF THE UNION for the White race to secure and protect rights belong to them as free men and citizens nothing more. It was not deemed enough to help the feeble up but to support him after the one underlying purpose of congressional legislation has been to enable the black race to take the rank of mere citizens. The difficulty has been to compel a recognition of the legal right of the black race to take the rank of citizens and to secure the enjoyment of privileges belonging under the law to them

as a component part of the people for whose welfare and happiness government is ordained at every step in this direction. The nation has been confronted with a class tyranny which contemporary English historian says is of all tyrannies the most intolerable. Today it is the colored race which is denied at some future time. It may be that some other race will fall under the banner of race discrimination. If the constitutional amendments be enforced according to the intent with which as I conceive they were adopted they cannot be in this republic any class of human beings in practical subjection to another class with power in the latter to dole out to the former just such privileges as they may choose to grant for the reasons stated. I feel constrained to withhold my assum to the opinion of the court. The civil rights law is struck down in 1875 by the Supreme Court in this case that provided Justice Harlan with his opportunity for the historic dissent are virtually the same

laws in substance now being considered by the Congress and argued before the Warren court during the discussions at the Center for the Study of democratic institutions. There was no disagreement about the need for correcting the inequities and abuses suffered by Negroes which Robert M. Hutchins once described as the greatest single crime the American people ever committed. There were sharp differences about what and who and most particularly how the inequities could be corrected. No one quarrelled with the end. But the questions raised about the Marines gave some insight into this resources and limitations of law for dealing with crisis issues like the race question in the staff meeting you are about to hear. Judge Edwin Dunaway former justice of the Supreme Court of Arkansas and a long time champion of negro equality talks with the staff about the problems of administering a program of affirmative discrimination in jobs and housing. One of the ironies facing civil libertarians and legal

purists today is the revival of the new respectability of the numerous closest tradition whereby the admission of certain groups to some institutions is limited under a quota system for example until recently some medical schools limited the number of Jews accepted to 5 or 10 percent of the total student body after years of struggling to outlaw the principle of numerous Clouseau us as undemocratic negro leadership is today demanding that preferential treatment in jobs housing and education be measured and tested on the basis of just such a quota system. We enter the discussion as Judge Dunaway is addressing himself to the problems of a quota system. You notice they demand jobs immediately on our levels. This is the mildest statement of it. Again you see the problem when you look at two or three specific situations in New York they're demanding 25 percent jobs for neg rose in the construction

industry and then in Chicago it's the same thing they have gone one step further. It seems to me and the demands on the Hollywood unions within the crafts the demand is that on each work crew one they grow be employed without regard to whether he's qualified to do the job and that he be paid full pay during the time that he is on this job. The thing that disturbs me agri were the general statement that if they just start off abandoning all discrimination in the employment of Negroes which looks pretty good as a theoretical thing it's going to be a long time before they get caught up. Con other concrete example they were doing business with a store in

Harlem and they agree we will hire some people. We have a policy. We have a long standing training policy had nothing to do with discrimination this has been the policy of when we hired only white people but they had to go through a seven year training period in order to reach the top managerial position. Well as the people point out if you start in training now it will be seven years before we have anybody and we can't wait seven years to get back which we have been hired because of the discrimination. So it seems to me that you come down to asking whether there can or should be legislation that applies to all employment private and public. I personally would make a distinction between private. And public employment. I do not think that the state has got into business through any of its agencies.

Telling an employer that you must hire so many neg Rose is strictly on the basis of race. This does not say that I would not be thoroughly in favor of again an educational or persuasive program by those who are in a position to exert some private pressure to step up. The employment of Meg rose. I find any quote a thing though offensive and in fact you have preference on the show you have this preference business gets an additional difficulties as we know in the past Negroes have been essentially eliminated or precluded from engaging in any of the apprentice programs through which the union membership is ultimately made up. Well under a presidential order that is now. Out with it still does not get

around the preference which has been given many of the crafts sons and relatives of union members. And I thought a very interesting refinement on this was the statement that George Meany me that he would oppose giving Legros a preference but that he would favor what he called an equal preference system. He then explained that by that he meant I would not agree that a neg Rose should have preference over a white man but. Because of the backwardness that we are now in that's not where Very well put but then have it is because of the discrimination against Negroes I would agree that the same. That preference be given to neg rows on the same basis that it is to relatives over other white men who are not relatives.

Setting aside the problem of preference and quota of Harry Ashmore would you object to an anti discrimination law backed up by Fair Employment Practices Commission determining only that Negroes were not being barred solely on the bones of a certain imam in favor of any law that will effectively stop discrimination. I had stopped short of the law which would favor preference for Negroes or any other group. But as far as the typical added discrimination law I think we ought to have more of them. Now on the government thing it seems to me that it would be entirely proper for either a state government or the federal government or local government to say we have discriminated against Negroes so long and they make up the bulk of the unemployed. It is harder for them to get jobs because they have not had the opportunity to have training.

We will start on the job training programs for government employees. Now on the matter of housing I am certainly in favor and I think we all would be of a law which says there shall not be any discrimination be because of race in the sailing and writing of property as I understand it however the argument of at least some of the people who say that there must be integration they want a quota system set up so that there will not develop any more this pattern of de facto segregation that there must be. So many white people and so many an egg rose and a housing project for

example. To me this presents an surmountable practical difficulties. There isn't this same sort of category problem come up in terms of wealth in regard to moving into various housing projects where the project is established at a certain percentage of the people should be in a certain income group. Richard LICHTMAN I mean isn't that isn't there a fairly good kind of precedent for that sort of the weather called if it's now then I want to come to the classification matter which is exactly what you're raising that there are classifications which can be made not based on race but based on need or Mr Hedges suggested it first. That everybody who is below a fifteen hundred dollar income shall get this sort of aid or have this available. Now it is true it is possible to have that classification. But I have been trying to figure out and I have been on a board successfully to do it and maybe

some of you can. How you are going to set up a classification say based on need for a housing subsidy or a scholarship in the scoop. This I think is fan and as a matter of fact you because of the low income status of the neg Rose will meet their needs but this will not meet the demand for affirmative integration because they may still own the classification of need. All stayed together and a group helped perpetuate the ghetto. If that's your only classification that it turns out to be in a new form of Negro housing then I am all for we have. Nothing. Now. I don't have this exactly but something like 47 percent of the occupancy of all public housing in the United States is Negro.

And in many areas it results I mean economic classification is there. But all I'm pointing out is if you solely use the classification of economic me or ability to pay you don't get at the other problem. And I frankly don't see any way of getting at what they consider to be the problem without using race to just transcend the law for a moment get to the problem that Harry mentioned if you have public housing and it's uniform for the housing of a given project is identical of a closely similar. And the other is the charges for those apartments that are closely similar you may have the problem of reestablishing a ghetto because let's say with all the housing is under $80 a month or so the pork was going to move in. That might be a recommendation a legislative recommendation in terms of wisdom to begin to develop projects which have kind of heterogeneous construction in terms of income and income groupings if you want to handle the problem indirectly more or less so that you have let's say a rather

expensive apartment one and inexpensive apartments or the other. These are not especially. Because in circles I'm sure most of you know about the importance of getting away from these large projects. Philips the one device the two will provide for rent subsidies for lower income groups so they can live in any part of the city they want to know the words. And there are other other devices along that line. We've really only begun to think of this sort of device to console conventional and so fixed in our images of what public housing support is that if we then had the additional impetus of the the need to do something about the race problem in directly new ways of thinking about support for public housing in avoiding defacto segregation might get some. I think what you're suggesting now is that housing agencies public

school boards government agencies in the employment area should start a conscious program. Tackling this thing and encouraging the segregated housing job opportunities and all but I cannot see how the demand for photos and the arbitrary hiring of a degree or a five meg Rose is going to solve anything. It seems to me that aside from the immediate other problems in education housing and employment and I'm not going to make a pie in the sky comment Mr. Ferrier because I know you're going to jump down my throat. It seems to me that in considering a workable system and one which we am not again not necessarily advocating that Martin

Luther King should be saying the same thing that I'm say. But. Overall what we're after and it is I take it the reason for having different ethnic groups and schools living together is that all of us in this country will learn to get along better or to understand each other and everybody have a happier life. I doubt that getting one or two negroes an immediate job and firing someone else in order to give it to them is going to do anything other than result in worse race relations. I mean we've got an example of this recently in Los Angeles the negroes were well-organized. So when order to give them some jobs in certain places that they wanted they fired some Mexican Americans in order to get a neg Rosa job which is resulted in great friction or increased friction. And certain communities there and all that I would ask and I am

not approaching this with an uncle tom or a handkerchief headed attitude that we cannot properly overlook. Rilla thinks that any of these suggested things will have on long range race relations in the country. The chairman Robert M. Hutchens. I'd like to ask first among them as I need to send a proposition Americal quote as such are not likely to be in fact often are in fact likely to be undesirable. This is what has happened in public housing that has so far as I know there has never been any formal regulation or law. But in fact in border situations like St. Louis and Baltimore that I'm familiar with this been going on now for several years. Public housing people have arrived whether correctly or not they had a kind of a magic figure of about somewhere between 10 and 15 percent Negro occupancy

in a housing project which is otherwise white and by definition this is a lower income group. If you believe the barrier that the whites will leave this is the break point apparently based on experience somewhere between 10 and 15 percent that up to that even in an old established project they can admit 10 to 15 percent Negro families without changing the pattern if they go beyond that. The Whites tend to move out or trouble starts. I'm not passing on the validity of the figures but it's become so widely accepted by public housing officials. That in many cities it's being used in the way they go about establishing the quota. Typically this was the case in Baltimore in St. Louis. They get the local human relations agency and then they get the negro leadership to agree that this is a reasonable quota not to contest it and then by their ordinary administrative procedure of admissions they hold to it. Experience going back over four five years it seemed indicated that this works pretty well. It gives you an effectively

integrated situation which presumably is educational for all concerned. I think however if you attempted to translate this into law you would open up a whole borders and that is and I cite this is being a fairly typical example where it seems to me by sort of semiofficial action you can realistically get a court and make it work except as a matter of you know I don't object to this kind of informal like straw a legal one of those things. Well let me put it this way. Next picture Af-Am didn't buy it but I cannot quarrel with its being you so long as it is not formalized in the law. All right there is a tween and a in excess corners of the speaker would have this compensatory function and one quarter excess I don't know what the right word would be for I mean if one of the it asked for more than that the proper share viewed as a matter of random distribution in a court it would be a kind of concrete guess as to what the population census would yield. Harry Calvin Junior. The

situation seems to me the second is not necessarily objectionable just automatically. That might be another form of denying what and what isn't a pure physical estimate of what the Negro share of whatever the market is we're talking about would turn out to be if it were done and any impartial basis that what we're confusing two different ideas one is the idea of the excess go to the neighbor should get 25 percent of the debt even if there are 25 percent of negroes qualified for the job and the other would be a way to get it would be what you do if you made an objective judgment about whether there's been discrimination in the in the area problem. The very thing I would like to make a distinction. Firstly do officials really think to. Help integration are not. Just the first problem. Because if they are willing to do show him we keep him much pro-opposition. That's the first problem because we can't tackle all these problems on the same date. SHEIKH Yeah just like judges if they are favorable in their fair share

of integration. Let them have faith in this problem. The second thing. I think the problem of. Black and white not only a problem of racists but also of cultural and social level. Because we are not mixing it with all the whites as opposed to us always some kind of difference of social level machine. And the first thing to do is to just social level of the negroes and where could you be dumb if you don't. Too much trouble. I think only in one feed to the field of education. If the problem is not so much to have this segregated schools ask to have very good schools for Negroes who will give them a high of social level and then they have attained this level. The problem of

implication what would not be so difficult in most of the parts of the country. And the same concerns also our country. That's also very often you can take people each day. Hopefully you'll live a seam of the education that makes them fit for the job. The problem not be so difficult. So I think for me the problem is only the problem of education education of the leaders education of the public and good occasion of any of us. And if you don't want to be in the US in some states the only sensible thing to do would be to take some ten thousand two hundred thousand people or your children or can't ship to send them to the north for school for and to teach them to jump and send them back but. I don't see it any other way of doing dish result strife and soon of all unless by education

we're going to go to your wants to stick up for America to come one more observation on behalf of them. Think I'm in favor of the man is that there's been one source of the momentum towards quotas would be the negro distrust of the. But Fate is involved evidently making the choices. You might be able to satisfy them by an arbitrary estimate the question is avoided therefore the extra degree of assurance is needed. That may be the case by case handling of any choice you can provide that sense of what it might be a sensible move for some issues right now. I don't believe that I can think of any way in which a quota system can be made defensible and easily enforceable and perhaps even constitutional. Harvey Wheeler However if there were some way in which perhaps the minimum quotas were to be established that would not carry with it the notion that it is defining desegregation by that nature. Then it would simplify

or a greatly facilitated number of other public policy approaches because on the basis of the achievement or lack of achievement of these minimums which might be considered something like fair housing standard minimums just as we decide whether or not there is a blighted area. There are just certain kind of average standards that one applies at a minimum but if there were such minimums that were possible to be arrived at then all kinds of other things could be done such as tax rebates property taxes perhaps I don't know how the federal gov. Can the property tax thing but income tax penalties and rebates special payments for people with children that were in one of these established schools at minimum minimum standard of all kinds of things could be done to get around within public policy if it were possible to have some kind of a number would be more important than this one. No one is thinking that there's a constitutional right to. Quote It would be a fixed number.

William garment imagine that no one thinks that a federal law that fixes a quota for federal application capacity makes sense that those things are being said. The notion of using a number flexibly found in a particular region the particular circumstance and the particular problem that we're having three problems at once and they're not really the same although they raise the same problem I mean education housing employment variably the issue of getting one parent cause a kind of number that some how responsive the particular conditions in the region and realizing that there's a certain absurdity in the use of number in this area that perhaps some pros in avoiding as he suggested they have a crazy question of how do you prove good faith and how do you prove I don't pass judgment on whether that has been good judgment and so it may be that there is some use to that number despite the initial sense especially. It was a dyslexic you know passion for songs that. I can't imagine anybody different than national. Crystal.

Let me one final comment to take away from Doctor promise book is in this instance really of his talk about presumptions in law but a way of avoiding counter-proof and a certain kind of issue by arbitrarily making it more concrete for other purposes than leave the issue of truth so to speak was involved record might be taken as presumptively correct evidence of no bad faith and you'd have to have a very strong case to upset a choice that was made in the teeth of a broader distribution being says labels her to swim out among young things that sets off a tautology. JACK Well concerned because if you don't happen to numerous classes for Negroes at the time she can preferentially you have a bit of a backbone of this if that is the numerous classes for other disadvantaged groups and not enough conception natural world and I think that me just. I think some of the difficulty in this handle and all the newcomers which was a big study on Puerto Ricans and negroes in New York a few years ago a

big team from Harvard. The suggestion there that you could ease the great problem which shows up in a very dramatic way in New York because practically all the colored people concentrated in one bar on Manhattan. If you could evolve by in some fashion clusters of Negro communities out through the suburban where the assumption would be that big Rose had reached economic status where they could afford to get out of Harlem wanted to go but white housing was not available to them in the Suburban. But if you could open up more or less deliberately as some kind of policy what would amount to in the beginning at least more or less all negro neighborhoods which where again the situation would be generally better as far as housing was concerned. And you would be making an approach to the school problem because you would be dispersing then your population through various school attendance districts. Well of course this is immediately resisted and understandably so by practically the whole negro leadership because it does smack of another kind of segregation the

emotional content of this issue has reached a point where not only grown leader gauged in the action movement and it's very important that if your aunt can accept that kind of compromise. On top of the table or under the table and therefore it makes it very difficult to think in terms of engineering arrangements of this kind although they might be very practical and I think in many cases would be supposing you set a 10 year period or a 15 year period or something like that and said that you would establish some kind of preferential system of public employment only the way they did for veterans. I'm still happy I took a civil service exam and got 10 plus for me. Frank Kelly posing assuming the need was of substance or just no use in their title to the scam. Some public employment only they would be given temporary appointment say for one year of the time and quality holdings temporary fines they will be required to take additional courses or educational things which will

be made available to them and then they will be examined by a board at the end of the year on the job. Asked whether they were fully qualified they would be given that opportunity and the first law would be in effect say 10 or 15 years. Don't you think that act personally would have no objection to it and you can imagine getting it through but that's not what we were talking about. And Harry don't you think I might that be perfectly legal. We did our preference point thing and it will happen very easy for one thing we've been building up in this country is the sense of fairness justice inside us on these larger organizations both public and private. And veterans preference thing was something of an abomination and I think that introduce this one now at this time in our history civil service and related agencies will be highly regressive.

It seems to me that that would be speaking about policy now that the Urban League's notion of a ma. National plan. Any other details. The next I'm off a lot more sense to me than any of these devices because there is a use for simply Norma's resources at the present time. And attempting to do something along the lines that Mr Primus suggests the problem of Negro Education in a psychological sociological point of view it is is just incredible for the low level of aspiration to say nothing of any kind of simple economic conditions puts enormous obstacles in the way of getting these kids to go to school. There are only a couple of projects around the country which are even making the beginning the longest. All resources and agencies for a vocational education are one of the most primitive sets of institutions in the whole country where there are a couple generations behind in that whole area. The

opportunities for doing something constructive. Without getting involved in that and this kind of thing here are a very great indeed. If we want to put the resources into it. What I'm afraid of is that some of these symbolic efforts will be taken from the standpoint of public policy. As a starts to do for the harder job and that is to get more tax dollars put into this work and say Well give me all these benefits but they don't want anything compared to the real need in the real need is going to mean spending very large sums of money. And there are good reasons to doubt that we know clearly just how to spend that money effectively. But I think this is the real world objective in the real real problem. I don't mean by that that I'm opposed to a certain amount of symbolic preference. I'm inclined for example to agree with some of the pressures that were put on the cover

of California recently to appoint a few extremely good judges. I think that there are some ways of doing this which would be have some political meaning for the Negro community that do not necessarily undermine the integrity of and of our institutions and that cannot be thought of as a substitute for this real expenditure of resources for years. If I am correct that the issuers want the general issue with one casting a good fade up the whites the whites who were then running this country. It seems to me you have to make your appeal to the reasonable hours of those who are going to test of course and you have to satisfy down what you are proposing as reasonable and just. You suggest that they use for poll with limitations that you will marry. What may seem reasonable and just through the people who are going agitated now.

Her narrative very well is it possible for the Negro to make an unjust and then now your lazy and everything novel and I think the finest aside what point does the neighbor the man become I think there is a higher question is it possible for whites to maintain because of Santa or so on and on. Just because if we are not talking about black cyber it seems to me I am are quite clear it is not possible for me to make honest as they are certain of what we do when that happens far less deal with the first one. First I ask a question about whether he believes that this reasonable structure is a sort of a missive this far as I can understand your right to education crime violence and so on are signs on the White House. We hope very much. That your obligations are a strong policy line. We're planning on. Real. World bringing a lot of moral suasion against it

because it is an offensive word used three times as an offensive to go on for a constable. For wilderness argument sit where the negroes were racing around. Back to several questions asked certainly agree that you've got to look at the good faith of whoever you're dealing with governmental or whatnot in it but I do not see that it helps resolve any of the problems to overstate the thing is that the whole question is the good faith of the white people. Madame like you added anything when you say that. Ramón actually a question that I think is one way of stating us all. Now. As far as giving a definition that is satisfactory to you of what is meant by affirmative integration or reverse discrimination I take it essentially to mean demands in one form or another for preference for neg rules simply

because they are an egg grows and without regard to anything else. Now as far as whether or not the people who are demonstrating in so Lana or Cambridge Maryland or wherever would be fine and the suggestions that I have made satisfactory that I would say that those who are leading the speechmaking on the demonstration lines would not find them satisfactory. I don't think though that that answers the question as to whether it's a proper approach because as Harry has suggested it just may be that finally the neg rows are asking for some things which even white people do use your framework would not ask. Now Joe Laffer did this study in Manhattan. And the Upper West Side there. And this is in line with what you said on Roman. He didn't say that.

No people believe this but that all of the neg rose that he talked to were not interested in quotas and preferences and moving people around what they wanted was good scoops. So if you're asking me whether there are not a lot of negroes who would buy at least a part of what we have suggested I think they are including most of what I call the responsible leadership. Now this is not to say that I am opposed to a continuation of the demonstrations I think that and the use of economic force but for them to use this group force is an entirely different thing from demanding a legally set up preference for discrimination. And as far as whether that's having any results in testing the good faith I was most encouraged to hear that both in New York and in Chicago as a result of the demonstrations the independent non governmental action

many corporations who have refused for years to even discuss hiring and their Grose are now wanting to hire them in considerable numbers so that it has gone beyond the time when you could fairly say that most white people have showed bad faith and considering the problems in the world. I think these problems about equality integration segregation and so on are in some sense insoluble. And until one has gone through the laborious process of setting out what he means by it a just arrangement I mean the quest is no less in some sense as I see it than than Plato's quest if you don't have a conception of a just society to begin with then you can't discuss local injustices or inequalities because you really don't have any criterion you have a big sense and we all have a vague sense when we make use of it. And there are some instances which seem so flagrantly in violation of apparently what are they can add a braided sense of justice is that we can fairly well agree upon them other instances come close to a borderline and we can't.

But one of the problems that bothers me in this notion of the white is being unfairly treated when a Negro gets a job is it seems to me to be static. One point of view it's understandable if you take the aspect of justice and you slice out the whole context of time and you look at this white person and he sees a negro coming along and the Negro is less qualified than he is and he says why should he get this job and I not when I have these qualifications assuming that justice is now some kind of proportion between let's say reward and merit which is the assumption of this argument which would require another long discussion to see whether that's correct or not and where the role of need fits in the funding the idea of justice. But suppose you take a temporally you say to this white person. You're here in part because of where the negro has been for the 40 50 years of your life. How did you get here in the first place. We're getting here in the first instance we grant that you're now here and you know have the skills but you're requiring of the skill. Were you in any way helped to acquire the skill because of the fact that a large number of your fellows in this population were matter of fact denied certain opportunities. That's the temporal context of this argument that's the sort of thing the distresses me. There ought to be not only the sense of Negro outrageous in some sense of white guilt on this

part. There is a sense in which these jobs are competitive. There's a sense in which the society is hierarchically arranged. There is a sense in which not everybody can be on the upper level. What were the preconditions which had to exist before white people could get into the positions which they now exercise in which they feel they're being unfairly dislodged from this and that in some sense true that the whole fact of the negro disenfranchisement from the whole culture of the country I think that played some role in putting these whites in the position which they now exercise when they're talking at quite for a moment that I think you raise an interesting question which I'm a dodge by denying the fact it seems to me that you've got a factual assumption is this totally sentimental just given the racial populations involved with this is this it was not wheezy enter some place where they have an enormous number of negroes in the slave force made it made a whole difference the culture. In what sense really is it true that the white man got the job because of some bonus to a neighbor disenfranchisement mean perfect is not to be nice and be nice in a way to work through the guilt depends on something different than that.

Prevent him from obtaining the job take simple instances like the Kraft unit he hasn't had the job so the wife has had a certain advantage based on the statement of an America with respect to that problem. We're serious about this I mean please you cannot think that I thought this was the example you yourself use of the crap you need to take in this is we're talking about the hereditary function of the caricaturing slightly if the nigger has been example if the Negro has been prevented from moving on some sort of equal level with the whites into this whole union and this is now been solidified in time over a period of 40 or 50 or 60 years then what sense is the white not receive the certain sort of preferential treatment that getting the job in the first place. I mean it was another window or. Well I just think this is an instance but the sort of thing seems to me to occur in employment generally take corporations you say now the corporations are beginning to move. Well the assumption is that previously they haven't been talking since they haven't been moving haven't the whites who have moved into those corporations had a certain advantage over negroes who were not being hired by them. But you try to see it in the general context of the Army this is all seem to be this seems to be left out What am I doing here why am I in this position he was the instance the geniuses. I feel this is some of this is left out in the God that Failed about this

analogy of being in the lifeboat while other people are drowning What is he doing there why would he be sitting in the boat when other people are swimming for their lives in some sense I think your successor Gary find that excessive. I mean I like the point but I don't think it has. I mean you see the differential treatment in regard to whites and negroes in terms of such things as housing employment and so on the evidence I thought was on my side actually fact assuming that what you say is true and assuming that society has some obligation to take whatever positive steps it can overcome these disadvantages giving you all that when you get to the factual situation when Mr. Walter Ruther said to the Urban League the other day you would be asking me as a labor union to put a white man on the street in order to take a nigger off the street. Now if you had full employment this wouldn't come up at least in the lower levels but in the fact that you don't have full employment. Are you going to argue that in order to do this kind of abstract justice you're going to do what would seem to be an

injustice to remove a white man from the job simply to make room for a negro. We define the context in which the term justice is applicable in the situation I don't want to refer to another white person I want to refer to myself when I'm in the situation and I feel that in some sense I'm being unfairly treated. Stop and ask myself how I got to this position. This is in some sense comparable advantage in the first place to me why don't you give us two years on you that are you going to reach the conclusion that the only way you can redress this injustice which you admit has been done is to disadvantage yourself. I think that may be part of the problem. I'm fairly sure that I'm not sufficiently a good person to be satisfied with the answer but I'm not giving up. But we find missiles with all sorts of prejudices and situations where we don't need some intellectual sense of prove our own passions. But if I'm in this situation now I'm not competing with someone and I'm in some sense intellectually removed from this competitive environment I sit back and reflect. It's not true to me that in the general context the negro doesn't really have a better claim against me that I'm going to grant them when they get out on the job and have to compete with them.

You have been listening to the second of two discussions on affirmative or reverse discrimination. The discussion was led by Ed when he Dunaway former Supreme Court justice of Arkansas and was recorded at the Center for the Study of democratic institutions during a two month conference on law jurisprudence and the Bill of Rights participating in the discussion where the chairman Robert M. HUTCHENS Harry Calvin Jr. of the University of Chicago Law School Philip Selznick of the University of California at Berkeley Haim Perelman of the University of Brussels and staff members Harry Ashmore Richard LICHTMAN Harvey Wheeler William Garman John Wilkins and Frank Kelley and W.H. ferry in next week's broadcast. Harry Calvin Jr. of the University of Chicago Law School continues the discussion on quotas. We hope you will join us then. This is how Kaufman in Santa Barbara.