Headline: THOSE WHO SEEK PATH OF EQUALITY STILL NEED HELP
Reporter: By Gregory Freeman

Publication: ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Last Printed: Sun., Dec. 8, 1991
Section: NEWS, Page: 4B, Edition: LATE FIVE STAR

My FIRST JOB at a daily newspaper was at a small paper in Michigan that hired an entire new staff in the 1970s.
  
Some of those hired were, like me, fresh out of college. Some had worked for one other newspaper. Most of us were pretty green. The last five people hired for the staff were black. All of us, of course, were happy to have reporting jobs.
  
None of us gave it any thought at that time. But when it became apparent that one of the black reporters wasn't a very good writer, some of us began to wonder. Why would the paper hire someone who obviously didn't know even the basics of newspaper writing? We began to feel sorry for him, and some of us tried to take him under our wings.
  
But he soon realized that he wasn't cut out to be a journalist and eventually took a job unrelated to journalism.

His hiring, though, made the rest of us who were black reporters wonder about ourselves. We had, after all, been hired at one time, almost as a bloc. Had all of our hirings been because of an affirmative action policy and not because of our own talents? I had had confidence in my own abilities, having been a reporter and editor for Washington University's student newspaper for four years, and having had an internship at the Washington Star and reporting experience with the St. Louis American under my belt. But, like the other black journalists at the paper, I began to have doubts as well.
   
I've since overcome such doubts, although some blacks are haunted by them years later, despite the fact they've proven themselves in a professional setting. It is, I suppose, one of the down sides of affirmative action.

Affirmative action, school desegregation programs, race-based scholarships - all are under attack these days by people who think that the nation has done enough to help its minorities. In addition to suggesting that such programs are a waste, some of those critics argue that such programs don't really help the minorities who participate or that they make them feel inferior to their white peers.

Affirmative action programs - set up about 25 years ago - were designed to give minorities a chance in places where they had not been given one, presumably because of race. They've been expanded over the years to include sex and other factors.
   
The programs have worked, at least to a limited degree. Affirmative action programs opened the doors for many minorities, where the doors would not have opened otherwise.
  
But they haven't worked nearly as well as they were designed to work. While there are more minorities working in the mainstream today than may have been the case in 1965, the numbers are hardly representative of the population.
  
My own business is a prime example. While ethnic minorities today make up as much as 20 percent of the population, they make up 8.5 percent of those working for daily newspapers, according to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, which conducts annual surveys. That includes blacks, Asians, Native Americans and Hispanics.

The reason given for most school desegregation programs is that black schools and white schools in past years did not receive equal amounts of funding for books, supplies and other materials. The result has been school busing, a concept disliked by many blacks and whites.
  
But the concept is accepted by many blacks because they see it as a way to see to it that their youngsters get equitable education. Many of those parents would prefer to send their students to school in their own neighborhoods. But because the schools in their neighborhoods often are not as good as the ones their youngsters are bused to, the parents tolerate busing.
  
And maybe busing helps foster racial understanding, although that's not its purpose.

As for the issue of race-based scholarships, colleges and universities did not set them up to discriminate against anyone. They are not there to keep anyone out of college. They're there to help people get in who otherwise might not have that opportunity.
  
Colleges make decisions on who gets in and who doesn't using a variety of criteria. Ethnic diversity is certainly involved in those decisions.
   But so are geographic diversity, diversity of rural and urban students and many other areas. And, as anyone who has ever gone on a scholarship search knows, there are scholarships for all kinds of people of various backgrounds. There are even scholarships for those who are left-handed.

The bottom line? It's too bad that we have to have programs like affirmative action, school desegregation programs and race-based scholarships. But I submit that while none of these programs has been as successful as may have once been hoped, all have been starts down the path of equality.
  
None of these should be looked upon as permanent solutions. We would all be better served without them. But our nation is not ready to simply do away with them all. No one can factually argue that businesses are now thoroughly integrated, that schools in black neighborhoods now receive the same amount of funding as schools in white neighborhoods, that most colleges and universities now have equitable numbers of minorities among their faculty and student populations.
  
Until those arguments can be factually supported - or until better programs are developed - America is stuck with some imperfect solutions.


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