(00:00:00) Today's speaker. Dr. Mary Frances. Berry is considered one of the America's most respected and distinguished historians. She's climb through the ranks of Academia and law and is currently a the Geraldine are Siegel professor of American Social thought at the University of Pennsylvania. Since 1980. Dr. Berry served as a commissioner on the United States Commission on civil rights in just as a side note in 1983 when President Reagan fired her and other Commissioners who were outspoken critics of the administration civil rights policies. She was reinstated by a federal district court and later Congress reappointed her to the reconstituted commission. Dr. Barry is also one of the founders of the free South Africa movement. She also served from 1977 to January of 1980 as assistant secretary for education in the United States department of health education and Welfare. Dr. Barry is in Minneapolis to participate in the 20th anniversary celebration of the creation of the Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights and the commission on civil rights. We would be hard-pressed to find anyone more qualified to speak. Gun cocks gun contemporary issues in dr. Barry, she lands truth and perspective to lessons of the past and in the setting of goals for the future at the conclusion of her speech. Dr. Barry will be delighted to answer questions. Please use the index cards at your table to jot down your questions during the speech. It is now my pleasure to present to you the membership of Minnesota meeting. Dr. Mary Frances Barry. Thank you very much. (00:02:03) Indeed. I am so pleased to (00:02:04) be in Minneapolis again mayor Fraser and I have in common that my (00:02:12) best male (00:02:13) friend in Washington whose a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter named Roger Wilkins lives in a house an apartment the mayor used to live in so that's what we share and (00:02:27) that's what we share (00:02:29) in (00:02:29) common. I am here for the (00:02:31) 20th anniversary celebration for the Minnesota the Minneapolis civil rights Department here in this city (00:02:39) and I come to you at a time when (00:02:42) in Washington we're having what we call the Silly Season which occurs every August so the (00:02:49) Silly Season is (00:02:50) evidenced by A number of things that happened to those of us who have not the fled the city for the beach or someplace in the swelter of August in international Affairs the Silly Season. We see in the newspapers one day last week. I was reading that the White House. Mr. Fitzwater announced that they did not Note have to notify the Congress under the War Powers Act about (00:03:16) hostilities in the Persian Gulf because that act requires first of all that hostilities be (00:03:22) imminent and he did not believe they were imminent in the same news article down at the bottom of the page. It said the defense department was about to give hazardous duty pay to the sailors who were there because hostilities were imminent. So we call the Silly Season (00:03:38) and just last week a reporter (00:03:41) on a topic that we are discussing here today (00:03:43) called me on the phone and (00:03:44) said could you give me a talk on the on the air for me? He says I just got this hot news at the White House. Briefing this morning that the president is issuing a proclamation issued a proclamation right before he went on vacation calling for a national civil rights day (00:04:02) and I (00:04:02) left and I said could you run that by me again? He (00:04:06) said oh, yeah, I'll read it to you. It says that given the president's wonderful enforcement record in the Civil Rights arena (00:04:15) for women minorities and handicapped and all the rest of us that indeed he was (00:04:20) saying that the country ought to go out and commemorate and celebrate an appropriate manner civil (00:04:24) rights day and we just wanted you to comment and I did the usual thing about the irony of this President being in office at a time and doing all these things. And then finally I said at the end I could not help it I did it on the ear that he probably didn't know what he was (00:04:41) saying, but in any case this is in many ways the best of (00:04:48) times for those of us who are concerned about issues of In Justice and opportunity in our society. And in many ways the worst of times since 1967 when the Civil Rights Department was established here in the City of Minneapolis a number of important changes and developments have taken place in our country to increase opportunity since 1960s. For example, if you're a woman you probably have the opportunity to get educated in fields that you would have been excluded from in 1967. I happen to be in a ring law school at one of the major Big Ten universities. The letter is starts with m, but it's not Minnesota (00:05:31) and in that Law School class of mine that (00:05:34) had upwards of 400 people there were only nine black students of which I was one and there were only ten women in that class. But today when I go back to the law school to visit I find that one third of the (00:05:50) class. Entering class consists of women (00:05:54) unfortunately, not as many blacks as before that's been up and down but that has changed employment. If you're a woman you'll find that you probably likely to be if you're working and most of us are in a job at a higher level of opportunity that you would not have been in before the 1960s. If you're interested in these issues like your freedom to choose whether or not to bring an unwanted terminate a pregnancy to term all that has changed since that time to if you're (00:06:23) black and if you're middle class that is if (00:06:26) you made it into the middle class by 1977 (00:06:29) by now, you should be doing all right, (00:06:31) if you've managed to put more than two or three paychecks together one after the other (00:06:37) and if you have managed to stay out of the wrong (00:06:39) neighborhoods, so that people won't think that you are there in some neighborhood where blacks are not supposed to be you probably doing. Alright, if you made it middle class by 1977 if you're Hispanic and Been in this country a while and you've learned English and you speak it well and have facility with it and you finish school. You're probably doing all right. Likewise. If you're an Asian American and if you're an Indian and if you've been able to find a way to get educated or Native American (00:07:06) and you avoid it the health problems that plagued the Indian Community and been able to somehow get (00:07:11) into the larger economy. You might be probably doing. All right, (00:07:15) and if you are a disabled person you are (00:07:17) clearly doing much better than you used to be. If you are a (00:07:22) disabled if you're handicapped child, you're more likely to be in school and not hidden away in the (00:07:27) closet somewhere or at home with people pretending you don't exist. And if you're an adult you are much more likely to be able to be employed at something you're able to do and be independent and not dependent on other people. So (00:07:39) all these things have changed and if you're a child in any of these families, (00:07:45) you'll probably better offer than you were if they've any of these families that I have had. Have noted and if you're an older American and you get Medicare and you get Social Security, and maybe you saved a little bit of money before you retired, if you had a job, you probably better off and if you're a college student and you (00:08:04) get Aid student aid and (00:08:06) not a bunch of loans that you have to repay for the rest of your life or some appropriate mix you're better off. We are (00:08:14) better off all of (00:08:15) us. If we're in these categories if we can go about ignoring the homeless pretending that the poor do not exist and pretending that the problems that are created of for those who have such problems are entirely their responsibilities and if we stop looking around ourselves what is going on in the society, but it is the worst of times. Also if you care about liberty and justice if you care about opportunity for all and if you care about the future for (00:08:46) ourselves and our children, and if you see yourself as a bridge (00:08:49) between the past. Present and the future because we are (00:08:53) indeed and a period which I like to call a retreat from (00:08:57) realism is a retreat from realism. This has been going on for quite a while (00:09:01) it gets so bad that sometimes you (00:09:03) can't tell illusion from reality Retreat from realism about race issues about sex discrimination about inequities about the left out people and it looked over people in our society (00:09:15) a retreat from realism about our economy and about foreign policy and about almost everything that (00:09:21) matters. For (00:09:23) example, if we look at opportunity in general most Scholars who have analyzed these issues say that you need to (00:09:29) have a number of things to have continued opportunity and increased opportunity. You need economic productivity. You need civil rights (00:09:39) enforcement you need increased levels of (00:09:41) human capital that is more Education and (00:09:44) Training and you also need to (00:09:46) find a way to make people motivated so that they will put forward the effort (00:09:50) well, We have problems on all of these (00:09:52) scores. We need greater economic productivity. But instead we've had stagnation. Everybody talks about and notices everywhere around us the trade deficits the budget deficits the stagnation and the inability. It seems to do anything about it on human (00:10:09) capital questions. We talked a lot about education but we have insufficient funds and ideas for (00:10:15) job training for job creation. And for making sure that people are ready to enter the mainstream of the economy (00:10:23) on civil rights enforcement. We have lots of arguments about how (00:10:27) it's no longer necessary or we don't have discrimination or something (00:10:31) instead of continue to strong enforcement. We have had a since (00:10:35) 1981. At least we can force one of the Voting Rights Act attempts to gut the 1982 amendments of the Voting Rights Act before the Congress, which is Congress (00:10:44) passed. We've had Grove City Title Nine sex discrimination against women being gutted in that case. We've had a dereliction in the enforcement of the laws that protect the handicap from discrimination problems with the age discrimination law being enforced especially in employment by the EOC. We've had the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment and a decline of a national (00:11:07) commitment to school (00:11:08) desegregation are any commitment to what we (00:11:10) used to go around calling and (00:11:12) Multicultural education as well as a tax on pay Equity with some people call comperable worth (00:11:18) and attacks on affirmative action in employment. All of this is happening (00:11:23) unemployment is now in most of the country about where it was in 1980. It hangs around (00:11:30) six percent overall (00:11:32) and we forget that I was in a city in 1960 where there was a riot because the unemployment rate was 3% and people thought that was too high. We also forget that black unemployment of course is always twice everybody else's Hispanic somewhere in between and that under employment that is people. In and making less money for the talents that they (00:11:54) have and the jobs that they do is a major problem and what economists (00:11:58) call and I like (00:12:00) the term down skidding in wages and incomes. I tried to figure out what that men (00:12:05) down skidding means that a (00:12:07) guy who used to work who I met in 1981. He was making $35,000 a year and had his job and who I met again during the recession in 1982 and who (00:12:18) had no job (00:12:20) is now back at work and has a family and he's making $7,500 a year The Economist call that down skidding. I call it pain and suffering (00:12:30) to earn a households have become common just to keep (00:12:33) Pace women we give these figures that we make 64 percent of what men make and of course we have to respond to that doesn't mean every woman is making 64 cents for every dollar just means that on the average. That's what it is because whenever I see that somebody says show me every single woman whose King well, (00:12:52) anyway the more and more poor people who are children of poverty and we talked about the flat of jobs and capital to other countries, the multinational corporation and America (00:13:03) economists say is increasingly becoming a nation of consumers and users instead of makers of essential Goods. (00:13:10) Whenever I say that to people they say well what difference does that (00:13:12) make if we're consumers are users instead of makers. That's all right. If somebody else makes it what difference it make whether we (00:13:18) buy it and I (00:13:21) suppose the only thing that I worry about is that in the service economy at large, although it's true that everybody does not make and sell Egg McMuffins generally people in the self service economy who have who are blue collar make less than people who used to make (00:13:37) steel. I also cannot see how (00:13:39) it can be in our national interest to have the central industrial goods produced in Geographic areas beyond our control (00:13:46) too often as we see the effects of all this were lulled into this. (00:13:51) Treat this in sensibility. There's a lot of discussion now about (00:13:55) protectionism and free trade and whether that'll make the (00:13:57) economy worse or better. (00:14:00) We don't like protectionism. We like the free market (00:14:03) but as one wig says the free market seems to mean that everyone is free. Everyone is free to sell things to Americans and we're not free to sell things to them. I don't know the answer to that but it is a major problem and all of this economic (00:14:18) battering has had an effect. We talked about the poor people in America and we talked about the underclass (00:14:25) especially in we read about it and we see about it in the black community. But we (00:14:29) also have a declining black (00:14:31) middle class A declining black middle class, which (00:14:34) gets almost no attention since 1977 the numbers and percentages of black students who (00:14:39) go on to college have declined every single year. (00:14:43) It has declined even in places where the numbers who graduate from high school have (00:14:47) increased which is major problem in our society (00:14:50) the numbers Senators of Black Folk who made it into the middle class since since the 1960s who leave jobs and are not then replaced and the (00:15:00) overall employment of blacks declines in Middle manage positions and management positions and others (00:15:06) are (00:15:06) recorded in the newspapers. You can read about it in the business section of them New York Times or the newspaper. If you don't know that ask somebody go ask the Bureau of Labor Statistics, they'll give you the statistics a declining black middle class as well as a decline and continued problems with the underclass poor people. We used to call them poor people. We now call them the underclass they are disproportionately black 1/10 of white Americans are poor 1/10. So there are (00:15:32) more white Americans who are poor (00:15:34) people than there are black people who are poor people but more than one-third of the black community is poor and most of these people are (00:15:41) children and it is true that they are in the inner city segregated by race (00:15:46) poorly educated and without the skills or experience in many cases required in today's Place let alone tomorrow's and that there are many among them who are women unmarried. I never married and men men who we overlooked in the discussion who (00:16:00) never worked because they never got a real (00:16:03) job. I'll never finish school or who I (00:16:05) displaced because of the flight of jobs and capital and the communities are plagued in most cases by drugs (00:16:12) and violence. All of that is true people lacking motivation self-esteem lots and lots of children some disabled people some men who worked earlier in their lives and hard work and jobs and women who wore out early and who are (00:16:28) disabled people who are dependent on government programs because if they did not have them what else (00:16:33) would they have and who in fact we have not figured out a way to help solve these problems. (00:16:39) What do we do? If anything is it true that the failed policies of the past made all these things happened and that that essential (00:16:46) element in Opportunity without which civil rights enforcement means nothing. Productivity and the actions of people (00:16:53) that somehow these have been undermined because of the failed policies of the past. I think if we were to look around us, we would find that the so-called failed policies of the past contributed to the success (00:17:05) that many people who make the (00:17:07) statements have had in this country. What do I mean (00:17:10) by the failed policies of the past? I don't mean just the failed policies so-called of the 1960s or the failed policies at the beginning of the 1970s. I mean the failed policies if they can be called that going all the way back about 50 years ago. We have to go all the way back to the new deal. It was during the New Deal (00:17:29) that we got a change in an American (00:17:31) attitude about the role of government which is what the issue of civil rights enforcement planning the economy or anything else is about today. (00:17:38) What is it that the government is supposed to do it was in those days that we resolve the issue in the direction that that part of the Constitution which says Congress shall have the power to tax and spend to The general welfare and provide for the common defense did not mean a whole lot of common (00:17:56) defense and a little bit of general welfare. It was in those days when we resolve that (00:18:02) problem and we did it then because there was an issue and urgency. We have a habit in this country. It's a human condition responding when there is urgency the urgency of War brought about emancipation after the Civil War the urgency of depression which affected people all around the country abroad about the (00:18:24) reforms that took place (00:18:26) and I don't know anybody who says that that changed attitude toward government accounted for everything that happened. I always get impatient with people who have a mono causal Theory or who try to tag (00:18:36) you with a mono causation theory about everything (00:18:39) if you mentioned some policy they say you're saying that that did everything and I can prove it didn't do everything. Well, I never said it did everything but it did something and so this new attitude about government and what it was responsible for when we got the attitude that there was a responsibility to (00:18:54) care for old folk who so that old age would be a Haven and not a sort of heartless. (00:19:00) And for (00:19:00) people which is what Social Security came out of and the (00:19:04) flawed but at the same time wonderful notion that the government ought to provide aid for (00:19:09) families with dependent (00:19:11) children flawed and (00:19:12) that the women who went up in argued in the 1930s that they wanted to (00:19:16) get jobs and have (00:19:17) daycare instead of getting a dole. We're told to stay at home and shut up which is often the fate of women in our history flawed in that sense. But wonderful in that there was some Aid provided for people who need it and the (00:19:30) whole idea of the government being an (00:19:31) employer things like the Public Works Administration and the WPA and all those things and lots of people benefited from (00:19:39) and then World War II, of course and it's (00:19:40) aftermath bought about further changes in that (00:19:43) direction the education programs many people who argue against federal aid to education today. (00:19:48) Don't remember that they wanted to school on the GI (00:19:51) Bill many people who argue that way don't understand or don't say that whole groups of people in this country who never would have thought About going to college because they came from a class where College was unheard of went to college and immediately entered the middle (00:20:07) class as a result of that which made a great change in our society the GI bill but in (00:20:12) throughout that whole period unattended to was a burden of race that had to (00:20:16) wait race gender handicapping condition ageism. All of this had to wait for a later period in our society (00:20:23) and waited did until another crisis (00:20:25) which was the Glory Days of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and the rebellion's riots disturbances of the 1960s and the early 1970s (00:20:35) change came about again partly through non-violence (00:20:38) mostly through non-violence and in part through the violence of which occurred in that period and as a result America began to look more like the way the country really is the (00:20:50) black civil rights movement, of course expanded and proliferated and dispersed into the women's (00:20:56) movement into a movement to incorporate more people into the Tunity that we have in the society and (00:21:02) it was not just civil rights enforcement. (00:21:04) That's what's important to remember always that (00:21:07) civil rights enforcement goes hand-in-hand with programs to make (00:21:11) opportunity reality and it is during that period that on a bipartisan (00:21:16) basis. It was not (00:21:17) Republicans Or democrats who did this it was Democrats and (00:21:20) Republicans and there (00:21:21) was some people who probably weren't any cracks. I mean, they didn't belong to any party but (00:21:25) Democrats and Republicans who responded on a nationwide basis to AB large majorities of the Congress from each party voted for student aid programs and Head Start large majorities voted for civil rights legislation a large majorities voted for Medicare. Even Richard Nixon Republican president proposed (00:21:48) Sita the comprehensive employment and (00:21:49) training act the public service (00:21:51) jobs programs and food stamps. So you (00:21:53) had (00:21:54) bipartisan acknowledgement that in fact something needed to be done. It responds to the pressure. That we're out there in the issues that were made visible and we began to talk different in America. I went back the other day and was reading newspapers and books and articles from that period the things (00:22:10) that people said opinion leaders people said things like a (00:22:14) country's characters determined by how it treats the least of these and not those who are best off and have fewer needs (00:22:20) and when they said that in the (00:22:22) 1960s nobody laughed and in the black (00:22:26) community, we benefited from these changes many people became middle class people in my family who had worked all their lives. (00:22:33) There was no absence of work in my family. We come from a long line of workers going back to the earliest memories of our people being in this country. We've always worked everybody every day from Sun to Sun (00:22:44) but the opportunity became to pay off (00:22:47) and some people finally made it up into the middle class and students and colleges and universities and high schools and elementary schools were taught increasingly to believe in opportunity and (00:22:57) Society came to believe in it and We used to say things like we need to get more in (00:23:02) accord with our democratic values that a mirror had been held up to the face of our national discussion and it revealed cracks and they needed repairing and that we (00:23:13) couldn't solve all the problems the right away, but that at least we were taking the first step which was to acknowledge that problems existed and that in the fullness of (00:23:21) time we would be able to solve them and when people talk like that and the 1960s nobody laughed and there we were and (00:23:29) some of us thought that the problems would soon be (00:23:32) all over. I remember as late as 1977 when I went to work in Washington at the Carter Administration not realizing that I was at the tail end of a phenomenon and not in the middle of it. I had its beginning (00:23:44) I would sit around the (00:23:45) table and talk to my colleagues and we'd (00:23:48) say about how pretty soon we wouldn't even have to be discussing civil rights and opportunity after all we were in office and we were all going to overcome completely even though his other people didn't do it and here I was running a Occasion and I was going to see it to the (00:24:01) right was done and Fritz was going to see the right was none and Jimmy (00:24:05) Carter even though he was kind of fiscally conservative tight. He would hold a dollar till the eagle choked to death that in fact, he was going to do the right thing and we were all going to do right Andrew days was running the Civil Rights Division and justice (00:24:19) department the first black Assistant Attorney General and Eleanor Holmes Norton was over at the EEOC and (00:24:24) all there were women who were general counsel and every cabinet department and they're all these people (00:24:29) wonderful people and things were going to change (00:24:32) real fast faster than (00:24:33) ever before but we were at the tail end of a phenomenon not at its beginning because the reaction had already been sitting in if you go back and read all the statistics you can see that the college going rate was already starting to go down all these things were happening and if you read the newspapers and magazines and the the small magazines and the big magazines and papers and opinion you would see that people were already discussing about how we had gone. (00:25:00) Too far (00:25:01) and my good friend Bill Wilson who's a professor at the University of Chicago came out with a book about that time with an unfortunate title called the declining significance of race. When all the book was really it was about was how we needed to have structural changes in the economy in order to keep making opportunity a reality but the book (00:25:19) sold the reaction was there already the reaction some people say that the (00:25:24) reaction against opportunity occurred when Ronald Reagan it was inaugurated as president. Now, that's too late. Some people (00:25:31) say it happened during the eighty campaign. No, that's too late. Some people said, it happened somewhere along about 1979. They (00:25:37) saw it when it happened. No that is when it happened either it had (00:25:40) already started to happen. It happened almost as it begun and I tried to figure out why it happened and I've talked to people (00:25:47) and listen to people who are experts on these matters. (00:25:50) I don't know some people say it was because of the riots that (00:25:53) occurred in the city of turned off people and they said all these rides he's people ungrateful. We've done too much therefore. Let's not do (00:25:59) anything. Other people say it was inflation and that when inflation was in double digits people got Surly and they weren't interested in doing anything and other people say it was a gas lines and the oil shocks and when you get up early in the morning and stumble out to the service station and sit there and wait for the gas station open. You don't want to hear anything about the least of (00:26:19) these in our society (00:26:21) and other people say it's because people have a short attention span that you can't we can't pay attention to things too long (00:26:29) that if you have an issue or a problem in America, you must solve it in about two years because after two years people say it's time to move on (00:26:37) if you haven't solved that. We're sorry. We thought that was last year sometime. What is the latest (00:26:42) new thing? I don't know (00:26:44) whether it's any of that a physicist friend of mine said no, it's very simple. (00:26:47) You must understand Mary Frances that for every action. There's a reaction. And so you expect this to (00:26:53) happen. I don't know but I do remember it was sort of like maybe the attention span thing is like during the Vietnam war. You may (00:26:59) remember when the monks started burning themselves the protest movement and I remember the first day you come home. Someone told (00:27:04) me and they said look at the TV a monk is burning himself and everybody ran to the television to see this Monk. And so what is it he's doing what's wrong. What is the issue and that on the third day when the (00:27:15) third month burned himself they came home and somebody said a monk is on TV burning and they said oh another month burning himself. Why doesn't he quit? I have already seen that (00:27:26) he did that three days ago. Somebody did that. We don't have time for that. Let's do something new. I don't know but it happened and we got and it wasn't because the problems went away demonstrable e if you sat and looked at analysis and facts and statistics you would see that the problem didn't go away and we got redefinition (00:27:46) in the opinions and in the media and in the things we read and heard. (00:27:51) Definition people finding reasons not to do (00:27:53) anything and I remember the arguments began and they continue today (00:27:57) all of this democracy is bad. It's supposed to be quality. You can't have democracy and quality we had arguments if you were women and you were talking about women's rights of people would say things like you're making your (00:28:10) children suffer. You should stay at home you're undermining the family they didn't tell you he was going to take care of you can stayed at home, but you're undermining the family (00:28:19) or that in fact, we have a free enterprise system in America and we are not accustomed to having government responsible for anything (00:28:27) except military and Foreign Affairs. And what you're doing is undermining the free enterprise system by having government play this role. So with women and it was sexual roles with questions of race inferiority and educational arguments with (00:28:41) handicapped people if you mainstream them, it's going to cost too (00:28:44) much. I remember arguing those issues when I was at a TW and since and where you going to get the money and all this and would be bad. (00:28:51) For everybody else all of this. We even had Scholars who erased or try to the history of inequality and (00:28:57) mistreatment based on gender poverty race and ethnicity. I remember going to scholarly meetings toward the end of 1970 1970s where distinguished people would get up and (00:29:08) make arguments about how slaveholders suffered less than slay a more than slaves and I asked why they said well because the slaveholder see the slaves they had Clinic they had food to eat and they had a bed see and they weren't responsible for management. You see whereas the slaveholders suffered because he had all that psychological guilt and there were no psychiatrist and a 19th century and so his suffering was more and so we sit around and make all these arguments about on then finally people would come up with well. Okay, it happened but don't tell me any more about it. I mean it happened but there's no responsibility for write it off what it came down to was (00:29:48) an argument that if I'm ahead. I'll stay ahead. (00:29:51) And there was a lot of talk about the good old days. I remember that boy the good old days were better when fewer people went to school. I problem today is too many people going to school, you know, if we just had it done on a class basis of elitism, then more people would graduate and we'd be better off. That's what's bringing the test scores down too many people going to school and then you have people saying pretend that everybody is starting off in the same place (00:30:13) that was snapped my head back one (00:30:15) day. Why don't you just pretend marry that everybody started off in the same place and then I went to the library and got a (00:30:22) book called probability Theory (00:30:24) and I found out that if you were behind and somebody says let's start racing. Let's just start where we are that you'll never catch up with them. That's probability Theory. The only way you catch up is if you (00:30:36) shoot them and I don't advise it. (00:30:38) So then we had arguments. I remember debating someone at the beginning of the 1980s in a debate who said to me. Well, you know, the reason why we don't have more diversity in our society Is because people don't want to do these things and they don't have the talent (00:30:55) anyway, and I said, what do you mean by that? He said well, (00:30:58) you know (00:30:58) blacks and no football and basketball and (00:31:01) Asian's know math and physics (00:31:03) women know the nurturing fields of we're (00:31:06) not sure what Hispanics no Indians don't know much of anything, but I he said no almost (00:31:11) everything especially what is required in the best places everywhere. So (00:31:17) the argument is the mirror is (00:31:18) not cracked. In fact, there is no mirror (00:31:22) and the focus of (00:31:23) these arguments to take us off the track on (00:31:27) these issues was on something called forced busing (00:31:30) and affirmative action as a shibboleths forced (00:31:34) busing and forced busing is one word forced busing you have to say it at the same time up close together that's different from unforced busing and and that's you know, like and I believe that argument for a long time. I believed that people like School desegregation and all that. Just didn't like buses (00:31:53) until my assistant who's worked for me for about 15 years and who happens to be white? No, she doesn't have to be why she is wait. (00:32:01) She said she said why don't you stop going out (00:32:04) making those silly arguments and taking those charts with you showing the safety records of buses. (00:32:09) Those people are not silly. I'm not serious about buses. She said you embarrass me going out there with all these tracks. So I did what you said. She said just open your eyes and look listen and I went to a neighborhood near my house diamond white neighborhood upscale (00:32:26) and I watching the morning and I saw buses (00:32:28) and they came and picked up these little children and they went off somewhere and on the side of buses had a (00:32:34) label. It said predominantly predominately white prestigious School number to private school. (00:32:43) So finally I asked the mother. Where is your child going? She said to school. Of course I said how far is it? No, it's about 15 miles. And then I Added well, maybe you know (00:32:53) whoever it was was right when they said it was not the bus but us but anyway (00:32:57) forced busing that was the (00:32:59) argument I've even had people tell me that the problem over the Civil Rights Commission was that we were for a (00:33:05) busing that's why Reagan busing and quotas why Reagan want to get rid of all of us and I went back and looked and while I was on the commission during my time that we hadn't even issued any report about busing but anyway didn't get a chance to and affirmative action affirmative action still the shibboleth. We know that there are arguments against it we're told and we're told a lot of things about affirmative action. We (00:33:27) told it violates Merit standards and usually when people say that they mean standardized tests. I (00:33:31) finally figured that out standardized tests and then I believe that argument until I went out and I discovered something two years ago because I had to write a piece on this stand SAT test (00:33:43) for a newspaper and I got all this information (00:33:46) and I found out that blacks make Lord (00:33:48) scores and whites on sats. (00:33:51) But guess who makes the lowest scores of all (00:33:53) you don't know because I didn't either (00:33:55) poor whites (00:33:56) make the Lord scores of all (00:33:58) and do you know I've discovered since that time that nobody wants to talk about pull a people (00:34:03) even poor white people don't want to talk about poor white people. I am going to teach a class at University. I decided call Poor white people (00:34:10) and I'm going to make people talk about pull away people but I discovered that then I discovered something else. I (00:34:16) discovered that Japanese Americans make (00:34:20) the highest scores on the SAT and I thought isn't this wonderful. I have accepted the (00:34:25) argument that SATs count for everything (00:34:28) and now these guys make the highest scores. So I called up a colleague of mine at a rather (00:34:33) distinguished University on the East Coast on a river called The Charles (00:34:39) and I said to him, you know, we've been having this debate for 10 years and I was accepting your thing finally about if we just made the right scores, we be able to go anywhere and do everything I said. I'm coming your campus. I want to visit all the classes because I want to see the delightful lecture Halls filled (00:34:58) with Japanese American students. (00:35:00) He said what are you talking about? I said well they make the highest and CDs so I know that in every highly desired classroom on your campus there they will be sitting and it'll be a (00:35:12) lovely sight for me to see and he said (00:35:16) you must be crazy. Are you been drinking something? So I don't know what the answer is but I figured out well (00:35:24) that is not really really the whole total answer may be part of it does (00:35:28) not mean I hasten to add that we did (00:35:31) not have to pass tests as I tell black community people and my friends and relatives all the time. We have to learn how to pass tests. Anyway, it doesn't matter we spend all of our time arguing about whether they are culturally biased and all that that takes up energy and we can't win the argument. So let's just go on and pass them and then whatever the next sorting device is will have to figure (00:35:51) How to pass that too. Anyway, why it on the firmament of action with all these arguments about it (00:35:57) why we must ask ourselves is it that it's still law and that the at least until now and that the Supreme Court is continue to uphold it and I don't mean just people on the court like Brennan and Marshall but people (00:36:08) like mr. Justice Powell (00:36:11) when he was there people like Warren burger and even Sandra Day O'Connor (00:36:16) now, why are these people upholding it? Well, I think the reason why is that it is recognized by thoughtful people that affirmative action is a (00:36:24) conservative remedy to the problem of racial and gender subordination. (00:36:29) It is not a radical. There's nothing radical about affirmative action. That is why I ask yourself. Why is it the business people Corporation some of them from Round Here the minute the president or somebody says the president's going to get rid of the Executive Order 11246 and end affirmative action for government contractors. All the employers say no don't get rid of affirmative action. Why do they (00:36:51) Do (00:36:51) that. The reason why they do it is because they know (00:36:54) that it is a conservative remedy. What do I mean (00:36:58) when the acknowledgement that there were some civil rights (00:37:00) problems in this country that needed fixing took place in the 60s. There were a lot of options proposed. One of them was reparations. Then that would have been kind of radical reparations. And (00:37:11) first I thought they meant 40 acres and a mule and I did not want them you and I said my 40 acres is prime Real Estate in Manhattan, and they didn't want to give me that but one was reparations and a guy named barks bicker who's a law professor (00:37:26) at a major university of sides of the Y and New Haven (00:37:29) wrote a book called the case for black reparations in which he costed out how much the all that would cost and then we write it off but that was too expensive and anybody who proposed it was (00:37:40) regarded as slightly off as a (00:37:43) practical solution another option which one I sort of light would have been an attempt to require removal of employees who (00:37:50) got their job. Jobs without competing against everybody competing against everybody who was qualified (00:37:56) that is anybody who was in a job would get fired because they didn't compete with everybody who's qualified. Now, how do we know that? We know that before the civil rights laws were passed and before affirmative action was (00:38:10) enforced there were jobs and women couldn't get (00:38:12) could even apply for I mean people would laugh at you if you want (00:38:16) jobs that if you were black people kick out the door Hispanics and so on (00:38:19) Asians and so these people who got them didn't compete with everybody's qualified now that we have Merit then we want to get rid of them and we knew I thought that they would be happy to be (00:38:30) gotten rid of in the interest of marriage that they'd be the (00:38:33) first to walk out the door. And then as soon as we did (00:38:36) that we could come up with valid standards and rehire everybody who better met the standards. (00:38:41) Well, I tried this out on a national labor leader one (00:38:44) time and he looked at me just like the guy up at Cambridge looked at me and said you must be drinking. (00:38:52) Have you not ever heard of seniority? I said Oh, I thought you believed in Mary. (00:38:57) Well, in any case that was (00:38:58) kind of radical and that didn't happen either but affirmative action was brought forward because something needed (00:39:04) to be done (00:39:05) stability in the society needed (00:39:06) to be reinforced because there were protests marches and sit-ins and riots and all kinds of things happening. And so what do you do when you want to reinforce stability you call in the lawyers (00:39:18) and the lawyers said, okay. We got a remedy for you. What do we do when there's harm done? If you're a lawyer the first thing you think (00:39:25) about is there will be an affirmative response on the part of the person who's done the harm (00:39:30) and you think about well, let's see, it's not only the person who did the harm today, but in fact we think about inequity that if you can if the equity has to choose between someone who benefited from a harm that was done and someone who in fact was (00:39:46) victimized Equity will always come to the rescue with a person who was victimized and (00:39:51) so these Very simple principles who were from was familiar to everybody who was a lawyer but who had nothing to do with a which had nothing to do with race or (00:39:59) gender or anything like that were put into place and it is a (00:40:03) long drawn-out lawyer like solution (00:40:07) bound up with paperwork administrative procedure litigation (00:40:11) courts and due process. It has been a great success and a great (00:40:15) failure what I mean by that a great success (00:40:18) because millions of minority workers and women of all (00:40:21) Races have gotten jobs that they would never have gotten if they had been no affirmative action and made more money as a result which is how you make money unless you inherit it or steal it (00:40:31) and because in fact they have because of affirmative (00:40:35) action and their further education they have been able to do this. It has been a (00:40:40) great failure because it is moved so slowly that the kind of progress that (00:40:44) people thought would be made hasn't been made (00:40:46) and in many cases it is given management and business an excuse for (00:40:51) saying They're doing something which when all they're really doing is making up an affirmative action plan, (00:40:56) but it also is a cover because when somebody like the NAACP or Operation (00:41:03) Push or some organization wants to go and boycott a corporation because they don't do the right thing on hiring women and (00:41:09) minorities. They can always say look at my firm of action plan go down and a civil rights office how good my contract compliance praying and here are my goals. Look at my wonderful timetables. I'm doing all right, I'm making a good-faith effort. (00:41:22) So it has been a failure and it has been a success (00:41:25) but overall it is necessary until we (00:41:29) are able to get equal employment opportunity really enforced in our society. Now, what do we do about all these problems they exist they been existing. I don't know. That's the short answer (00:41:41) whenever you propose something in our country to solve a problem. It's hard to get people's attention. All you get is a really excuses some issues get hot tea Spread next pregnancy was a hot issue for a while. I guess it (00:41:54) still is that meetings all around about teenage pregnancy, but (00:41:57) when I tell people that an anthropologist told me (00:42:00) that if you want to know what causes teenage pregnancy understand (00:42:05) that when people have nothing to do that there is one human activity that they engage in a whole (00:42:11) lot people don't want to hear that and that same Anthropologist told me if you do not believe me go on vacation with somebody you really like. (00:42:23) So I that's not all the answer nothing ever is but it is part of the answer we talk about welfare reform and everybody's in favor reforming it now to (00:42:33) make people work. That is the Nay latest buzzword along with competitiveness and so on but in fact in areas where their high unemployment rates nobody's figured out how to generate any jobs (00:42:44) and even and we talked about getting people off welfare making them work when their (00:42:48) housing employment rate some places where people who are not even on Affair don't have jobs. (00:42:53) We resist paying for the kind (00:42:55) of day care that people will need if they're going to work. And the other interesting thing to me is (00:43:01) how some people who have argued all this time that women need to stay home with their (00:43:04) children and the women shouldn't be in the workforce when you start talking about welfare (00:43:08) reform they say, yeah, they should be in the workforce and they shouldn't be home with their kids. I know one woman whose name I won't mention she is the darling (00:43:16) of faction, which is to the right of where I am on the issues who I debate from time to time and she said to me one day she (00:43:23) said, you know, I used to be against all this (00:43:26) business about daycare and didn't want to do anything about welfare, (00:43:30) but I found out that all the people on welfare are black so that's okay. I'm for it. (00:43:33) Now. That's not true. Of course because most people on welfare away. I remember seeing Jesse Jackson on the Phil Donahue show where he said almost the people on welfare a white and there (00:43:44) was a big argument on the show about whether he was telling the truth anybody who knew that most of the (00:43:49) population was would have known that. Senator wires and make sense (00:43:53) the political parties fight internally infernally and eternally about how far right or left move in order to win the 880 (00:44:03) election. That's one of the big debates now about (00:44:06) and not how far (00:44:07) right or left to move on any issue is good for the country and (00:44:12) then they are always complaining about special interests. I've discovered that if I go (00:44:15) to talk to Congressman or Senator about something I'm a special (00:44:19) interest, but if the person who's against my position goes talk there citizen. Yeah, my special interest and that person is a citizen. I mean if you were against women have (00:44:29) freedom of choice in the area of abortion rights. If you're against that the you're a citizen if you're pro-choice, then you are special interest. I mean, I don't understand that (00:44:40) but much of the public can behaves as if they (00:44:43) own special interests, which consists of thinking about themselves is really in the National interest in our society. What you need in order to make progress is effort and opportunity effort and opportunity effort without opportunity won't get you anywhere and all the opportunity in the world. If you don't make the effort won't get you anywhere and nobody knows what motivates people but we do know that opportunity sometimes does and it's worth the risk of bringing them (00:45:08) together. Also if there's to be no government responsibility for the (00:45:12) black poor. We will be the only people in America who pay (00:45:14) taxes and who get absolutely no response (00:45:19) from our concern for our concerns and that there are some problems that only government Can do so the answer of course is self-help and government responsibility put together to solve these problems, but that's too complex for a lot of people and it's hard for them to understand what my mother calls keeping more than one idea in your head at the same time. She says I've known you to have at least two ideas and sometimes three try to keep on doing that it (00:45:45) seems more and more likely that analysis doesn't (00:45:49) solve the problem (00:45:50) that escapes from these (00:45:51) problems will elude us. I believe until things get a lot worse and until there's another social reform movement to inspire change such as those that have existed in the past. Somebody's going to have to put themselves on the line to reinforce the legalisms and to reinforce the policy and to bring an impetus to bear for new policy and that new Reform movement is going to be across racial lines and it's going to focus on the need for real opportunity for all as the highest purpose of our national existence and there are people around the country who are already Progressives on this issue and who are trying on this issue and will continue to try there's a lot that we can do there things that we can do (00:46:32) politically we can try to understand the issues. (00:46:35) That's one of the biggest problem trying to understand the issues. The other one is to mobilize politically whether it's around issues like the nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court, which is a watershed issue, (00:46:47) whether it's in fact engaging in Acts of Civil Disobedience on local issues to help turn the tide or whether it's in fact, if you don't like politics doing something simple, if you can't help on the political side go (00:46:59) tutor child visit a shelter for the homeless volunteer there. It can have a wonderful in lightening effect on a human being to be there helping adult who is illiterate and who (00:47:11) wants to learn how to read everybody can do something (00:47:15) people cannot do everything but they can do the next thing and the major reason why things are not worse than they could be right now. And the reason why we continue to can be optimistic is that there are some people who have stood up in these difficult times the civil rights groups the leadership some of the political leadership people in local communities around the country who continued to challenge and to stand up on these (00:47:38) issues. They remember (00:47:40) that if Rosa Parks before she sat down in Montgomery before the boycott bus boycott had taken a poll. She'd still be standing up. (00:47:51) They knew it was never easy and it takes time because and that's (00:47:55) okay because it's taken us hundreds of years for (00:47:58) emancipation From Slavery for women to get the right to vote. It's only been about 22 (00:48:03) years that in Black America has had real freedom in the law in this country. The only about 22 years my goodness. We act like people say well, why are you people so impatient? And why do you say we have to keep (00:48:17) on doing this? We've been (00:48:18) doing it forever know it's only been about 22 years and we've had real freedom in the law and that came as a result. Struggle the (00:48:24) answer to the (00:48:26) injunction of history is that if we want (00:48:29) to have real Liberty (00:48:30) and Justice in our country, (00:48:33) and if we want to celebrate the next 20th (00:48:35) anniversary of the Civil Rights Department here with having accomplished. I (00:48:39) objectives more (00:48:40) struggle is going to be required. Thank you very much. (00:49:06) Dr. Barry will be happy to take questions from the audience. So the more of you will be able to ask questions Jean Maris executive director of Minnesota meeting. Will there she is move among you with a microphone to manage the question and answer session. So Jane you're wondering about. (00:49:30) Okay. Dr. Barry. We have a question. Could you comment on the women's movement in the role of women of color within it and the women's movement the role women of color (00:49:42) that has been (00:49:45) as part of our history. There's been a continuing dispute and controversy. And difficulty with the incorporation of women of color in the women's movement the women's movement often appears to people we're talking about the women's rights movement. I assume not the women's anti Rights Movement. The women's rights movement has ostensibly included the concerns of women of color early on we were talking about black women and we say women of color we mean black Hispanic Asian Native American women in the concerns that they had before them. There was one big split the 19th century is matter of History over the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment getting added to the Constitution prohibiting race discrimination in the vote in the 15th Amendment but not sex discrimination. So you had a big split there in the women's suffrage movement leading up to the 19th Amendment. There was a lot of dissension about the role of southern women and southern white women and men who did not want black women to be included which Created all kinds of problems appeals to racism made by some of the leaders of the suffrage movement which are documented by historians people like Susan B Anthony and others which were done for Madame reasons of political expediency. (00:51:07) And oh some rather (00:51:09) graphic examples things like out to be Wells who was a rather heroic black woman who reporter and civil rights activist who led a group of women at a March in Washington for suffrage during the Wilson Administration and being told that she should in March because she was black and it might offend some of the whites and she being like out of be Wells was when the March started she just pushed into the land anyway and went on (00:51:35) March the events like that in the most (00:51:39) recent period of our history dissension about how much enforcement of the Civil Rights Act benefited women who were not women of color and how many how much of it in Enforcement benefited black males especially and people of color (00:51:59) issues (00:51:59) around in the last few years the 1984 campaign. When a number of women of color thought that it was unfortunate that when Fritz was interviewing all those people to be the vice presidential candidate. He didn't interview any any minority women didn't interview Shirley Chisholm who was an obvious person to interview. Not that she would have been camping anybody who would I don't know who is advising for time never asked him. I asked him that that that was a mistake and also a lot of deals and agreements political deals in agreements that have been made during the run-up to the Democratic Convention between black women Hispanic women, especially and the white women that were not kept once the Ferraro nomination seemed assured people's just sort of backed off. So that's created (00:52:51) problems. Now, I think I have what it do. Some of my best friends are white (00:52:56) women and I don't mean I mean, that's true. I mean I went to school with him and Michigan and song that said other em school, but the (00:53:05) fact is that (00:53:07) they are a product of the culture in which they were born and the relationships that they've had and instinctively it's kind of hard to think of other people. I had a special assistant to work for me once not the one I have now one of them who was a white woman of good friend of mine and I told her to go out and recruit some more women and one day where she was going over the list of who she recruited for the various agencies and departments under us and I asked her about him. I said how many of them black women she said, oh my God, none of them. I didn't think (00:53:39) I said Leslie, how could you do that? Just I just didn't think I said how many Hispanic I didn't think (00:53:45) she had recruited all these people and they were all white women. And (00:53:48) so she here she is working for me now so and Man, and so she had to be sensitized and reminded and I'm always (00:53:57) reminding the women who are my friends and I belong to every organization so I can remind him from that standpoint. I belong to anything that you send me a notice for through the mail. (00:54:09) So if it has a sad face on it, I'll send money enjoying it or whatever but I remind them of that that is a continuing Titian and (00:54:17) I think it is reflective of the racism generally that exists in the society and it has to be confronted head-on and I don't mean confronted by having consciousness-raising sessions where people are get a notice which says please come to a meeting to discuss your racism. (00:54:33) I mean, the only people who show up at meetings like that or people who already (00:54:36) sensitized (00:54:37) what has to be done is people have to work on issues (00:54:40) together. I mean it's one thing to come to a meeting to discuss day care for our children and how we can all get together to do something but it's another one to come sit and discuss whether you are racist and if you are what you do about it and so on song the people you need don't get there. So I think more of that and (00:54:59) challenging each other challenging each other. The other part is that women often white women also often don't know how to deal (00:55:05) with things that happen with women of color when they are associated with them in causes. (00:55:12) They don't even radical (00:55:13) feminists don't deal with it in the same way. They would deal with the radical women's issue. For example, I know a case now somewhere where a black woman who's working in an organization isn't doing her job and the white women don't want to tell her because you know, we don't want to tell her because she might get mad they might think we're racist. (00:55:30) Well if she's not doing a job tell her she's not doing a job. Maybe that's racist not to (00:55:35) tell her so there are continuing strains and the major women's organizations have very few black. Members they ought to have more black women are stronger on women's issues than white women are as a matter of fact if white women wear a supportive of women's issues as black women are era would be (00:55:53) ratified all the issues that people in the women's rights (00:55:57) movement. The biggest problem of the women's movement is white women (00:56:02) who oppose the ones who oppose (00:56:04) everything because they think they got a good they got a good deal as Phyllis Schlafly told me once I don't want to be equal. I want to be better. Thank you very (00:56:12) much.