Eyes on the Prize II; Interview with Eleanor Holmes Norton

do if keeping the firm firm action is a set of techniques that not even your 25 words of less, excuse me I mean have said you set me to counting words I mean it's very hard to define affirmative action at all is affirmative action is a very diverse set of techniques

that remove barriers that have excluded minorities and women from the workplace and from promotion within the workplace I think there may even be 25 words OK so now place yourself in 1977 and tell me as newly appointed chair of the EOC what was the status of affirmative action and what effects had it brought about in the country? Well 1977 was in some ways a high watermark, a new president who supported affirmative action had just been elected, we had just had two presidents Republican not of the same party who had also strongly supported affirmative action and already we were beginning to see extraordinary changes in the American workplace women and minorities who had always been at the bottom had begun to filter out

through the various levels of the workplace at the same time there was an awesome challenge awaiting me because the Bockey case was pending in court and I had to decide how to advise the president and how to deal with the Justice Department on what the government's position should be on that groundbreaking case Now what was your feeling about the significance of the Bockey case? Was it merely symbolic if it was symbolic is that merely? The Bockey case I felt was the wrong case at the wrong place at the wrong time it was an education case it seemed to me quite inappropriate for law on affirmative action to be set by a education case since most affirmative action in this country occurs in employment and it occurs in employment as a matter of law while the affirmative action that went on in the university was very often self initiated by educators

as it turns out we won the Bockey case Bockey got into school and I had no problem with that but the standards that emerged from that case were fairly much confined to education and left the road open in a positive direction for the next case the Weber case that would indeed address employment discrimination and affirmative action I thought that was I'm sure that that was you know Why and how are white ethnic immigrants able to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps while blacks needed affirmative action? Almost anybody who didn't have a stigma attached to him or her could pull themselves up if they came in the late 19th or early 20th century because the wonderful American economic machine

drank up all the labor it could find reached out to the far reaches of Europe and thus the polls and the Jews and the Italians and the Germans in this great variety of Americans that have assimilated into our population now and got off boats with no skills with only their drive and their yearning for a new life they experienced enormous deprivation, enormous discrimination overt and terrible discrimination the grandparents of the Jews and the Irish and the Italians will tell you about that the difference is that a white skin quickly absorbed them into the workforce they were needed desperately and up they went generation by generation meanwhile there was in the south of the United States an indigenous workforce that spoke the language knew the customs of the country and had an extraordinary work ethic and those people of course were African Americans

but they could find no work in the north or the south both labor unions and corporations conspired to keep them out of jobs not until World War One interrupted the supply of white labor from Europe was there any tendency to hire blacks at all even in northern factories where there was no a dejury segregation and then blacks were hired only in the meanest jobs for which there were no white takers that artificial effort that specifically and overtly excluded blacks when jobs were available not only available but when they went wanting that effort after the Civil War until virtually the time of World War Two is responsible for the retardation of blacks in the workforce

compared with the wholesale success of white immigrants we would not need affirmative action today if blacks had been led into the factories the way the white immigrants were and if they had been the controversy that now surrounds this issue never would have taken place we now are making up for what we did not do when jobs were readily available and of course the great tragedy is that blacks have gotten the right to work where only whites worked before only as the economy has become stagnant and the longer drinks up labor as it did in the late 19th and early 20th century it is a real American tragedy the only way to make up for it now of course is by using what amount to artificial means temporary remedies, affirmative action remedies that bring blacks in even as they bring women in

and Hispanics in who have also been excluded and then fall away after the entrance of these groups who were kept out and deliberately kept out now you had a very interesting to me analysis of the way that economic change happens over generations and you attributed the growth of the black middle class in part to affirmative action. Could you speak to that? You want to speak to the black middle class now we have had only since the late 60s finally the tardy emergence of a black middle class part of the reason of course is that people got access to education but all the studies show that affirmative action has been critical to the formation of a black middle class a black man with a college education in the generation of for example my husband's father did what my husband's father did worked in the post office

with white men who had eighth grade educations that by the way had the effect of discouraging black men from going to get a college education black women of course could teach once they got a college education black men were as likely to work as laborers even when they had a great amount of education today today beginning in the late 60s after the Civil Rights Act was passed it became possible for blacks to penetrate business albeit at the lower rungs it is business which is the business of this country and when it became possible to be hired in business and in federal local and state governments we began to see finally the emergence of a black middle class it is fragile it is still too small but black people today the majority are at least in the working class or the middle class while a third of blacks remain poor

great cut it is wonderful what effect did the crazy economy of the 1970s have on black economic programs? the great tragedy is that the extraordinary expanding American economy that has been available for virtually all white immigrants has not been available to black people because by the time blacks got the right to work where everybody else worked the economy itself was stagnating because it operated within an international economy where we are not always competitive so that in the 70s when affirmative action is just beginning to be felt we also have an economy that is not cooperating so that while blacks who in fact were able to get education or able to have access to the networks that increase one's mobility have done very well blacks who were imprisoned by the economy

because they had working class skills no longer had available to them the great manufacturing sector that indeed is responsible for the creation of a white working class if indeed they had been able they had access to those same jobs entry level jobs jobs that require no skill good paying union jobs or jobs that are competitive in scale if they had had access to them 20 years earlier not to mention 40 or 50 years earlier then black people would I predict have stood quite equal to white people by 1980 Excellent, cut, great Is preferential treatment for blacks in and of itself reverse discrimination against whites? What's the word? I forget the name of the word I want to use

Words like reverse discrimination and preferential treatment are understandable considering how controversial this subject is but they misdescribe affirmative action affirmative action indeed requires the employer to reach out for people who have been excluded but it also has other rules that protect those who have not been excluded people cannot be hired for jobs who are less qualified than for example the white males who with whom they compete so they cannot be reverse discrimination or discrimination against such people Understand we have a kind of logistical problem here if in fact women, blacks, Hispanics have been excluded

the question becomes how do you include them? How do you make up for the legal wrong? Well you obviously have to reach out and show evidence that they have in fact been recruited and hired in doing that however it's important that those people be equally well qualified that people who are less well qualified not be hired what causes the controversy of course is that there have been many court orders where the courts have required specific numbers of people to be hired in order to make up for past discrimination but what is seldom alluded to is the fact that those same courts require a division of the jobs between those who have suffered no exclusion and those who have so that typically let's say a police department and every police department in the United States of any size has been sued successfully for discrimination a police department is found to have discriminated and is ordered to hire qualified blacks or who have passed a test

even though they may not be at the top of a list for the test the court then says usually for every for example two whites that you hire hire one black even if the employer has deliberately and overtly kept blacks out for example by saying I'm sorry we do not hire blacks here and we haven't hired them for ten years and we don't ever intend to hire them even in that kind of situation the court would require that the employer not hire only blacks to make up for his deliberate discrimination but that the jobs be divided between blacks and whites until there is a critical mass of blacks in the position not necessarily until all the discrimination has been overcome but until there is a critical mass of blacks who then by their very presence signal to other blacks that this is an open workplace and by the word of mouth in the black community

then begin to bring other blacks in such orders of courts usually last the several years they are not permanent and cannot be permanent they are remedial only and it is the it is the concept of remediation and not preference which more aptly describes what affirmative action is in this sense excellent great cut good you know the last question that I have on so can you tell us what you think some of the political implications were of the decision on the barbecue case hold on a second do you want us to cut? I want you to use your discretion and don't be purest that's good that's good advice

one of the more unfortunate things about the Bocchi case is that it became the vehicle for educating oh should I say miss educating the public about affirmative action the public learned about affirmative action it almost literally for the first time through sound bites 10 second sound bites on television with people polarized against one another as a result what is really a quite complicated concept one hard enough to explain even if you have a lot of time became digested as an element of unfairness now if indeed affirmative action of the kind used in Bocchi or in later cases had been unfair you could have depended upon the conservative supreme court to have struck down such measures instead in case after case after case the court approved affirmative action

and as time went on even strengthened affirmative action for the public to understand this somehow however it would have required the kind of for the public to have understood affirmative action as the supreme court was explaining it would have required a level of sophistication or education on the subject that simply was not being done above all it would have required the kind of leadership that increasingly we did not have on this complicated and controversial issue November 21 1984 demonstration took place at the South African Embassy in Washington D.C. I'd like you to describe why this demonstration was so significant or even necessary

and why you felt it was important for you personally to participate in it Randall Robinson the head of trans-Africa Randall Robinson the head of trans-Africa came to see me and told me what the plot was four of us were to go if I was willing to the South African Embassy where we would ask about conditions in South Africa and I was to come out and inform the press that the other three did not intend to come out until trade unionists being held in Communicato were released we were driven to this tactic because the relatives of these trade unionists their lawyers could not get to see them and we feared the fate of Steve Biko the black student who was murdered in custody it seemed to me just the right thing to do struggle did not be does not begin or end at the borders of the United States

to be sure I have some level of identification with people who are pressed in South Africa there is a kind of logical extension of the civil rights struggle remember Martin Luther King didn't get the Nobel Peace Prize for leading an indigenous movement in the United States he got the Nobel Peace Prize because of what his work showed the world about equality and freedom and those of us who live after him it seems to me have to be responsive to similar problems throughout the world and thus to move on the South African Embassy to raise consciousness in this country on brutal oppression based on color seemed to me to be just the next step in the American civil rights struggle I know they will be happy with that and I think that you captured both

as a black woman who has been involved in many of the struggles for civil rights what is your personal philosophy of struggle and moral authority? when the civil rights movement is no longer needed and we ask ourselves what did it mean? it seems to me the answer will mean that it meant something universal it meant something beyond Chicago and Detroit and Mississippi and if so it meant that because of its impact on people who were not only black but who were other things as well we see the evidence of the women's movement for example was directly inspired by the civil rights example Hispanics and American Indians understand about equality because of the civil rights example and people all over the world took this as an example and color discrimination in the United States

as well as in the rest of the world is among the most despised kinds of discrimination in no small part because of the universalism of the civil rights movement blacks get their moral authority not only because they were pressing for their own rights but because they did so in a way that wrote equality lessons large and they wrote those lessons large enough for people throughout this country and people throughout the world to understand the meaning of equality in our movement it seems to me as important far more for what it meant to millions of people all over the world and what it meant for 20 million Americans our own freedom is precious and important but in the end what gives our movement its majesty is the example it set throughout the world for people of color and for people who in any way were oppressed and found in that example a reason to hope and strive for a different life

oh god thank you did the black consciousness claim that it all influenced your decision to get an effort? oh certainly so I'm the oldest and three girls who had our hair straightened for a whole life and every two weeks had to press our edges and the notion that I could be free of this and embrace my identity was utterly luring on the other hand as an early afro where I would also have not been in conformity with what most black women at the time was doing and added to that was the fact that I was a young lawyer representing unpopular clients because I was an American civil liberties union lawyer professionally

so I had to consider my own other attraction to the afro and you can see it hasn't left me yet along with my professional responsibility particularly did I have a client who was appearing before the military authorities and I wanted to make sure I didn't prejudice him so I had to think long and hard and finally I thought my goodness judges are trained to disregard everything but the evidence and I'm going to get my hair cut had to be cut real short because it had straightener in it so to get down to the nap they had to really really cut me short I didn't tell anybody what I was going to do but often when I went to the hairdresser and we lived in New York then my husband and I would eat dinner with my in-laws at their apartment in Harlem so I told them that I would be by after I went to the hairdresser's I walked in the door and everybody's mouth flew open nobody dared criticize and I think they didn't really want to criticize but they were to say the least shocked

I said I certainly hope the judge before the military court of appeals isn't shocked as you all are else I'm in trouble at least my client is my own parents I have to give them credit I seem to absorb this well when I came again I gave them no for warning I think I was at least interested in seeing what the first reactions of the generation above me would be when straight hair was banished for me I recognized though as more and more black women embrace the afro that we were not only engaged in an act of fashion that we were embracing our black identity and that was indeed healthy and that it had to happen at the same time as the styles have gone diverse and many people now straighten their hair I am not critical of that the reason I am not critical of it is because I think the point is now made

once that nappy hair came out and got the approval of black people then we were free to do anything we wanted to do including straightening our hair so that it would not then be an act in any way of implied self hate so that while I must tell you as I tell my son who wonders why I'm out of fashion with my afro while I must tell you that I'm going to go into my 90s or however long I'm able to live in this world with this afro because it's easy and because my identity is so wound up with it I am not at all critical of blacks who are in their womanish ways want to embrace whatever is the fashion of the moment and that this might happen to be straight hair sometimes now can you just give me a topic sentence and tell me when you what year was that you got your afro that's where I need adwood because I think it was 68 but I could be wrong my husband has a photographic memory forgets nothing which is also bad to have a husband who forgets nothing

I literally want to get this wrong okay when was it in time that you went natural it was the late 60s when the afro had begun to emerge but was by no means yet fashionable indeed you were subject to be asked why didn't you go get your head done if you came up with an afro at that time even though it was beginning to flower here and there okay I'm sorry could I have that again and could you give me a living it? oh I see I began to wear an afro in the late 60s I began to wear an afro in the late 60s when the afro had begun to emerge but was by no means fashionable indeed you were subject to be asked in the streets why didn't you go why didn't you go get your hair done if you had one

but it was beginning to flower here and there by that time okay great cut okay 14 Murphy please how did you understand what was commonly referred to as backlash phenomenon in the 1968? well there was ever the concern in the movement about backlash we had known only white resistance to integration and equality so that we feared that every advance we made would meet its own counter move and we called it the backlash we were sure that that would happen from the sit-ins we would sure it would happen from the March on Washington

we would sure it would happen from the urban rebellions the great riots that swept the cities frankly we thought white America had a very low tolerance for actions by blacks to correct their conditions and certainly for unlawful actions the rebellions the city rebellions of course had a high unlawful content and you began to hear the language of law and order the code words that came to be applied to movement activity even that was not unlawful as it turns out backlash full face did not emerge until around 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan as a movement activist who chose law as a strategy how did you feel about others like the black panthers specifically whose choice involved picking up arms

did you feel that they were jeopardizing how one gains of the movement did their language you know off the pig and so forth and their posture have an effect on you well as a lawyer as a follower of Martin Luther King junior I did not identify with unlawful activity or with violence for example on the other hand I certainly identified with brothers like the panthers and chose to identify with their peaceful work not with the advocacy of violence that sometimes one heard from them the breakfast that they served seemed to be to be the example I remember being on the Johnny Carson show one night with a black panther who was advocating right to bear arms under the second amendment and I was brought on to tell the story of the second amendment as a lawyer and that is to say that it was not meant to empower individuals to bear arms but was meant to empower states to have state militia but before we went on the show even though the brother knew that I was there to speak differently about the second amendment

he and I became fast friends there was a terrific bond you see he had his way to meet color oppression I had found mine I believe mine would prevail I believe mine was the better way but it was impossible to break entirely with him there was too much that united us and ultimately of course after the panthers got in all kinds of trouble what remained certainly in my mind was the benign activity the breakfast the care they showed for young people what I think Americans have to remember is that it is a national miracle of the first order that black Americans after 300 years of slavery and discrimination they chose non-violence in the first place as a way to liberate themselves and that only a few groups emerged ever who advocated violence

that is a blessing for this country for which it should be profoundly grateful it's wonderful okay Marketplace okay we're in 1972 the news has spoken nationally about colon telcro the government operations to set up the movement to actually self-destruct as a former movement person were you surprised at this news? the movement people were not surprised that there had been surveillance by the FBI setups to try to get people to do illegal activity because we had heard enough clicks on the phone had seen enough people who we believe to be provocateurs so that we suspected this all along I must say though that this is one of the factors in American life that I think has never worn off kind of distrust of government of white people's real intentions

there was a tendency on the part of some to see this as part of a large white conspiracy against back people and here it was proved here we were operating non-violently in the best traditions and there is the government the FBI and others trying to get us to do things illegal trying to catch us in doing things illegal and that that had a profoundly cynical effect until this day I think that there is a line of mistrust among many black people that will not be wiped away until they are replaced by another generation okay we have a kind of continuum here the movement begins with with ministers like Andrew Young and Martin Luther King

the students middle class students mostly like myself take up the movement the masses in the great cities and in the great rural areas take up the movement and finally the movement reaches into jails where black men mostly are being held in quite inhumane conditions we knew that they had heard us we also knew that many of them were criminals but the the 60s and early 70s were a period when drugs and venality did not nearly as much account for criminal activity as they do today when opportunities had not been as available as they are today so there was a much greater tendency to identify with people in jail today the black community is very hostile on issues of crime because black people have been so victimized by criminal activity by black people but interestingly in the late 60s and early 70s black people tended to identify with people in jail

many had relatives who were in jail many knew the kinds of streets the kinds of circumstances that produced people who went to jail so we've had a great change in the way crime is viewed and yes we saw the rebellions that Attica particularly given the way it was put down as an indication that black life was cheap and that even in jail even in inhumane prisons there were far removed from the city as Attica was that the message that you didn't have to take it had found its way okay come out those wall lines okay this is for take two

black men who had been to college often found themselves working beside white men who had eighth grade educations actually what I need is feed to see exactly I don't know what I said okay even when they had an education and it's just then even when they had an education black men even when they had an education the word you want to say just the word one more wide line for possible use and take 17 masses of people in the great cities the masses of people in the great cities masses