Full text of "Paved With Good Intentions:The Failure of Race Relations in Contemporary America"

PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS The Failure of Race Relations in Contemporary America Jared Taylor Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc. New York Acknowledgments I am grateful to many people who gathered information for this book and who suggested improvements to the text. Byron Walker was an unfailing source of valuable material, and Thomas Jackson and Dr. Wayne Lutton supplied me with useful publications I would not normally have consulted. Carol Fusco tirelessly gath- ered newspaper clippings and read the manuscript with a critical eye. John Craig sent much useful material, and his comments greatly improved early versions of the text. Dr. Evelyn Rich found many invaluable references, and corrected later versions of the text with great patience and diligence. My editor, Kent Carroll, took a particular interest in the subject and devoted himself to an unusual degree to improving the manuscript. Finally, I am in deepest debt to my agent, Theron Raines, who was my most generous source of current information and without whose dedication this book would not have been published. Contents Introduction 9 1 Racism 21 2 Charges of Racism 63 3 Asians 109 4 Affirmative Action in Education and Employment 123 5 Affirmative Action Spreads 183 6 Double Standards 217 7 The Underclass 281 8 What Is to Be Done? 331 Notes 359 Index 405 Introduction Race is the great American dilemma. This has always been so, and is likely to remain so. Race has marred our past and clouds our future. It is a particularly agonizing and even shameful dilemma because, in so many other ways, the United States has been a blessing to its people and a model for the world. The very discovery by Europeans of a continent inhabited by Indians was an enormous crisis in race relations — a crisis that led to catastrophe and dispossession for the Indians. The arrival of the first black slaves to Virginia in 1619 set in motion a series of crises that persist to the present. Indirectly, it brought about the bloodi- est war America has ever fought, Reconstruction, segregation, the civil rights movement, and the seemingly intractable problems of today's underclass. Despite enormous effort, especially in the latter half of this century, those two ancient crises remain unresolved. Neither Indi- ans nor blacks are full participants in America; in many ways they lead lives that lie apart from the mainstream. After 1965, the United States began to add two more racial groups to the uneasy mix that, in the heady days of civil rights successes, seemed finally on the road to harmony. In that year, Congress passed a new immigration law that cut the flow of immi- grants from Europe and dramatically increased the flow from Latin America and Asia. Now 90 percent of all legal immigrants are nonwhite, and Asians and Hispanics have joined the American mix in large numbers. The United States has embarked on a policy 10 ® Paved With Good Intentions of multiracial nation-building that is without precedent in the his- tory of the world. Race is therefore a prominent fact of national life, and if our immigration policies remain unchanged, it will become an increas- ingly central fact. Race, in ever more complex combinations, will continue to be the great American dilemma. Nevertheless, even as the nation becomes a mix of many races, the quintessential racial divide in America — the subject of this book — is between black and white. Blacks have been present in large numbers and have played an important part in American history ever since the nation began. Unlike recent immigrants, who are concentrated in Florida, California, New York, and the Southwest, blacks live in almost all parts of the country. Many of our major cities are now largely populated and even governed by blacks. Finally, for a host of reasons, black/white frictions are more obtrusive and damaging than any other racial cleavage in America. In our multiracial society, race lurks just below the surface of much that is not explicitly racial. Newspaper stories about other things — housing patterns, local elections, crime, antipoverty pro- grams, law-school admissions, mortgage lending, employment rates — are also, sometimes only by implication, about race. When race is not in the foreground of American life, it does not usually take much searching to find it in the background. Race is a looming presence because it is a category that matters in nearly every way that we know how to measure. The statistical picture of black society, and the real world behind the statistics, are fundamentally different from the world in which whites live. From 1983 to 1988, the homicide rate for young black men in- creased by two thirds, while the rate for young white men scarcely budged. Black men between ages fifteen and twenty-four are now nearly nine times as likely to kill each other as are whites of the same ages, 1 and homicide has become the leading cause of death for all black men between ages fifteen and forty-four. Murder has become so common that it has dragged down the overall life ex- pectancy for blacks for the fourth straight year, and that of black men for the fifth year in a row. Life expectancy for whites in- creased or held steady. 2 In Harlem, there are so many killings that Introduction <§> 11 a black man living there is less likely to reach age sixty-five than is a man living in Bangladesh. 3 One in four black men in their twen- ties is either in jail, on parole, or on probation. 4 This is approxi- mately ten times the rate for whites of the same age. 5 Though they are only 12 percent of the population, blacks commit more than half of all rapes and robberies and 60 percent of the murders in America. 6 Other measures are just as grim. From 1985 to 1990, while syph- ilis rates for whites continued their long-running decline, they rose 126 percent for black men and 231 percent for black women. Blacks are now fifty times more likely to have syphilis than whites. 7 Blacks have the highest infant mortality rates for any American racial group and are twice as likely as whites to die in their first year. 8 Black children are four times as likely as whites to be living in poverty, 9 and less than half as likely to be living with two parents. 10 Illegitimacy rates for blacks have climbed steadily, and now more than 66 percent of all black children are born out of wedlock. The rate for whites is 19 percent. 11 Young blacks are half as likely to be working as young whites, 12 and at some urban high schools, nearly 70 percent fail to gradu- ate. 13 The median net worth for a black family is only $3,397, lessj than one eleventh that of a white family. 14 Blacks are more than four and a half times more likely than whites to be on public assistance, 15 and even after welfare, food stamps, Medicaid, and subsidized housing, the median black household income is only 64 percent of the white median. 16 Just one or two of these numbers would be evidence of a nation gone wrong. Taken together, they are a catastrophe — and in the time since they were collected, many have gotten worse. If the races were statistically indistinguishable, or if the advan- tages were evenly distributed, race might be nothing more than an anthropological curiosity. Unfortunately, the differences are both stark and consistent. They explain why race is the fearful question that looms behind every social problem in America. "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal." 17 This is the most famous sentence in the six-hundred-page Kerner Commission report, published af- ter the race riots of the 1960s. Despite the social programs that the 12 ® Paved With Good Intentions report called for, and despite the progress that blacks have made in some areas, the numbers just cited suggest that our nation has been unable to halt the drift toward two societies. Something has gone badly wrong. The civil rights movement, which seemed to point the way to unity, has become a divisive struggle for group rights rather than individual freedom. There is very little left of the confidence with which America marched to- ward the 1970s. Despite the best efforts of an admittedly imper- fect society, many of the changes of the past quarter century have been for the worse. What happened? One of the most important things that hap- pened is that America's thinking about race hardened into doc- trine. On the surface, it might seem otherwise. America often gives the impression of tackling problems of race head on. No other nation in the world has such elaborate mechanisms for taking its own racial temperature or for dissecting the racial implications of every new policy or proposal. There are civil rights acts, equal housing acts, voting rights acts, and commissions and bureaucra- cies to enforce them. Minority groups have their own organiza- tions that seek out discrimination and prod the nation toward ever-greater awareness of their needs. Local governments, univer- sities, and businesses employ thousands of people to ensure equal opportunity in every area of American life. Our society is officially — and officiously — race-conscious. At the same time, the race-relations industry operates according to assumptions that have not changed in thirty years. Official thinking about race is a closed book. Despite ouf obvious failure to reach the racial solutions that seemed within our grasp, any new thinking about race, any departure from the assumptions of the 1960s has become heresy. We have made race such a grim and serious thing that we may speak of it only in a handful of approved phrases. Our very thoughts have become as stilted as our speech. Race is therefore not only the great dilemma, it is also the great paradox. It is in race relations that America has gone most obvi- ously wrong, yet it is about race that we dare not think anything new or different. If there is a body of thought that shows all the signs of doctrinaire rigidity, willful ignorance, and even duplicity, Introduction ® 13 it is what is thought and said about race. It is where we are failing the worst that honesty and clear thinking are least welcome. Be- cause the field is so dominated by doctrine, public debate about race is as stylized and as predictable as the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. Stylized thinking does not solve problems. It makes them worse. Orthodoxies do not survive unless they are shored up by the forces of authoritarian righteousness. And indeed, race relations give rise to beliefs that are virtually religious. It is one of the few subjects about which one may hold a considered position that oth- ers will say is not simply wrong but also evil. An imprudent word or ill-chosen phrase can ruin a career; an unguarded comment can make a man be considered unfit to hold public office. There is no other subject in America — not sex, not religion, not drugs, not abortion — about which the forces of orthodoxy are so monolithic and unforgiving. Naturally, this gives rise to heresies, large and small. Sometimes they break out with a peculiar viciousness of their own, in acts of racial hatred. But more often they lead to cynicism and hypocrisy, to private exchanges of taboo opinions. Anyone who searches his memory — or his conscience — knows that there is no other subject about which public pronouncements diverge so sharply from pri- vate opinions. This would be nothing more than a huge, ironic joke were the subject not one that is crucial to America's future. Lives, public policies, reputations, perhaps even the social order are at stake. We cannot afford to be limited by rigid thinking. An atmosphere of heresy-hunting is not one that leads to understanding. We must set forth the facts of our racial problems without forcing them to fit fruitless conventions. In a metaphor that is both poetic and disturbing, the essayist Wendell Berry calls American race relations "the hidden wound." 18 A hidden wound cannot be treated. This one is festering so deeply that it threatens the health of the entire body politic. People from every political perspective agree that race relations are a horrible wound crying out for healing. But there can be no cure without correct diagnosis. Correct diagnosis is impossible without honest, even fearless investigation. At the very least, Ameri- 14 ® Paved With Good Intentions cans must be able to talk about race without fear of retribution. If the notion of free speech has any meaning at all, it must apply to the oldest, greatest, most dangerous problem our nation faces. We must say in public what we think in private; we must throw off the shackles of orthodoxy. Orthodoxy very nearly kept this book from being published. Two editors who rejected the manuscript put it as plainly as possi- ble when they said that for a publisher to accept the book the author would have to be black. These men are prisoners of the mental habits of our time. Though black/white relations are, by definition, experienced by both races, blacks are thought to have the qualifications to write about them but whites are not. Some truths may be uttered by blacks but not by whites. Double stan- dards like this are a sure sign that our thinking has fallen into rigid, even dangerous conventions. What are these conventions? Although there are many, and much of this book is devoted to refuting them, there is one central doctrine on which they all depend: Whites are responsible for the problems blacks face. Black crime, black poverty, black illegiti- macy, black difficulties of all kinds can be traced to a heritage of slavery and to inveterate white racism. In other words, it is the malevolence of whites that causes blacks to fail. Although the doctrine is not often stated as sweepingly or as bluntly as this, it underlies virtually every public pronouncement on race relations and virtually every public program designed to improve them. One of the less famous sentences in the Kerner Commission report begins with the words, "White racism is essentially respon- sible for the explosive mixture which has been accumulating in our cities. . . ." 19 This sentence has gotten little attention because its truth was taken for granted. It is still taken for granted. Yale president Benno Schmidt, de- voting his commencement address to the subject of racism, told the Yale Class of 1989, "I hope that you will recognize that the problems of racial injustice in this society require the attention of this nation as urgently as at any time in our history." 20 Susan Estrich, who was Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis's pres- idential campaign manager, explains what America should be do- ing to reduce crime: "fighting racism, in the criminal justice sys- Introduction ® 15 tern, in our economic system, and, yes, in the political system, with as much fervor as we fight crime." 21 Not even Jesse Jackson goes much further when he says, "Racism is now so powerful again in our domestic and foreign policy that it threatens the soul of our nation and our status as leader of the free world." 22 Rev. T. J. Jemison is president of the 7.8-million-member Na- tional Baptist Convention, which is the largest black denomination in America. In his 1990 presidential address, he told his church that racism in America "is worse now than it's ever been." The United Church of Christ echoes this view. In a pastoral letter to be read from every pulpit in the denomination, it blamed the "quiet riots" of unemployment, poverty, crime, and family disintegration squarely on racism. 23 A 1987 front-page article in The Wall Street Journal quotes a black spokesman who claims, "If you wiped out racism, 90 percent of black people's problems would disappear." 24 The white author of a recent well-received book on race relations agrees. His concluding view is that whites are responsible for the woes of blacks, even for the fact that so many young black men are killing each other that it "amounts to a self-inflicted genocide." 25 Americans are so accustomed to hearing — and repeating — this view that they scarcely bother to think about what it means. It means, essentially, that white people, not blacks, are responsible for black behavior. It implies that blacks are helpless and cannot make progress unless whites transform themselves. This inverted version of the doctrine, with its unpleasant odor of paternalism, is almost never heard, but it finds expression in a host of race-based explanations that have sprung up to explain the failures of under- class blacks: Do blacks drop out of school? Teachers are insensitive to their needs. Do black women have children out of wedlock? Slavery broke up the black family. Are blacks more likely than whites to commit crimes? Oppression and poverty explain it. Are ghetto blacks unemployed? White businesses are prejudiced against them. Do blacks have IQ scores fifteen points lower than whites? The tests are biased. Are blacks more likely to be drug addicts? They are frustrated by white society. Are half our convicts black? The police are racist. 26 There is scarcely any form of failure that cannot, in some way, be laid at the feet of racist white people. 16 ® Paved With Good Intentions This kind of thinking denies that blacks should be expected to take responsibility for their own actions. More subtly, it suggests that they cannot do so. When whites make excuses for the failures of blacks — excuses they would scorn for themselves or for their own children — they treat blacks as inferiors, whether they mean to or not. Tentatively and hesitantly, a few people have begun to recognize the limits of conventional thinking. Even such pillars of the Demo- cratic Party as Senators Bill Bradley of New Jersey and John Kerry of Massachusetts have begun to break the unwritten rules of pub- lic discussion about race. In the spring of 1992, both called on blacks to stop making groundless accusations of racism and to take responsibility for their lives. 27 No one would argue that America is free of racism. A nation that enslaved blacks, freed them only after a terrible war, dis- franchised them, segregated them, lynched them — such a nation cannot entirely free itself from its past. However, though America is by no means perfect, racism is no longer central to its national character. Of course, it is possible to find instances of cruel and repulsive acts of racism committed against black people in America. Some blacks are no doubt held back by white racism, both subtle and unsubtle. However, white racism has receded dramatically in every area of American life. Wherever it comes to light, it is vigorously denounced by blacks and whites alike. Racism is now more popu- lar as an excuse for black failure than it is plausible as an explana- tion for it. Often, where racism has not been found, it has been necessary to invent it. For many people, both white and black, the notion that white racism explains black failure is the key to understanding American society. They are so convinced of the prevalence of white racism that they refuse even to consider the possibility that it may not be the sole obstacle to success for black Americans. For them, white racism is a brutal fact that seldom need be questioned — to ques- tion it may be immoral. Assumptions that are thought to be be- yond examination often need it most. This book examines assumptions about racism in several differ- ent ways. The first is simply to look for racism. The awful statistics Introduction ® 17 about black crime, poverty, and illegitimacy are not, by them- selves, proof of racism. Instead, there must be evidence that blacks are imprisoned, denied work, or impoverished simply because they are black. Many people, both black and white, have looked hard for this evidence but have been unable to find very much. When the circumstances of Americans differ only by race, society treats them much the same. Second, if whites in America are inveterately bigoted, other nonwhite races should face obstacles similar to those faced by blacks. Yet Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, and even black West Indi- ans have overcome America's storied racism and are often more successful than native-born whites. Instead of complaining about oppression and prejudice — of which there used to be plenty — they have taken responsibility for themselves and seized opportunities for a better life. Third, America has made historically unprecedented efforts to correct the evils of the past. We have not only prohibited discrimi- nation against blacks but have created preferential opportunities for them. Our crusade to undo the mischief of the past has done mischief of its own, and by formally discriminating against whites, it has stood both justice and the law on their heads. Finally, America practices a host of double standards that per- mit much to blacks that is denied to whites. The doctrine of white racism excuses blacks even when they are guilty of what is least tolerated in whites: racism itself. These are not popular positions to take in America today. Nor is there any joy in calling attention to failure, especially failure in race relations. One cannot express a divergent opinion about race without having one's motives scrutinized. Nevertheless, facts exist independently of motives. It is on a firm foundation of facts that the conclusions of this book, as well as the recommendations in its final chapter, are meant to rest. Almost from its opening pages, this book casts doubt on the basic assumptions about race and society that have driven social policy for decades. In attempting to show how mistaken assumptions begot mistaken policy, it has been necessary to show just how miserably those policies have failed. 18 ® Paved With Good Intentions Hideous things are happening in our country. Millions of Amer- icans — many of them black — live in conditions of violence and squalor that would shame the rulers of Third World nations. It takes a certain hardness of heart to live in the same society with such horror, much less to countenance policies that make it worse. The last two chapters of this book are an unblinking look at the misery in which too many black Americans live. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to think that this is a gloomy or pessimistic book. The opposite is true. If the policies that brought us this horror were founded on perfect understanding and were the wisest policies imaginable, then we would have reason to be distressed. In fact, though they were propounded with the best of intentions, our understanding and our policies were wrong — sometimes hopelessly wrong. A gloomy book would be one that cheerfully urged yet more measures of the kind that have failed. Like that on race relations, the consensus that has developed around social programs can be so strident as to discourage debate. Although that consensus has begun to crack, it is still a delicate matter to ask seriously whether the government programs that are supposed to solve our social ills have not actually made them worse. Single parenthood and illegitimacy, now largely destigmatized, appear again and again in studies of crime, poverty, welfare, and the failure to finish school. There is scarcely a social problem in this country that would not be well on its way toward solution if Americans adopted a rule their ancestors lived by and took for granted: They did not have children until they had a spouse and an income. The concluding chapters of this book seek to under- stand the connection between welfare and the disappearance of the obstacles — moral, social, and financial — that once prevented Americans from bearing children they could not support. More programs of the kind that were born in the 1960s, and that have continued to grow through every succeeding administration, will have little effect on the great unspoken problem that underlies all the others: Millions of Americans are bringing children into the world whom they cannot support or rear. This is an especially great and urgent problem for black Ameri- cans, who have seen marriage practically disappear from many of Introduction ® 19 their communities. Nevertheless, the same forces of dissolution that have left inner cities in ruins are at work in the larger society. Rates of illegitimacy and marriage breakup among whites are now approaching the rates among blacks that prompted the so-called Moynihan report of the mid-1960s (see Chapter Eight). It is vital to consider the possibility that welfare has contributed to these problems, because if it has, solutions lie elsewhere. There are effective measures we can take — some simple and short-term, others more complex and far-reaching — once we conclude that our efforts have been misguided. There is bitterness in acknowled- ing mistakes, but to do so is our only salvation. For if our thinking was wrong, let us think again. If our policies were wrong, let us abandon them. It is because we have made such serious errors that this book can be hopeful. With correct diagnosis and proper cure, even the hidden wound can be healed. 1 Racism On December 28, 1991, thousands of black rap music fans gathered in Harlem for what promised to be an espe- cially entertaining performance. Some of the biggest names in "hip-hop" — LL Cool J, Heavy D, Run-D.M.C, and Bell Biv DeVoe — were to play basketball against each other. The event was heavily advertised, and soon there were far more fans than the gymnasium could hold. People without tickets de- cided to rush the doors and crowd into the gymnasium without paying. They started a stampede that bent the metal pole of a streetlight, broke through glass doors, and trampled ticketholders who were waiting to get in. Nine people were crushed to death. 28 After rescue crews arrived and relieved the press of the crowd, fans stepped over bodies to get close to the rappers, and several robbed corpses. Rap stars who tried to help evacuate some of the dozens of injured were prevented by mobs of autograph-seekers. 29 Five emergency rescue men were also injured when they were attacked by the crowd. 30 It was, in short, a sorry display of callousness. Journalists, how- ever, could not bring themselves to say so. The Associated Press blamed the horror on "the beast": "The beast bent a lightpole in front of the gym building; it pestered rappers for photo ops and 21 22 <§> Paved With Good Intentions autographs in the morgue of the gym floor, distracting those who were trying to help the injured; it laughed and joked outside amid the despair; it robbed the dead." "It" killed nine people. 31 One white music critic went farther: "It's no secret that our society teaches minorities to hate themselves. If you are not white, male, straight, middle-class, well-educated or well-off, you are told . . . that you and others like you are disposable. . . . You self- destruct and aid in the destruction of others. You do as you are told. . . . Should it come as any surprise that people trapped like animals in cages are going to rip each other apart out of sheer frustration? Why should they value human life when society judges their lives as meaningless?" 32 At a memorial service two weeks after the deaths, speakers blamed the tragedy on the police, city officials, the "white estab- lishment," and "Uncle Tom blacks." Rev. Lawrence Lucas of the Resurrection Roman Catholic Church called the deaths an "orchestrated disaster" designed to give the police an excuse to attack young blacks and to take power from them. Rev. Timothy Mitchell of the Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church said the deaths were a "painful reminder of the racist, capitalist, individu- alistic society in which we live." Thus exhorted, the crowd left the memorial service and promptly tried to storm a building as a pro- test. 33 The way these deaths were reported and explained was not a departure from the way news about blacks is often handled. And yet many people must have found it strange. Why did the speakers at the memorial service seek excuses for inexcusable behavior? How did the "white establishment" start the stampede? How did racism cause young blacks to rob the corpses of other young blacks? Just who is it that is teaching minorities to hate them- selves, and how do they manage it? No one asked those questions because no one ever asks those questions. If racism can make blacks do such horrible things, it must be a fearfully powerful force, and there must be a great many white racists. And yet, who are these racists? How are they able to do all the things they are said to do? Most whites probably cannot find in themselves the desire to oppress or persecute blacks. Most proba- bly do not even know anyone who wants to do that. Could they Racism ® 23 even confidently cite the name of someone they have heard of who actively seeks to oppress blacks? Do you, the reader, oppress black people? If you wanted to, how would you go about it? It is unanswered questions like these — How did racism start that stampede in Harlem? Who teaches blacks to hate them- selves? — that prompted the investigations in this chapter. Looking for Racism Many people think that to show that white racism causes black failure, all they must do is show that blacks fail. The cause falls into place by itself. This is a common but incorrect style of reason- ing. People often collect symptoms and effects, and then attribute them to a cause that suits their own argument. In fact, it is a style of thinking that has often characterized American political thinking in the past. At various periods, and on the flimsiest evidence, Jews, Catholics, blacks, immigrants, or Communists have been blamed for everything that was wrong with the country. The historian Richard Hofstadter calls this the para- noid style in American politics. 34 Today America is in the grip of yet another massive attack of paranoia, except that it is the major- ity white population that is automatically blamed for whatever goes wrong. Charges of racism can be made with the same reckless impunity as were charges of communism at the height of the Mc- Carthy era. To ask for the facts that support the charge is only to prompt more accusations. To make a convincing case for racism, it must be shown that America treats otherwise similar blacks differently from whites. Anecdotal evidence is insufficient. It is only in the larger sweep of society that we will find forces powerful enough to oppress an entire people. Those who look carefully for evidence of racism — and not just for evidence of black failure — are likely to come up short. America often judges people by how much money they make. Although we assume that blacks want money as much as whites do, they make less. To show that this is the fault of racist employ- 24 <§> Paved With Good Intentions ers, one must show that even if blacks are just as well qualified and hardworking as whites, they are still forced into bad jobs with low pay. Research by Richard Freeman, an economist at Harvard, shows that this rarely happens. Comparisons of blacks and whites who grew up in the same circumstances and went on to get similar educations show no differences in their average incomes. This was not always so. In the past, smart, qualified blacks could not get equivalent jobs. But by 1969 — more than twenty years ago — blacks made just as much money as whites with the same backgrounds. 35 The trend toward parity was firmly established well before affirma- tive action and other special programs for minorities. Mr. Freeman sees the big change as having taken place in the 1960s, during what he calls a "dramatic collapse" in patterns of discrimination. 36 He summarizes the situation a decade later: By the 1970s black women earned as much as or more than whites [women] with similar educational attainment; black female college graduates obtained a moderate premium over their white peers; young black male college graduates at- tained rough income parity with young white graduates, and all black male graduates had more rapid increases in income than whites. . . ," 37 Women have made especially dramatic progress. In 1946, the median wage for black women was only 36 percent of that for white women. It has since climbed steadily, and by 1974 it was 98 per- cent. 38 Black women with a college education have actually out- stripped whites. By 1950, black women college graduates already made 91 percent of the wages paid to white female college gradu- ates. By 1960, they earned 2 percent more than whites, and by 1970, the difference had grown wider still. 39 By 1979, all black women, whatever their qualifications, earned 8 percent more than white women of equal qualifications. 40 The reason for this advan- tage is that they have been steadier workers than whites. When black and white women hold similar jobs, the black woman, on average, has been on the job 38 percent longer. 41 It is normal that she be paid more, because she has more experience. This essential parity between the wages of equally qualified Racism ® 25 black and white women is well known in specialist circles but virtu- ally unknown to the public at large. The economist Walter Wil- liams, who is himself black, calls this comparative data on working women "one of the best-kept secrets of all times and virtually totally ignored in the literature on racial differences." 42 Why do the organs of public information fail to report this powerful argu- ment against the existence of pervasive work place racism? Today, 19 percent of black women in the work force hold pro- fessional and managerial jobs, whereas only 13 percent of black men do. 43 For whites, men are more likely to hold such higher- level jobs. Of all technical jobs held by whites, women hold 48 percent. By contrast, women hold 63 percent of the technical jobs held by blacks. 44 If desirable jobs that have traditionally been filled by men are open to black women, what is keeping black men out of them? It is difficult to explain how white racism shackles black men but not black women — women who presumably labor under the double disadvantage of both sex and race. Another black author, Thomas Sowell, points out that some believers in racism do not merely ignore these data. "There is a positive hostility to analyses of black success," he writes, if they suggest that racism may not be the cause of black failure. 45 This hostility has not stopped Mr. Sowell. He has shown that in 1969, while American-born blacks were making only 62 percent of the average income for all Americans, blacks from the West Indies made 94 percent. Second-generation immigrants from the West Indies made 15 percent more than the average American. 46 Al- though they are only 10 percent of the city's black population, foreign-born blacks — mostly from the West Indies — own half of the black-owned businesses in New York City. 47 Their unemploy- ment rate is lower than the national average, and many times lower than that of American-born blacks. 48 West Indian blacks look no different from American blacks; white racists are not likely suddenly to set aside their prejudices when they meet one. For nearly twenty years, young blacks who manage to stay mar- ried have had family incomes almost identical to those of young white couples. Until recently, the only exception had been the South, but even there the difference has vanished. Now, in fami- lies where both parents are college-educated and both work, black 26 <§> Paved With Good Intentions families make more money than white families. This is true in all parts of the United States and for families of all ages. 49 In some professions, where affirmative action programs have created an artificial demand for qualified minorities, blacks may earn more than whites simply because they are black. This is the case for college professors, 50 who can command stiff salary premiums be- cause they help fulfill hiring goals. Many blacks have not let talk of racism daunt them but have instead figured out that what counts in America are brains and hard work. The number of black families that are "affluent" (earn- ing more than $50,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars) went from one in seventeen in 1967 to one in seven in 1989. 51 Such families in- creased, in actual numbers, from 323,000 to 1,509,000, 52 a 467 percent rise. From 1982 to 1987, the number of companies owned by blacks grew by a third, and their receipts more than doubled. 53 In 1991, the hundred biggest black-owned businesses in the coun- try had revenues of $7.9 billion, a 10.4 percent increase over the previous year. 54 Between 1972 and 1991, the number of black accountants shot up by 479 percent, the number of lawyers by 280 percent, and the number of professional computer programmers by 343 percent. Preachers are virtually the only white-collar group in which the number of blacks declined during that period. 55 From 1950 to 1990, the black population of America doubled but the number of blacks in white-collar jobs increased more than ninefold. 56 Blacks, as a proportion of managers in companies with more than a hun- dred employees, have gone from 0.9 percent in 1966 to 3.7 percent in 1978 and 5.2 percent in 1990. 57 If racism is such a force in our society, why did it not stop this progress? It is true that blacks are still under-represented in management. H. F. Henderson Industries, a small defense contractor in West Caldwell, New Jersey, is not unusual in that the proportion of whites in professional and technical jobs (80 percent) is much higher than in the company as a whole (48 percent). The only unusual aspect is that Henry F. Henderson, the company's founder, is black. He would like to have more blacks in manage- ment, but since he hires by qualifications rather than by race, most of his skilled employees are white. Racism ® 27 J. Bruce Llewellyn, chairman of the Philadelphia Coca-Cola Bottling Company is also black, and faces the same situation. "You have to look longer and harder to find these people [quali- fied minorities]," he says: "It's just obvious that the pool of tal- ented white people is bigger than the one of talented black peo- ple." 58 To draw useful conclusions about racial discrimination, it is nec- essary to compare like with like. When this is not done, the results can suggest racism where there may be none. For example, maga- zines and newspapers often report that black college graduates make less money than white college graduates. The difference is said to be due to employer discrimination. The trouble with this comparison is that it includes all black and white college gradu- ates. Whites are more likely to attend top-ranked colleges than blacks and are more likely to major in well-paid fields such as business and engineering. A physics graduate from Yale is likely to earn more money than a sociology graduate from Foothills Com- munity College, whatever their races. Careful comparisons of blacks and whites who have graduated from equivalent colleges with equivalent degrees show that the blacks earn more than the whites. 59 "Racism" frequently dwindles away as analysis goes deeper. During the ten years from 1970 to 1980, the median household income for whites rose by 0.8 percent, while the median household income for blacks fell by 11 percent. What accounted for this? Did racism get worse? The problem in this analysis is that the income unit is households and not people. During the 1970s, many fami- lies, both black and white, broke up. Also, every time a young woman had a child and went on welfare, a new household was established. The fact is that while individual blacks' incomes were actually rising more quickly than those of individual whites, blacks were splintering into new households at a much more rapid rate. Ac- cording to one study, if black family composition had held steady during the decade, median black household income would have risen 5 percent. If white household composition had held steady, the white median household income would have risen by 3 percent (instead of its actual rise of 0.8 percent). 28 <§> Paved With Good Intentions People of both races were actually making more money, but they were spreading it out over more households. In fact, the ac- tual incomes of black husband-and-wife families rose four times as quickly as those of white families. In families in which both the husband and wife worked, the family income of blacks increased five times as quickly as that of whites. 60 Black family income fell during the 1970s, not because of "racist" employers but because of disintegrating families. Conclusions like these are the results of taking the time to com- pare like with like. Whenever this is done, differences that can be attributed to racism are elusive. The trouble, of course, is that the black population is not identical to the white population. The black population is less well educated, less experienced, and less qualified. Believers in racism insist that these differences are due to past racism. To some extent they undoubtedly are. But our thinking must change as America changes. Whatever effects the past may have had on the present, employers who pay qualified blacks as much as or more than they pay qualified whites are not now practicing racism. Moreover, the conviction that blacks are constantly held back because of white racism impugns not only the morals but also the intelligence of whites. If rampant prejudice were preventing thou- sands of talented blacks from getting jobs, they would presumably be willing to work for less than the prevailing wage — just as they were forty and fifty years ago, when they could not get jobs that matched their training. If that were still so, it would not take a few clever employers long to realize that they could hire able blacks at low wages, undercut their competitors, and make boom-time prof- its. Why is it that we have never heard of a single company doing something so obvious? Even in the antebellum South, free black workers were a grave threat to white tradesmen, and could be kept out of professions only by law. A white employer was not going to pass up a hard- working black if he could hire him for less than the white wage. In 1857, at the height of slavery, white tradesmen petitioned the At- lanta city council for regulations to keep free blacks out of their professions: Racism ® 29 We refer to Negro mechanics [who] . . . can afford to un- derbid the regular resident mechanics ... to their great in- jury. . . . We most respectfully request [that the council] af- ford such protection to the resident mechanics. 61 "Negro mechanics" were a problem because white employers could not be trusted to let racial prejudice stand in the way of getting a job done cheaply. One of the most important purposes of Jim Crow laws was to bar blacks from certain professions. Seventy years ago, those laws were on the books because whites were so quick to set aside prejudice if it might interfere with what really mattered: profits. What was true then is more true today. Employ- ers are in business to make money, not to indulge prejudices. If they start indulging prejudices, they make less money. In South Africa, where blacks were still excluded by law from certain jobs right into the 1990s, employers routinely broke the law, and the government /wed them for it. There is no more effec- tive weapon against discrimination than a free labor market, and not even Afrikaner employers could resist it. 62 Hunting for Racism However, looking at job patterns and average incomes may not be the best way to hunt for racism; it will show only the effects of racism. Many people hunt for it directly. For example, studies are sometimes conducted in which blacks and whites with the same qualifications are sent to interview for the same job. If only the white is offered the job, it was presumably because of racism. This sort of experiment is tricky, because it is nearly impossible to find two people, even of the same race, who are identical in intelli- gence, poise, and attractiveness, yet the results are supposed to show a reaction to one thing only: race. The most recent such study of black/white pairs involved appli- cations for 476 entry-level jobs, mostly in retail, restaurant, hotel, or other service jobs. In 67 percent of the cases, neither applicant 30 ® Paved With Good Intentions was offered a job. In 13 percent, both applicants were offered the job; in 15 percent only the white got the job, and in 5 percent only the black was offered the job. It would be hard to argue that this is evidence of large-scale, antiblack bias. Moreover, as one scholar has pointed out, this was strictly a private-sector experiment. If the same applications were made for government or university jobs, it is entirely possible that affirmative action would have skewed the results in favor of the blacks. 63 One unusual seeker of racism is Yelena Hanga, a visitor from Russia who happens to be black. Her father is a Tknzanian and her mother is the daughter of an American black who emigrated to the Soviet Union in the 1930s. In 1988, Miss Hanga, a Moscow journalist, worked for a time in Boston as part of an exchange of journalists. When she first came to America, she looked hard for white racism but could not find any. Her black friends explained to her that "the time has passed when discrimination is visible to the naked eye." They taught her about "institutional racism," "something a foreigner does not un- derstand during a short stay in the United States." In spite of these instructions, she concluded that whites were not responsible for all the troubles that befall blacks: "In my country we know about racism between black and white, and I thought this was the only evil preventing black progress." "What upsets me most," she writes, "is the racism among blacks." 64 What, in fact, is "institutional racism"? It appears to be the villain believers in white racism are left with when they cannot find people who are actually racist. Here is one definition: Institutional racism can be defined as those established laws, customs, and practices which systematically reflect and pro- duce racial inequities in American society. If racist conse- quences accrue to institutional laws, customs, or practices, the institution is racist whether ornot the individuals maintain- ing those practices have racist intentions. 65 This is an attempt to transfer responsibility to an entire society, even when there is no intent to discriminate. It does away with the idea of individual responsibility, while essentially declaring all Racism ® 31 whites guilty. 66 It is thinking like this, which attributes to whites at large the sins that cannot be found in individual whites, that leads to indiscriminate, societywide "remedies" such as affirmative ac- tion. A foreign journalist's views, though interesting, are only infor- mal observation. Scholars have devised various more objective ways to hunt for racism. The most straightforward thing they do is to ask people what they think. Answers change over time. In 1942, 58 percent of American whites thought that blacks were less intel- ligent than whites. By 1956 that number was already down to 23 percent, and in a 1991 Harris poll it had dropped to 11 percent. 67 In 1942 only 30 percent of whites thought whites and blacks should go to the same schools, but by 1985, 93 percent thought they should. In 1963, 45 percent of whites told a Gallup poll they would move out if they got a black neighbor; in 1978 only 13 percent said they would, 68 and by 1990 the figure had dropped to 4 percent. 69 Those who believe in racism will argue that these numbers may not reflect genuine changes in attitude; instead, the data may sim- ply show that whites have learned to give hypocritical answers. Even if that were so, it is still significant if that many whites feel they have to be hypocritical when they used to be brazen. Further- more, the answer to a different question suggests that whites may well be telling the truth. In 1958, 96 percent disapproved of ra- cially mixed marriages, while in 1983 60 percent still disap- proved. 70 According to a 1991 survey, 66 percent of whites said they would disapprove if a close relative married a black. 71 If large numbers of whites are willing to express an illiberal view of mixed marriage, it suggests that if more than the reported 7 percent really did not approve of integrated schools, they would say so. In any case, white attitudes have changed a great deal. Still, since people might not be willing to tell a pollster what they really think, scientists have devised other ingenious ways to test for racism. One old trick is to offer a child two dolls that are 67 Arthur A. Fletcher, "Is Affirmative Action Necessary to level the Playing Field?," Los Angeles Times (September 8, 1991), p. M6. It is interesting to note that in a recent survey, more blacks than whites said they thought blacks were less intelligent than whites. Marcus Mabry, "Bias Begins at Home," Newsweek (August 5, 1991), p. 33. 32 ® Paved With Good Intentions identical, except that one is black and the other is white. White children usually pick the white doll. If black children pick the white doll it is supposed to mean that their self-image has been damaged by a racist culture. When this experiment was done in 1987, two thirds of the black children chose the white doll. Amer- ica must still be damaging the minds of black children. The odd thing about these results is that they were exactly the same as results from the early 1950s — long before "affirmative action," black TV anchormen, and "black pride." The results were even more unexpected when the experiment was done in Trinidad, where 85 percent of the people are black and the government is 100 percent black. There, more than two thirds of the children chose the white doll. 72 People have tried very hard to explain this, but what at first looked like white Ameri- can racism might be something entirely different. Academics have come up with other ways to measure racism. For example, they make special videos in which actors play identi- cal parts — except that the roles of blacks and whites are ex- changed in different versions. They then show the different ver- sions to different groups and ask them to rate the characters. Differences in ratings are supposed to reflect the only differences in the videos, namely, race. Or they try something closer to real life. They take a white woman and a black woman to the super- market and ask them to drop groceries deliberately. They then see if whites help the white woman but not the black woman. It is true that some of the experiments show differences based on race. One researcher, for example, found that whites helped the black lady with her groceries as often as they helped the white lady, but they did not always pick up as many pieces for her. 73 Other studies, somewhat inconveniently, show that blacks are just as "racist" as whites. The people who study this sort of thing agree that what they have found is not exactly the blinkered prejudice we presumably had in the past. One report puts it this way: "Precisely because of their subtlety and indirectness, these modern forms of prejudice and avoidance are hard to eradicate. . . . [T]he modern forms of prejudice frequently remain invisible even to their perpetra- Racism <§> 33 tors." 74 Another report about "modern racial prejudice" says that it is "informal, subtle, and indirect, and most importantly, it is typically invisible to the perpetuator [sic]. However, it can be de- tected in laboratory experiments." 75 The authors of one study then go on to propose ways for whites to make up for this. They should undergo "sensitivity training." They should videotape their conversations with blacks and whites and study how their own body language may differ. They should evaluate black employees as parts of black/white teams so that unconscious antiblack prejudice will not creep in. Whites with black subordinates should be paid more if the blacks do well, etc. 76 The reasoning behind all this is that even when whites think they are being fair, they are still unconsciously racist. They must make special efforts to root out unconscious bias. This is undoubtedly well meant, but it is not the way to solve America's racial problems. If racism is a problem in America, it is surely not unconscious racism that is detectable only in the labora- tory. It is debatable whether there can even be unconscious, unin- tended prejudice, much less whether it can be overcome. The au- thors probably would not consider giving advice to blacks. They seem to feel that since whites are responsible for what happens to blacks, it is whites who must change. That is, in fact, the general view. Employers, for example, must bend over backward to ac- commodate blacks — and not just those from the ghetto. Leanita McLain was a talented black writer who, by age thirty- two, had won many journalism awards and had become the first black on the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune. In 1984, she killed herself. One writer attributes her suicide, in part, to this: She put on the clothes, language, and habits of the white professional world, giving up her own cultural heritage for long hours. This is a common problem for many contemporary black professionals who have had very serious difficulty in adjusting to the white employment world . . . one that expects the victim to fit the mold, but not the mold to adapt to the black victim. 77 34 <§> Paved With Good Intentions Victim? It is a terrible pity that this gifted woman killed herself, but of what, exactly, was she a victim? What was the rest of the editorial board supposed to do to change the mold to "adapt to the black victim"? Black economist William J. Wilson is tired of hearing whites blamed for everything. "[Tjalented and educated blacks are expe- riencing unprecedented job opportunities . . ." he writes, "op- portunities that are at least comparable to those of whites with equivalent qualifications." 78 As George Lewis, a hardworking black man who is vice president and treasurer of Philip Morris, says, "If you can manage money effectively, people don't care what color you are." 79 Reginald Lewis is a black lawyer and investment banker. In 1987 his company, TLC Group, raised $985 million to acquire BCI Holdings, an international food conglomerate with $2.5 billion in sales. Mr. Lewis, whose net worth is estimated to be $100 million, is not very concerned about race. "I don't really spend a lot of time thinking about that," he says. "[T]he TLC Group is in a very competitive business and I really try not to divert too much of my energy to considering the kind of issues [race] . . . raised." 80 Police Racism Of course, it may be that blacks are treated fairly only in the white-collar world, where whites have managed to curb their rac- ism. Perhaps the racists that conventional theory requires all have blue-collar jobs. Police work is thought by many to be the profession most likely to harbor racists. Police officers are an unblushingly blue-collar group that handles guns, rides motorcycles, and often must do violence to people for a living. Traditionally the policeman's work- place has seldom even had the sensitizing presence of women to restrain excess. Many people assume that the criminal justice system is inveter- ately racist. One black writes, "For many, many blacks there is no system, there is no justice, and it is criminal." 81 A black Yale Racism ® 35 professor writes deliberately of the criminal processing system be- cause he thinks that for blacks it metes out process, not justice. 82 One nonwhite author says simply and colorfully, "police have one trigger finger for whites and another for blacks." 83 When Arthur Eve, a black New York State assemblyman, learned that blacks in his state are more than ten times more likely than whites to be in prison or under court jurisdiction, he had one explanation: "New York is the most racist state in America." 84 Some people write almost as if the justice system deliberately keeps a certain proportion of blacks behind bars, whether or not they commit crimes: "Despite constitutional safeguards, police and prosecutors and judges still find it relatively easy to ensure that one out of every five black men will spend some part of his life behind bars." 85 Black newspapers regularly go even farther and explain why the system would do this. As the Catholic pastor Lawrence Lucas writes in the Amsterdam News of New York City, one of the main purposes of the criminal justice system is "putting young black males in jails by any means necessary so that lower class whites can exercise authority, supremacy, and make a nice living." 86 In other words, an important goal of the justice system is to round up enough nonwhites to keep whites busy with well-paid prison jobs. The same sentiments are echoed in the City Sun of Brooklyn, New York, which writes, "The system of racial control is being tied more strongly to the economic welfare of ordinary whites than at any time since slavery. In farming communities and small towns across the land, the control of Black and Latino males is replacing the growing of food and manufacture of products as a way of economic life." 87 Although few white observers express themselves quite so cate- gorically, they generally assume that the police and the courts consistently stack the deck against blacks. But once again, charges of bigotry must rest on evidence, not on emotion. Unfortunately, this is such a charged issue that not even scholars always treat the evidence rationally. One man recently wrote a paper about unjus- tified, "racist" arrests of minorities. In it, he cited eight different studies, but not one of them found evidence for "racist" arrests. When criminals were classed by groups that differed only by race, 36 ® Paved With Good Intentions researchers found that police treated them essentially the same. Nevertheless, this did not prevent the author from concluding that police racism is widespread, because certain "authorities" have told him so. 88 Careful investigators have usually reached the opposite conclu- sion. For example, during the five years from 1971 to 1975, re- searchers in New York City found that 60.2 percent of the people police shot at were black, even though blacks were only 20.5 per- cent of the population. Although whites were 64.1 percent of the population, police shot at them only 17.5 percent of the time. Blacks were thus more than ten times as likely as whites to be shot at by police. This sounds like a sure case of the itchy trigger finger for blacks. However, during the same five-year period, 62.4 percent of the arrests for violent crime in New York City were of blacks and only 20.5 percent were of whites. Thus, shootings by race were propor- tionate to arrests for violent crime. Also, it is significant to note how these New Yorkers whom the police shot at were armed. Only 7.8 percent of the blacks were unarmed, whereas 15.5 percent of the whites were. Blacks were carrying a firearm 60.5 percent of the time, but only 34.4 percent of the whites were. Whites who were unarmed or just carrying a stick or knife were much more likely to be shot at by police than blacks were. Finally, more than half of the men of all races who had gun- fights with the police were under 24 years old. The median age of black male New Yorkers was 23.1 years and the median age of whites males was 33.3 years. That is to say that a larger number of blacks were in the age group that gets in trouble with the law, and this reason alone would explain part of their overrepresentation in crime figures. In conclusion, the authors of the report found no evidence that police shot at blacks just because they were black. 89 There is good reason to examine this study in some detail. The first set of numbers, the ones that show that black New Yorkers are ten times more likely than whites to be shot at by police, are about as far as most newspapers get. They are certainly as far as television reports get. It takes patience and an open mind to learn that what appears to be police racism may not be. What is true for New York City is true for the nation. Sixty Racism ® 37 percent of the people killed by police are black, even though they are only 12 percent of the population. Is this because the police are racist? Maybe not. Nationwide, blacks account for 58 percent of all arrests for weapons violations, 64 percent of all arrests for violent crimes, and 71 percent of all robbery arrests. It is less well known that blacks are responsible for 73 percent of justified, self- defense killings by civilians, and the overwhelming majority of the people they kill are other blacks. 90 Are the police then gunning for blacks, or are they simply shooting the people who are the most dangerous? Are they racist or just doing their jobs? Many people have argued that the high crime rates reported for blacks only reflect the fact that police concentrate on the kinds of street crime blacks commit. According to this theory, whites break the law just as often, but commit "white-collar" crimes rather than assaults and robberies. In fact, blacks commit a disproportionate number of white-collar offenses as well. In 1990, blacks were nearly three times as likely as whites to be arrested for forgery, counterfeiting, and embezzlement, and were 3.4 times more likely to be arrested for receiving stolen property. These disproportions have been known for decades. 91 Believers in racism insist that blacks are arrested more often than whites not because blacks commit more crime but because racist police deliberately arrest them more often. However, there is a reliable way to test this theory. With crimes such as rape, mugging, or assault, the victim usually gets a good enough look at the criminal to see what race he is. People report these crimes to the police because they want the perpetrator arrested. They are not going to say a man was black when he was actually white. 92 Therefore, if the system were hopelessly racist, there would be more reports of white crimes than arrests of white criminals. This is not the case. The ones who get away are just as likely to be black as the ones who are caught. 93 There is another way to check for police racism. Whether or not 92 A spectacular exception to this rule was the case of Charles Stuart of Boston. In 1989 he murdered his own wife and tried to throw police off the trail by claiming to have seen a black man kill her. This was widely decried as "racism," but if Mr. Stuart had decided to claim that a violent stranger had killed his wife, it was plausible to claim that a black man had done it. Mr. Stuart later killed himself when the police seemed about to see through his deception. 38 ® Paved With Good Intentions the police have the leeway to make "racist" arrests depends on the type of crime. With violent crime, the police usually make arrests based on what they are told by victims and witnesses. If everybody tells them a white man did it, they are not going to get away with arresting a black, no matter how much they might want to. Fur- thermore, there is a great deal of pressure on police to catch violent criminals. They cannot just walk away when people are raped or maimed. Police have much more leeway to be "racist" in the case of nonviolent thefts, such as burglary. Often there are no witnesses, so if the police wanted to indulge a racist taste for arresting blacks, this would be the opportunity. In fact, blacks are most strongly overrepresented in precisely the crimes of violence in which the police have the least leeway for racist arrests. In the case of prop- erty crimes with no witnesses, where police leeway to make "rac- ist" arrests is greater, blacks are a good deal less overrepresented in arrest statistics. For some crimes, arrests are almost entirely up to the police- man. Whether he arrests a drunken driver is up to him — a perfect opportunity to treat blacks unfairly, if that is what he wishes to do. In fact, drunken white drivers are disproportionately a good deal more likely to be arrested than are drunken blacks. 94 Studies of arrests for public drunkenness and traffic violations — other crimes that give the police great leeway as to whether they will make an arrest — show no difference in the arrest rates for whites and blacks. 95 There is every reason for white policemen consciously to avoid getting into confrontations with blacks. Why should they risk the public outcry? If they shoot or beat up a black, they must face daunting criticism from the press, the mayor, the police chief, and civil rights organizations. In America today, only foolish police- men would deliberately mistreat blacks. 96 In fact, whenever white policemen use justified, self-protective violence against blacks, their actions are commonly scrutinized for bias. In 1988, a white Toronto police officer shot a black man who 96 Please see Chapter Six for a discussion of the Rodney King case. The national outcry it provoked is a good indication of how the nation reacts to mistreatment of blacks by white police officers. Racism <§> 39 was swinging a knife. The black community protested, and the officer was indicted for manslaughter. The police were so out- raged that they demonstrated publicly against the indictment. A group called the Black Action Defense Committee said that blacks might have to start arming themselves to avoid being "murdered" by the police. The president of the police union said that if things continue this way, crime will increase because the police "are go- ing to be reluctant to arrest black people." 97 But to return to statistics, even those who are convinced that the criminal justice system is racist would probably concede that it must have been even more racist in the past. We would therefore expect to find that, proportionately, the number of black prison inmates has dropped. That is to say, a black's chances of being in prison, though higher than those of a white, should be lower than they used to be. This is not the case. In 1932, a black was four times as likely as a white to be in prison. By 1979 the odds had worsened to the point where he was eight times as likely to be in prison. 98 Is our society becoming more racist, or is it that a black's chances of being in prison do not have much to do with police racism? Another puzzle: If the police and courts are locking up blacks because of prejudice, many people would expect to see the most grievous effects of this in the South. A black's relative chances of being in jail should be worse where racism is thought to be worse. However, none of the states in which a black has the best chance of being in jail is in the South. In Minnesota, a black is twenty-three times more likely to be in jail than a white; in Iowa, twenty-one times; and in Wisconsin, nineteen times. The two states with the lowest differentials are Mississippi (three times) and New Hamp- shire (about equal chances). It would be hard to argue that the police and the courts in Minnesota are radically more racist than those in Mississippi. Nor are these state differences just a fluke. By region, the Northeast jails blacks at fifteen times the rate it jails whites, the South at only five and a half times. 99 Once again, the racism that is supposed to explain so much does not appear to explain anything at all. Many people have argued that if police forces are integrated we will see a drop in differential crime and arrest rates. In spite of this 40 ® Paved With Good Intentions widespread belief, few people have seriously looked into whether anything changes when there are blacks on the force. In fact, black policemen are more likely to shoot blacks than white police are. Is this because they are ill-disciplined and trigger-happy? Probably not. It is because they are more likely to be put to work in black neighborhoods, where there is more killing of all kinds. 100 Blacks and whites who both work in black neighborhoods are equally likely to shoot at blacks. 101 In normal police work, researchers find that blacks are "more active disciplinarians" and "more likely to make arrests." That is to say, they are tougher cops. Some studies have found that both black and white police officers are more likely to treat criminals of their own race more roughly than they treat other races. 102 What about black judges? Do they sentence blacks differently from white judges? What evidence there is seems to show that, if anything, black judges give harsher sentences to black criminals. 103 Some black judges have explained the difference by saying that they feel no mercy for black criminals who prey on other blacks. 104 Sentencing is another aspect of the criminal justice system that is routinely accused of racism: Black criminals are said to get stiffer sentences than white criminals for the same crime. The most exhaustive, best-designed study shows that this is not the case. In a three-year analysis of 11,533 people convicted of crimes in California in 1980, Joan Petersilia found that the length of a sentence depended on such things as prior record and whether the criminal used a gun. She found that race had no effect. Miss Peter- silia has had the courage to admit that these findings refute her own earlier work, in which she did not take other factors into account, and had concluded that race made a difference in sen- tencing. 105 The death penalty has often been cited as proof of racist justice. It is true that someone who kills a white is more likely to get the death penalty than someone who kills a black (11.1 percent vs. 4.5 percent). This figure is often cited as proof that American society values white lives more than black lives. In fact, other death pen- alty statistics do not suggest racism at all. For example, white mur- derers, no matter whom they kill, are more likely to get the death Racism ® 41 penalty than black murderers (11.1 percent to 7.3 percent). Fur- thermore, whites who kill whites are slightly more likely to be on death row than blacks who kill whites. Finally, whites who kill blacks are slightly more likely to be on death row than blacks who kill whites. 106 Given a choice of death penalty statistics such as these, newspa- pers commonly headline those that suggest white racism while ignoring those that do not. 107 They also trumpet the results of even the most flawed studies, as long as they support the thesis of unequal justice for blacks. For example, in 1989 the Atlanta Jour- nal and Constitution published a major, multipage story on crimi- nal sentencing in the state of Georgia. It found that in nearly two thirds of the state's jurisdictions, blacks were twice as likely as whites to go to jail for the same crimes. A front-page map showed which parts of the state were the most biased. Only forty-six inches into the story did it become clear that the newspaper's data ig- nored prior convictions! 108 Every legal system in the world is tougher on repeat offenders than on first-timers, and many blacks are repeat offenders. A comparative study of sentencing that ig- nores prior convictions is very nearly worthless, and to base a major, sensational story on such a study is thoroughly irresponsi- ble. Slanted reporting of this kind has convinced many Americans that their justice system is riddled with racism. A black law student attending a recent political convention in New York City put it as bluntly as anyone: "The criminal justice system is set up to incar- cerate blacks and Latinos, particularly the males." 109 This illusion can have real, unfortunate consequences. The Kerner Commission found that, in the 1960s, many blacks justified looting and burning 106 Dallas Times Herald (November 17, 1985), p. 1, cited in William Wilbanks, The Myth of a Racist Criminal Justice System (Monterey: Calif.; Brooks/Cole Publishing Company, 1987), pp. 17f. William Wilbanks, "Times Herald Misused Statistics in Death Penalty Study," unpublished, p. 1. The question of who gets the death penalty is complicated by several factors, one of which is money. Rich murderers, who are able to hire shrewd lawyers, are more likely to get a lesser sentence than poor people who must make do with court-appointed lawyers. Furthermore, not all killings are equivalent. Murder committed while engaged in another crime, for example, is likely to get heavier punishment than one that results from a domes- tic quarrel. A study of race and the death penalty would have to control for such variables to determine whether sentencing was influenced by race. 42 ® Paved With Good Intentions on the grounds that "the system" was racist. 110 One black sociolo- gist says, "There has been a growing belief among blacks and lower-class groups . . . that the criminal processing system has been an instrument of political repression . . . and that criminal behavior may be the only way to produce social change. . . ." m The riots in Los Angeles in the spring of 1992 were triggered by the belief among blacks that a racist court system had unjustly exonerated white police officers who had beaten a black motorist. Nevertheless, without a decades-old sense of resentment against white society in general, a single court case would never have started riots. This sense of resentment is fed by the constant re- frain that American society is inveterately racist. Blacks have heard this message so frequently they cannot help but absorb it. The seventeen-year-old mastermind of an Omaha drug-dealing ring has already learned the sociological excuses for his crimes. "Society is set up so that black people can't get ahead," he says. "I'm not supposed to have the American dream and all that. I'm supposed to be in jail." 112 If people believe that society is unjust, it lowers their internal resistance to crime. Rather than feeling that it is wrong, they may feel that, through crime, they are striking blows for justice. 113 One researcher who studied prison inmates found that for whites, the more they identified with the criminal class, the lower their opin- ions were of themselves. This was not the case for blacks. 114 This difference probably reflects different feelings about the fairness of society and the legitimacy of crime. Attitudes toward crime can corrode the minds even of blacks who do not break the law. One columnist writes of stopping to watch a line of black men break dancing on a sidewalk in New York City. Two of the dancers soon drifted into the crowd to ask for money, and received a shower of dollar bills. They received another shower, when one pointedly reminded the mostly white crowd, "Keep in mind, folks, we could be doing something 110 Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (New York: Bantam Books, 1968), pp. 203-6. Although the report repeatedly mentions the widespread belief among blacks that the criminal justice system treats blacks differently from whites, the authors could find practically no evidence of this. They nevertheless concluded that police forces should revamp their policy and personnel standards to eliminate even the perception of bias, pp. 302-9. Racism ® 43 worse." 115 Is crime such a natural — even legitimate — option for blacks that whites should feel grateful when they abstain from it? In the 1960s, the black poet Imamu Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) put it this way: [Y]ou can't steal nothin from a white man, he's already stole it he owes you anything you want, even his life. All the stores will open if you will say the magic words. The magic words are: Up against the wall mother fucker this is a stick up! Or: Smash the window at night (these are magic actions) smash the windows daytime, anytime, together, let's smash the window drag the shit from in there. No money down. No time to pay. Just take what you want. 116 Although they may not express themselves as colorfully as Mr. Baraka, many blacks are equally convinced that they have every right to tamper with the white man's system. During a recent mur- der trial, a California Superior Court judge disqualified a black juror who was. overheard saying that he would give the death pen- alty only to whites. 117 Biases like this are not always detected in time. At a murder trial in Washington, D.C., in 1990, the verdict of not guilty was so unexpected that the prosecutor gaped as it was read and the de- fendant fell over in his chair backward in his jubilation. The defen- dant was black, and so were all the witnesses. Three weeks later, one of the jurors caused a sensation at the court when he mailed in an anonymous letter. It explained that most of the jurors had thought the man was guilty but that a black-activist foreman had browbeaten them into a verdict of not guilty. The letter concluded with these words: "I let a man go free for murder with my vote, I hope God will forgive me." When the Washington Post interviewed ten of the twelve jurors, it found that the activist had distributed literature from Louis Far- 44 ® Paved With Good Intentions rakhan's Nation of Islam and had worn a button supporting a separate nation for blacks. She insisted that society was to blame for all the ills of blacks, and she persuaded the other jurors not to send another young black man to jail. The defendant has since been indicted on another first-degree murder charge. This murder victim, like the previous one, was black. 118 In the Bronx, in New York City, defendants and jurors are over- whelmingly black and Hispanic. Prosecutors and police who ap- pear as witnesses are overwhelmingly white. Bronx jurors now have a firm reputation for doubting the testimony of police and letting off black and Hispanic defendants. A Bronx district attor- ney remembers the way it used to be: "When I started in this office, twenty years ago, the strongest case you could have . . . was when all your witnesses were police officers. Now, sadly, it's the weakest." Says another prosecutor: "If you have a case involv- ing cops, you are almost certain to lose." 119 If the situation were reversed, and white juries were routinely doubting black police- men and letting off white defendants, there would be a deafening outcry. One of these Bronx cases was that of Larry Davis. He wounded six policemen in a shoot-out, but in 1988 a jury of ten blacks and two Hispanics acquitted him of attempted murder. He was never- theless convicted of illegal weapons possession and sentenced to five to fifteen years in prison. When his sentence was announced, his supporters chanted, "Never give up. Free Larry Davis. We gotta right, black power, we gotta fight, black power." In a speech afterward, Mr. Davis said that the presiding judge had "violated the law countless times" during the trial, and proclaimed, "There is no justice for the African-Latino people." Mr. Davis, a con- victed felon like all four of his brothers, 120 then went on to face different charges for two separate murders, a kidnapping, an as- sault, and a car theft. 121 On almost the same day that Mr. Davis was sentenced, the first black to be appointed to the elite, ninety-four-man Texas Rangers police squad said he looked forward to the day when the press stopped paying attention to his race. A forty-one-year-old profes- sional lawman, Lee Roy Young said that he had never suffered discrimination nor seen others discriminated against. 122 Racism <§> 45 Campus Racism Why does America prefer to believe a convict, Larry Davis, rather than a Texas Ranger, Lee Roy Young? As we shall see, there are a number of reasons for this, but universities play an important role in establishing and spreading the view that white people are racist and that it is white racism that accounts for the failures of nonwhites. College professors and administrators tend to be far more politically liberal than the population at large, and at many universities the search for racism and the struggle to elim- inate it are pushed to the point of ideological excess. Although a college education should encourage reflection and discourage hasty judgments, universities are even more closed-minded on the subject of race than the rest of society. Academics have created an atmosphere in which the slightest statement or gesture is analyzed for potential "racism," and devia- tions from orthodoxy are swiftly punished. The new mood of heightened sensitivity has been accompanied by what is said to be a worrying "resurgence" of campus racism. Media reports about race on campus hew to conventional doc- trine and generally imply that racist incidents are all perpetrated by whites against blacks. This is, of course, not the case. For exam- ple, four black football players at the University of Arizona went to jail for hunting down solitary whites and beating them up. Three of the blacks were on scholarships, and the biggest was a 6-foot-4, 255-pound lineman. 123 Brown University was considering asking for help from the FBI when, in the opening weeks of the 1989 school year, whites were attacked by urban blacks on sixteen different occasions. 124 Eugene McGahen, a white freshman attending the historically black Tennessee State University, was beaten in his room by a group of blacks with covered faces. Brian Wilder, another white freshman at the same university, took to carrying a knife and sleeping with a baseball bat after receiving death threats and being told by blacks that they would "get" him. 125 * 46 ® Paved With Good Intentions By contrast, some of the "racism" attributed to white students sounds exceedingly tame. During a late-night bull session at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, a freshman reportedly said that Martin Luther King was a Communist and then pro- ceeded to sing "We Shall Overcome" in a "sarcastic" manner. The university made him do thirty hours of community service at a local minority organization. A graduate student reportedly called a classmate a "Mexican" in a "derogatory" manner after an intra- mural football game. Presumably he could have called him any number of obscene names and not been punished, but "Mexican" got him thirty hours of service also. 126 At Harvard, insensitivity was nipped in the bud when the dean for minority affairs learned that dining hall workers were planning a "Back to the Fifties" party. The fifties were segregated, argued the dean, so such a party would smack of racism. 127 At TUfts University, a student was put on academic probation for saying "Hey, Aunt Jemimah" to a friend who was wearing a bandanna. A bystander was offended and brought charges against the student for violating the college speech code. The university's reasons for punishing the student were murky at best: "We did not find evidence to support [the] accusation [of harassment], never- theless we decided [the student] still had no right to make the remark." 128 In 1989, thirty fraternity members from the University of San Diego were discovered by a park ranger as they were burning a cross in a nature preserve. They were quickly hauled before the college authorities, to whom they explained that this was part of their initiation ritual, which was based on Emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity. Each pledge was to make a list of his faults and burn it in the cross's fire. The university was eventually made to understand that the ritual had no racial significance at all. Nevertheless, the fraternity was put on probation for three years, forced to abandon the ritual, and its members each made to do twenty-five hours of community service. Just for good measure, every member of every fraternity and sorority on campus was made to attend workshops on racism. 129 This is "tolerance" taken to an intolerant limit. Most reports of campus racism are of this kind of thing or of Racism ® 47 racial graffiti. Anything more than verbal abuse is extremely rare. Furthermore, a number of university administrators wonder if some well-publicized cases of anonymous graffiti have not been the work of minority students who think they can profit from the white breast-beating that inevitably follows. 130 Some cases of racial "harassment" are pure play-acting. Sabrina Collins, a black student at Emory University in Atlanta, gained national attention when she received death threats in the mail, her dormitory room was repeatedly ransacked, and racial insults were scrawled on the walls and floor. She was so traumatized that she curled up into a ball and refused to talk. An investigation showed that the episodes began just as Miss Collins came under investiga- tion for violating the school's honor code and that she probably staged everything herself. The head of the Atlanta chapter of the NAACP said that so long as the incident highlighted the pressures that blacks face on mainly white campuses, "it doesn't matter to me whether she did it or not." University officials, just as incoherently, agreed that wor- risome questions about white racism had been raised, whoever was responsible. 131 Whites are so zealous in their search for bigotry that even a hoax is cause for anguished soul-searching. In this atmosphere, colleges all over the country are rushing to combat racism, real or imagined. One of the most common steps has been to ban what is usually called "hate speech." According to one count, by 1990 there were 137 American campuses that banned certain kinds of speech. 132 Speech codes are essentially based on the assumption that whites are racist, nonwhites are not, and the latter must be protected from the former. Some universities are explicit about this. At the University of Cincinnati, the student handbook states that blacks are incapable of racism. Thus when a mixed group of black and white students insulted some Arab students during the Persian Gulf War, the whites were quickly convicted of racism by the student senate. The blacks were above the law. 133 Most speech bans are written so as to apply to everyone, but most people understand that they will usually be invoked only against white students. Some are so broad and so vague that they have been struck down by the courts. At the University of Michi- i 48 ® Paved With Good Intentions gan, a rule was passed that prohibited students from, for example, venturing the opinion that women may be inherently better than men at understanding the needs of infants, or that blacks may be naturally better at basketball than whites. A student filed suit, claiming that the regulation prohibits legitimate research, and his view was upheld by a federal judge. 134 A federal court has also struck down a speech code at the University of Milwaukee. 135 In 1987, the University of Connecticut established what was probably the most bewilderingly broad "sensitivity" code at any school in the country. In addition to the usual slurs, it forbade "inappropriately directed laughter" and "conspicuous exclusion [of another student] from conversation." Only after a student sued the university did it limit its speech ban in 1991 to words "inher- ently likely to provoke an immediate violent reaction." 136 Speech codes may well increase tension and edginess rather than relieve them. A student at the State University of New York at Bingham- ton complains that "If you look at someone funny, it's a bias inci- dent." 137 One university, Brown, has already imposed the heaviest possi- ble penalty — expulsion — on a student who violated its speech code. In a drunken outburst to no one in particular, a white foot- ball player, Douglas Hann, let fly with a series of obscene insults about blacks, Jews, and homosexuals. When a black student ap- proached him to complain, he reportedly told her that his people owned her people. 138 Loutish though Mr. Hann's behavior was, Brown has hardly distinguished itself by expelling a student for expressing opinions. There is some question as to whether speech restrictions are even legal. Some experts have argued that publicly funded univer- sities cannot restrict speech and must abide by the terms of the First Amendment, whereas private colleges have more latitude. Congressman Henry Hyde of Illinois would like to settle the ques- tion once and for all. In March 1991, he introduced legislation in Congress that would outlaw speech codes. 139 In any case, it is a sad day when our universities, which suppos- edly promote academic freedom and unrestricted inquiry, are binding their members with tighter restrictions than does society at large. In such an environment it is no surprise to learn that Racism ® 49 students keep unfashionable opinions to themselves. In 1991, one professor found that students at New York Law School would criticize affirmative action only if they were assured their opinions would be anonymous. On the record, they were all in favor of it. 140 Entire courses have been dropped in the name of "racial sensi- tivity." Reynolds Farley, an acclaimed demographer at the Univer- sity of Michigan, stopped teaching a popular undergraduate course, Race and Cultural Contact, after he was criticized for rac- ism. His offense was to have read in class a self-deprecating pas- sage written by Malcolm X, and to have discussed the southern arguments in defense of slavery. "Given the climate at Michigan," he says, "I could be hassled for anything I do or don't say in that class." 141 Other faculty members at Michigan have cut discussion of race-related subjects from their courses for fear of attack. 142 Administrators come under just as much scrutiny as professors. In early 1992, 250 faculty and students at the City University of New York (CUNY) filed a racism suit claiming discriminatory spending. They argued that the State University of New York (SUNY) was getting more public money per student because it had proportionately more white students. Indeed it was; about 10 percent more. Was this proof of racism? The state university main- tains expensive medical, dental, and technical schools. When these were taken out of the calculations, the city university was actually receiving more public money per student than the state univer- sity. 143 One increasingly common way to combat alleged campus racism is to make all students take courses designed to sensitize them to the plight of minorities. In 1991, the University of California at Berkeley started making students study the contributions of mi- norities to American society. 144 English Composition is the only other campuswide requirement. 145 The University of Wisconsin campuses at Madison and Milwaukee, New York State University at Cortland, the University of Connecticut, Penn State University, the University of Michigan, and Williams College have also insti- tuted race-relations requirements in the past several years. 146 Courses like these often put the burdens of guilt and responsi- bility squarely on whites. As one satisfied student at Southern Methodist University put it, the purpose of a race-relations course 50 ® Paved With Good Intentions he was taking was to show that "whites must be sensitive to the Af- rican-American community rather than the other way around." 147 At Barnard College, teachers who assign readings from the works of "minority women" get cash rewards paid for by grant money. 148 The Ford Foundation recently announced grants worth $1.6 million to nineteen different schools to "diversify" faculties and course content. 149 Many colleges that have not set up required courses make do with specialized orientation. There are no blacks at all at Buena Vista College in Storm Lake, Iowa, but it feels it must also combat racism. Special seminars are held every year. In addition, fresh- men were put through a month-long immersion course on racism in 1990. At least one student was so struck by what he was taught that he reportedly wanted to travel to other parts of the country to see racism firsthand. 150 One wonders exactly what he expected to see. In April 1987, Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, commissioned a Task Force on Racism in response to incidents reported on other campuses — there had been no complaints at Wellesley. The task force duly reported that Wellesley was "co- vertly racist," so it committed itself to hiring more minority teach- ers, and now requires freshmen to take a course in non- Western culture. 151 Harvard University recently put on a week-long program of AWARE seminars (Actively Working Against Racism and Ethno- centrism). John Dovidio, the keynote speaker, explained that all white Americans are racist, 15 percent overtly so and 85 percent more subtly. A black speaker, Gregory Ricks, explained that Ivy League colleges deliberately sap the confidence of blacks, and wondered if they were not practicing a particularly devious form of genocide. One professor suggested that teachers should edit out any facts from their lectures that might offend minorities, because "the pain that racial insensitivity can create is more important than a professor's academic freedom." Another professor agreed that teachers should have less freedom of expression than other people, because it is their duty to build a better world. Finally, Lawrence Watson, cochairman of the Association of Black Faculty and Administrators, had this advice for minority students: "Over- Racism ® 51 reacting and being paranoid is the only way we can deal with this system. . . . Never think that you imagined it [racial insensitivity] because chances are that you didn't." 152 Racial sensitivity can take many forms. The University of Michi- gan marked the 1990 celebration of Martin Luther King's birthday with a series of vigils, seminars, and lectures that involved virtually every department. Some of the offerings were nothing short of heroic. The classical studies department gave a talk called "An- cient Greece and the Black Experience," and the nuclear engi- neering department sponsored a session called "Your Success Can Be Enhanced by Positive Race Relations." The School of Natural Resources gave a lecture on "Environmental Issues and Concerns: The Impact on People of Color." University president James Duderstadt says, "We're reinventing the university for twenty-first- century America." 153 Racism at Stanford Stanford University has also been reinventing itself. It conducts intensive "sensitizing" seminars and requires them for all fresh- men. Nevertheless, in the fall of 1988 Stanford was one of many campuses said to be afflicted with white bigotry. Newspapers and magazines repeatedly referred to a notorious "poster" incident, but they never explained what had happened. The episode is worth a close look. Ujamaa House is Stanford's African-theme residence hall. In 1988 more than half of its 127 students were black. One evening in October there was a hallway discussion among undergraduates. One was a black, whom we will call QC. At one point QC claimed that all music in America has African origins. One of the whites asked about Beethoven. QC shot back that Beethoven was black. Several white freshmen, one of whom we will call Fred, openly doubted that. Later that evening, Fred found a Stanford Orchestra poster with a big picture of Beethoven on it. With a crayon, he gave Beetho- ven an Afro and black features, and hung the poster outside QC's 52 ® Paved With Good Intentions room. QC found it the next day and was "flabbergasted." Another black Ujamaa resident called it "hateful, shocking" and said she was "outraged and sickened." Though he had heard no reaction to the poster, Fred, who lived in the dorm next door to Ujamaa House, began to worry that it might have given offense. He went to his teaching assistant for advice, but the T/A suggested he do nothing. "Let it blow over," he said. Meanwhile, someone scrawled the word "niggers" across a poster advertising a dance at a black fraternity. Coming on top of the Beethoven poster, this caused much fury at Ujamaa House. A black resident T/A who suspected that Fred had defaced at least the Beethoven poster, went to Fred's room to ask him about it. To scare the truth out of him, the T/A said that Ujamaa students were talking about beating him up. Fred promptly admitted marking up the Beethoven poster. It was clear he had had nothing to do with the "niggers" poster. After an abusive grilling by the staff mem- bers of Ujamaa House, Fred decided that he would publicly ex- plain his motives the day after next. About a hundred people were at the meeting, including a thirty- eight-year-old black residential dean who was involved with mi- nority affairs. Fred explained that when he first came to Stanford, he was shocked and offended by the emphasis on race. He said he had come from a multiracial environment but that race was not the central fact of life. He said he disliked what he called "ethnic aggressivity" and that the campus obsession with race was "stu- pid." A friend had been upset to meet a black student who insisted she would not consider marrying anyone but another black. He said he had defaced the Beethoven poster because it was a "good opportunity to show the black students how ridiculous it was to focus on race." He said the poster was "satirical humor." A black student interrupted: "You arrogant bastard. How dare you come here and not even apologize. I want an apology." Fred made a perfunctory apology, which the blacks did not accept. There was then a clamor that Fred be expelled from the neighbor- ing dormitory. The black dean came to Fred's defense and argued that the Beethoven poster was not a big deal, that Fred should stay. The dean said he had dealt with much worse than that in the Racism ® 53 sixties. The black students then turned on the dean, and attacked him repeatedly in a "loud and insulting manner." They later claimed that the dean had "stabbed them in the back." QC stood up to attack the dean. He said it was arrogant of the dean to downplay the Beethoven poster and said he could not tolerate having Fred live next door. He accused Fred of "dogmatic racism" and of having used the poster to insult him personally. After a few minutes of this, QC started crying and moved toward Fred. He shouted something to the effect that in Chicago, where he was from, he could kill Fred for a thing like that. He then lunged at Fred and collapsed. Six or seven students carried him out of the room, "crying and screaming and having a fit." The meeting then went to pieces, with about sixty students cry- ing, some screaming, and others in a daze. In the midst of all this, some of the students continued to argue heatedly with the black dean, who finally agreed to expel Fred from the residence next door. The meeting finally ended. TWo days later, two of the white residents at Ujamaa found notices pushed under their doors that said: "Nonblacks leave our home/you are not welcome in Ujamaa." The same notice ap- peared on the bulletin board. Also that day, someone defaced the photo display of the freshmen in Ujamaa by punching holes in white faces. Several days later, a few signs turned up around cam- pus that read: "Avenge Ujamaa. Smash the honkie oppres- sors!" 154 This, in summary, is the "racial incident" that added Stanford to the list of campuses where white racism is on a dangerous up- swing. In fact, the most poignant character in this sorry tale is the black dean. It is certainly ironic to have struggled to get where he is, only to be attacked by students half his age because he would not admire the depth of their suffering at the hands of "dogmatic racism." Six months later, Stanford released a 244-page report on cam- pus race relations. Because of incidents like the one at Ujamaa House, the report called for thirty new minority faculty, doubl