We're Not Done Yet

All you have to do is say it…… “affirmative action”….
and everyone in the room winds themselves up tight like a
railroad watch.

Well, I think it is a surpassing, humane and and sensible policy,
a proper emergency room which opened after 500 years of color
discrimination and savagery.

And it ain’t a final paradigm. I hope it lasts only as long as its needed.

The reason I’m bringing it up is what I call the “Westchester Decision,”
a stunning agreement filed in Federal Court this past Monday which
desegregates Westchester County. You heard me right, desegregates
the whitest community in America requiring all of the Westchester
communities to provide affordable housing for a total of 750 blacks and
Hispanic households. To qualify you have to have less than 3% blacks or
7% Hispanics.

Glory Hallelujah! We sat-in on Scarsdale! Get the fire hoses! It’s
affirmative action in real estate!

Now, there are all sorts of “affordable” housing laws in place already
driving recalcitrant all-white communities nuts. (Like in Westchester and,
dare I say it, in then Berkshires (where I live)).

But this is different….this’ll really upset the selectmen…..this is old
fashioned civil rights stuff…..a ruling based
(like the ‘64 public accommodations and the ‘65 voting rights act) on race,
on ethnicity…..

I pulled out my old Jim Farmer file and found an OP-ED piece I wrote
14 years ago….It’s the story of how Affirmative Action was invented, by
Farmer and Lyndon Johnson in the Oval Office. It went something like
This:

Jim: Did you ever hear the “hobbled runner” story?

Lyndon: Tell me.

Jim: Seems there was this black long distance runner who raced a white
competitor. After he circled the track for the first time, the white
runner found the black man hobbling along with chains on his legs.
The white runner got a hammer and chisel and struck off the chains
and the two men continued the race…..with the white runner a full
circuit ahead.

Lyndon. That’s not fair. We’ve got to do something about it.

Jim: I propose a program of “compensatory preferential treatment” for blacks in the
marketplace.

Lyndon: (smiling) I completely agree…but for God’s sake don’t call it that, it’ll scare
the hell out of everybody. We’ll call it…… “affirmative action” !

##################

All these years, I've floundered and whined about segregated communities and
I haven't done a damn thing about it. Listen to this quote from Craig Gurian of the
Anti-Discrimination Center who brought the lawsuit that ended in the Westchester
decision:

"Residential segregation underlies virtually every racial disparity in America, from
education to jobs to the delivery of health care....."

I've met an awful lot of indignant people on this subject....seems they've
forgotten what it was all about in the first place.

I want to add a Hooray! for Judge Denise L. Cote, who made the Westchester ruling.

We’re not done yet.

ol val

A complaint! Where are the Initials?

Well, I just took a look at my June 17 posting, and it was
a splash of optimism following Obama's Cairo speech....I
had no idea the old "no nothings" and Christers would come
tumbling out of the woodwork and raise hell in the the town meetings
about health reform.
Jeez , (which I'm told is a squeeze of "Jesus") can't they give
the guy some time to straighten out the crooked compass Bush
left us to navigate with?

While I'm thinking about the Obama early months,, let me
register a complaint..... Now, you gotta understand I was born
in 1930 and ALL around me (when I was old enough to eat on
my own) was the New Deal.... Outside town (in Charleston, Illinois)
was the CCC camp with the guys in green overalls who built the
dam on the Embarras River and the big new ceramic transformers
of the Central Illinois Public Service company (CIPS). And
(it's OK to begin a sentence with a conjunction)
I remember the square tin signs signed by
Henry Wallace annoucing "This Field is a Department of Agriculture
Experimental Field" (or something like that...). Everywhere you
looked it was "WPA" or "TVA" or some set of initials that added up
to "NRA." There was the big blue eagle and Roosevelt was on the
radio (seems to me every night) selling the program. So my complaint
is that the Obama stiumlus package is still in lower case....despite the
fact that it is a wonderful program which is spending as much (or more)
money than the NRA.

I spent a lot of my life as a PR guy (it's one of the jobs you can do
drunk) for a bunch of public agencies...and believe me VISIBILITY
is everything. Every time a shovel hits the ground there ought to
be a forty gun salute. I respect the way the stimulus package is being
administered...very carefully I understand so that it can't be ripped
off (that'd give the Christers something to spasm about). But we've
got to SEE it....and celebrate it....not just the numbers reports (oh
look ma, unemployment only went up a little bit this month) but the
name, place and size of every new bus, new bridge, fixed sidewalk,
highway and every new hole in the ground (somebody had to dig it.)

By the way, back in the Thirties, Charleston, Illinois became the
"Broomcorn Capital of the World" --- and I can prove it....there was a\
SIGN on the way into town that said so.

Anyway....I back again, looking for trouble....