Recent articles and events have prompted discussion about the pace and amount of racial progress in our nation.
First, President William Jefferson Clinton went to Little Rock,
Arkansas, on September 25 to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of
the Little Rock Nine’s first foray into organized White hostility.
Then, several magazines have run reviews of the new book by Abigail
and Stephen Thernstrom, America in Black and White (Simon and
Schuster). The Thernstroms, passionate advocates against affirmative
action, bow to the past by spending a third of their book writing about
“American apartheid.” Then they fast forward to the present, using
their analysis of past wrongs to congratulate our nation for how far it
has moved.
The Thernstroms’ use of the rah-rah “we’ve-come-along-way-baby” view
of race relations can be used to argue that affirmative action is
unnecessary. We’ll reach a level playing field, they seem to imply, if
we just give it time. Meanwhile, tools like affirmative action cause
“White resentment” which does little to bring the races closer
together. Missing in action from their drive-by analysis is the
resentment that many “we’ve-come-along-way” Black folks might feel
about the ways we are required to prove ourselves day in and day out.
In all the talk of racial progress, just a few facts are missing.
There has been progress, but also setbacks. And there is much less
visible progress the higher up the ladder you go. Some companies have a
relatively representative number of African American workers, except in
upper management. Sports teams are more likely to have Black players
than they are owners, managers, or coaches. And university faculties
may be among the worst offenders, with Black faculty woefully
under-represented at every rank from entry level to full professor.
When confronted with these numbers, some universities offer the
intellectual equivalent of “the-dog-ate-my-homework” excuse. “We can’t
find any,” they say.
Of course, too often when they find us, they don’t know how to treat
us. Many African American faculty say their path to tenure is .steeper
and more rocky than that of some of their colleagues. The subjectivity
of the tenure process is best understood by considering that
“collegiality” (i.e., how well do you get along), is one of the areas
in which faculty are rated.
