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True
Progress for Minorities
Obsession
with symbolic issues like cross burnings distract
African-Americans from focusing on issues, like K-12
education, that can really make a difference in
their lives.
Recent
media preoccupation with cross burning and
affirmative action obscures more important matters
affecting minorities in Virginia, particularly
African Americans. Real progress is unlikely until
these other matters are dealt with honestly.
Symbols of racial
mistreatment and discrimination stir powerful
emotions among African Americans. That should come
as no surprise. Yet, the enormous energy invested in
these battles could be more appropriately applied to
other struggles critical to improving the social and
economic condition of African Americans and other
minorities.
The terrifying
effect of burning a cross for the purpose of
intimidation shouldn’t be trivialized. What the
media ignored, however, is that such a criminal act
can be prosecuted just as forcefully and effectively
under a recently enacted Virginia statute as under
the old cross-burning statute struck down by the
Virginia Supreme Court in 2001.
The decision of the
U.S. Supreme Court, which reversed one aspect of the
Virginia Supreme Court’s ruling, will have no
discernible impact on prosecutions of cross burning
here. So what has all the legal wrangling, political
commentary and public debate been about? How has any
of this advanced the cause of minorities?
For
judges and lawyers, the battle has largely been an
exercise in hair-splitting. Just read the five
different opinions filed by the nine justices.
For politicians,
this has been an emotion-charged campaign over a
symbol of our racial history. It has never been
about whether those who burn a cross to intimidate
can and will be prosecuted.
In the fight over
the use of racial preferences in college admission
decisions, unlike the cross-burning fight, the
outcome might actually make a real difference. The
diversity of college student bodies could very
likely be affected if racial preferences are
outlawed by the U.S. Supreme Court when it decides a
pending case later this year. But the extent of that
potential difference has been overstated by
proponents of practices such as those at the
University of Michigan.
African Americans
would be well advised to concentrate on the far more
important problem in education at the elementary and
secondary school levels. Inner city public schools
are poorly serving hundreds of thousands of children
of all races. The relatively small number of high
school graduates who would gain admission to elite
colleges through racial preferences pales in
comparison to the number of children who are cheated
of their opportunity to have a decent education long
before a college decision is even a potentiality for
them.
The use of racial
preferences is a practice that deeply divides
Americans. There is a political cost to minorities
in demanding continuation of reverse discrimination.
The resentment it fosters could undermine their
efforts to advance on other fronts.
African Americans
should be building coalitions to strike at the
seemingly intractable problems that hinder their
social and economic progress. These will not
necessarily be political coalitions lobbying for new
legislation.
There has been an
avalanche of new laws since in mid-1960s without
appreciable change in the social and economic
conditions of most African Americans. It’s
time for an accounting. Were these laws oversold as
tools to help minorities advance?
None of this is to
suggest that political and legal battles over
symbols are always unjustified. There are times for
such battles.
The aspirations of
minorities are being frustrated because symbolic
battles now consume most of their energy. It would
be far more productive to focus on strengthening
educational opportunities for all minority children
and eliminating the causes of family and community
disintegration.
--
April 14, 2003
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