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Rethinking the American Race Problem
By Roy L. Brooks University of California Press
Copyright © 1992 Roy L. Brooks
All right reserved. ISBN: 9780520078789
Understanding the Problem Combining elements of race and class, I attempt to establish two propositions in Part I of this book. First, certain societal hardships within socioeconomic classes are manifested along racial lines, creating racial inequalities that form today's race problem. Second, our fundamental civil rights policy, formal equal opportunity (examined in Chapter 1), denies priority to specific African American civil rights interests class by class and, as a consequence, such racial subordination accommodates, intensifies, and nurtures intra-class racial disparity, or the American race problem. At a deeper level, both of these propositions find expression in the "subordination question," a two-pronged question that asks whether formal equal opportunity (through its tenets, racial omission and racial integration) subordinates the civil rights interests of African Americans and, if so, whether such racial subordination contributes to intra-class racial disparity. Part I answers both questions in the affirmative.
In short, my response to the subordination question comes down to a simple lesson: By giving little or no priority to the interests of African Americans in equal opportunity, civil rights laws and policies, as developedand interpreted over the past several decades, ineluctably contribute to the American race problem .
The African American Middle Class
Compared to their white counterparts, middle-class African Americans suffer more employment discrimination ("complex racial discrimination") and segregation (racially stratified work environments), other employment hardships, housing discrimination and segregation, and low college enrollment. Chapter 2 focuses only on employment disparities; housing and education are considered later, in connection with the working class.
Formal equal opportunity's tenet of racial omission subordinates the civil rights interest of middle-class African Americans in equal employment opportunity in several ways. A primary problem is the priestly status given to the "strict scrutiny" test, a judicial construct used in constitutional litigation to vindicate this tenet. The strict scrutiny test, faithfully applied, gives low priority to the equal employment opportunity interest of middle-class African Americans by enjoining or discouraging public-sector employers from using race-conscious employment policies or practices that give qualified African Americans access to jobs from which they have been excluded in the past by societal discrimination. As a consequence of such racial subordination, there are fewer good opportunities in the legal arena to redress the socioeconomic disparity that is manifested along racial lines within the American middle class and that involves complex racial discrimination, segregation, and other job-related hardships, from loneliness and disaffection to stress and hypertension.
Similarly, judicial construction of statutory antidiscrimination law—mainly Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act,17 —shifts to the plaintiff the burden of persuasion concerning a defendant's justification for a discriminatory practice and places a relatively high standard of causation on the plaintiff. Some courts have even shown a reluctance to apply Title VII to high-level jobs. These and other features discussed later subordinate the interest of middle-class African Americans in equal employment opportunity by substantially decreasing the odds of winning cases under Title VII. Consequently, legal remedies for complex racial discrimination and racial segregation in the nation's top jobs are significantly limited.
The African American Working Class
Like middle-class African Americans, working-class African Americans experience intra-class racial disparity in employment, housing, and higher education. But unlike the more affluent members of their race, members of the working class also encounter obstacles in primary education and additional hardships on the job. Although the employment problems they face, including the lack of time, money, and flexibility to pursue Title VII litigation, are extremely important, I have chosen to focus the argument in Chapter 3 on intra-class racial disparities in housing and education, both primary (here meaning kindergarten through high school) and higher education.
Legal doctrines, procedures, and policies designed to implement or vindicate the racial omission tenet subordinate certain housing and educational interests of working-class African Americans and consequently accommodate or sustain intra-class racial disparity in these areas. Chapter 3 specifically discusses the role of the "intent" test, the strict scrutiny test, the Fair Housing Act, and the Supreme Court's decision in the Bakke case.
The intent test, for example—another judicial creation that reigns supreme in the realm of constitutional litigation—makes the task of proving racial discrimination in housing and racial segregation in public schools extremely difficult and often impossible. Members of the African American working class find themselves unable to use litigation, an essential governmental resource, to effectively protect their interests in equal housing and educational opportunity. The housing discrimination and segregation traceable to race within the working class thus continue unabated. In primary education, problems such as the absence of cultural diversity and the dearth of educational resources (from books to desks to computers) in racially isolated inner-city public schools remain acute.
Faithful application of the strict scrutiny test invalidates any remedial use of racial occupancy controls, or "benign housing quotas," that could counteract complex housing discrimination and prevent housing resegregation through the "tipping" phenomenon. This gives low priority to the African American
working class's civil rights interest in open housing. The style of racial subordination supported by the strict scrutiny test can only contribute to the housing problems of working-class African Americans and prolong the struggle against discrimination and housing segregation—segregation that is especially pernicious not only because it usually entails poor municipal services and low-quality housing but also because it etches in the minds of both African Americans and whites an indelible image of yesteryear's racial hierarchy.
The African American working class's civil rights interest in fair housing is further frustrated by the poor structure and administration of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and by the protracted litigation and the low amounts of monetary relief under both Section 1982 and (until recently) the Fair Housing Act.18 In failing to support the interest of working-class African Americans in equal housing opportunity, these acts of Congress have allowed housing discrimination and segregation to continue for at least a generation.
Likewise, the Supreme Court's momentous decision in Regents of the University of California v.Bakke —which some have incorrectly regarded as a constitutional precedent—has given college and university admissions officers reason to abandon admissions quotas for African Americans or to place undue weight on traditional academic indicators.19 These admissions practices, which fail to give priority to the interest of African Americans in equal opportunity in higher education, have the effect of decreasing the enrollment of African Americans in colleges and graduate schools.
The tenet of racial integration is also tied to practices that subordinate the interest of working-class African Americans in equal primary education. School officials often implement this tenet in ways that result in "second-generation discrimination" and "resegregation" within integrated schools: academic tracking patterns, biased disciplinary practices, disproportionate placements in classes for the mentally retarded, and school integration techniques that place heavy burdens on African American schoolchildren. Such racial subordination destroys not only the quality of education these children receive but also their self-esteem.
The African American Poverty Class
Intra-class racial disparity in the poverty class is reflected in the disproportionate number of poor African Americans who live in long-term poverty, who experience long-term unemployment, who remain geographically isolated within the inner city, and who, because of these socioeconomic conditions, exhibit a proclivity toward behaviors, values, and attitudes that are dysfunctional and self-defeating in American society. These ingredients constitute a subculture within the African American poverty class—that is, an underclass. Structural transformation of our smokestack economy to a service-oriented economy requiring a higher level of skills may be, as Wilson claims, the major reason for the creation of the African American underclass.20 But slavery and Jim Crow also set in motion socioeconomic conditions—unemployment, poverty, residential isolation—that have helped to form this group.
The tenet of racial integration aggravates these conditions by subordinating the primary civil rights interest of the African American poor, which is to have an equal opportunity to achieve a decent standard of living. Integration policies have this effect by providing a first-time opportunity for middle-class and workingclass African Americans to leave previously segregated communities. Although this is beneficial for those who leave and for the nation as a whole, such an exodus of stable families and talented individuals is a disaster for those who are left behind in poverty-stricken areas. It depletes from African American communities the human and economic resources—talented community leadership, role models, social stability, and dollars—that are necessary for millions of poor African Americans to attain control over their lives and a reasonable level of existence.21 Racial integration pays little attention to this special civil rights interest of the African American poverty class. Its effect hurts rather than helps this class, leaving many of its members behind in the underclass as "unavoidable costs" of racial progress, while more stable and affluent African American households march forward with the rest of society (though at a slower pace than whites). By failing to recognize or emphasize the civil rights interest of the poverty class in achieving an adequate standard of living, racial integration
helps to open a cultural and economic abyss in communities already suffering from the lingering effects of slavery and Jim Crow, creating an underworld of dysfunction and self-destruction into which millions of African Americans have fallen.
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Excerpted from Rethinking the American Race Problem by Roy L. Brooks Copyright © 1992 by Roy L. Brooks. Excerpted by permission.
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