Bill Clinton, a famously voluble fellow who strongly prefers talk to action and often appears to believe talk is the same as action, has a remedy for our racial problems: “I want to lead the American people in a great and unprecedented conversation about race.”
Unprecedented? What does he think Americans were talking about in 1954, when the Supreme Court ordered an end to legally segregated public schools? Or in 1963, when Martin Luther King Jr. led a march on Washington that helped bring about the Civil Rights Act? Or in the 1970s, when courts were ordering school districts to bus students to integrate public schools? Or in the 1980s, when the Reagan administration tried to dismantle affirmative action programs and was roundly criticized for the effort?
Clinton assumes that most of us were paying no attention to the subject of race in 1992, when the policemen who beat Rodney King were found not guilty, setting off riots in Los Angeles. Or in 1995, when O.J. Simpson was acquitted. Or last year, when Californians approved Proposition 209, which abolished state-sponsored racial preferences. The question is not whether Americans can be coaxed to talk about race. It’s whether they can ever be induced to stop.
There is something odd about a president trying to assert moral leadership by masquerading as a talk show host. But if the way to initiate a conversation is to say something ridiculous, he is off to an excellent start. His heralded speech last Saturday on race relations–heralded by him, at least–was full of sentiments suggesting that Clinton knows little about the subject and has no interest in learning more.
The president fantasizes that he brings some real moral authority to the issue. Why? Because when he was growing up in the South, “I went to segregated schools, swam in segregated public pools, sat in all-white sections at the movies and traveled through small towns in my state that still marked restrooms and water fountains `white’ and `colored.’ ” But, he says, he had a grandfather with “the heart of a true American, who taught me that it was wrong.” Yes, it was. But Clinton hasn’t noticed that Jim Crow is dead and that taking an unflinching stand against it is not a big help in addressing the racial issues of 1997.
Contrary to what he claims, America has changed in the last generation. He quoted the hackneyed line from the 1968 Kerner Commission that we were becoming two Americas, one white and one black–overlooking the fact that by 1968, this country was finally moving with resolve to end that centuries-old division, not establishing it for the first time. “Today,” Clinton declared, “we face a different choice: Will we become not two but many Americas, separate, unequal and isolated?”
I can answer that: no. In recent decades, race has subsided as a dividing force–even as American society has become more racially diverse. Blacks are more likely to live in integrated neighborhoods than they were a generation ago. Most workplaces of any size are racially mixed. A forthcoming book by Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom, “America in Black and White,”, notes that three-quarters of both whites and blacks say they have a good friend of the other race. The number of interracial marriages has quadrupled since 1970.
Blacks have seen their economic opportunities expand dramatically. Two-parent black families, the Thernstroms report, now have an income only 13 percent less than that of two-parent white families–a gap that stems largely from differences in education and regional location. Disparities in the earnings of black and white women have virtually vanished.
Clinton’s sole concrete suggestion for dealing with the race issue is to preserve those race-conscious remedies that go by the name of affirmative action. So it’s not surprising that the advisory panel he has appointed includes not a single identified opponent of racial preferences. He apparently thinks the national conversation will go better if his critics will kindly shut up.
You would never know from listening to Clinton that opposition to affirmative action does not come solely from racial animus–or even from whites. A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll asked, “Do you think blacks and other minorities should receive preference in college admissions to make up for past inequalities?” Forty-nine percent of African-Americans said yes, and 48 percent said no.
Nor would you guess that racial preferences are not a favor to all minorities. In California’s top public universities, they have served to limit the numbers of talented Asian-Americans. That helps explain why 44 percent of Asian-Americans voted for Proposition 209.
Facts like these ought to be confronted in the national discussion Clinton hopes to stimulate. But except when he hears the sound of his own voice, the president won’t be listening.
