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