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The Lonely-Man March
Or, Everything I know I learned in the projects
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Business New Haven
11/6/1995
By: Mitchell Young
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My working career has spanned almost 25 years now. While I've been directly involved with only a handful of companies, I've dealt with hundreds of others. So when political discussions early this year centered on affirmative action, I began to search my own experience for a basis of what to think about hiring preferences.
As I reflected on my own experience I was struck by how racially isolated my lifestyle actually has been. My life in a small New England town with more than 8,000 people but fewer than 25 permanent African-American residents (the town's tobacco crop brings seasonal Jamaican workers) is the most obvious example.
But of the more than 100 companies we regularly deal with, I couldn't identify one prime contact at any current private-sector customer or vendor who is black. My personal transactions aren't much different, with the exception of service people in places like McDonald's, etc.
Thankfully, my 1960s sensibilities were rescued when I realized that Terry Wells, Business New Haven's art director, our company's administrative assistant, and my wife's dentist were all black. We can't tell you how relieved we were to realize we couldn't possibly be “racist” having placed such important assets in the hands of African-Americans.
Ironically, growing up in the projects in Brooklyn, a great number of my day-to-day friends (if not soul mates, exactly) had been black. And even though Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing was set in my old neighborhood, it didn't represent my experience. Our mostly black-white schoolyard relationships had their strains, but it was drugs, urban decay and a sense of futility that drove us from the city, not race.
When the national dialogue recently turned to the great divide between black and white, like the rest of America I was quick to form an opinion. On reflection, it seems near-pathological that I could evaluate and judge the black experience. After all, I had almost no basis for this process, except observations gleaned from passing people on the street and watching television.
Spotting trends is what I live for, and my pursuit of a position on affirmative action did prepare me for the onslaught of introspection brought on by The Trial and The Million Man March. President Clinton, who speaks more thoughtfully about race issues than other Presidents in recent memory, said at a speech at the University of Texas, “The rift we see before us that is tearing at the heart of America exists in spite of the remarkable progress black Americans have made in the last generation, since Martin Luther King swept America up in his dream, and President Johnson spoke so powerfully for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy in demanding that Congress guarantee full voting rights to blacks.”
Most people don't know what the “rule of two” is. It was a Department of Defense bidding process than closed off bidding to white-owned businesses if two or more qualified, minority-owned firms were available to do the work. Of the Pentagon's multi-billion-dollar budget, about $1 billion worth of bids were awarded this way - leaving, I would guess, about $399 billion to us white guys. This being a competitive world and all, I was still looking for my God-given 100-percent market share - and I found it: During the week of the Million-Man March, and the President's race speech, this Pentagon rule became an early casualty of the affirmative-action war and a recent Supreme Court ruling striking down generalized race-based contract preferences.
Today, going to the mall means a trip to the Gap. But 32 years ago and again this past month, for hundreds of thousands of people, going to the Mall meant marching on Washington.
Many of last month's marchers were black baby-boomers who never saw Martin Luther King Jr., but had shared in the success of his efforts. And while it was difficult not to fixate on the deficiencies of Louis Farrakhan - the participants, it seemed, had a greater goal: to join together, but also to join the mythical Woodstock nation, the free safe America.
“What do you think?” a black man asked one of the few whites at the demonstration. “Big,” the white man replied. “Not big,” the black man said with a broad smile, “Huge. And completely safe. No drugs. No guns. No booze. This is great. This is what we need.”
The message of the march that struck home was the shared need to blame black men for the mess they're in. Whether it was Farrakhan, the media or the President, the message was clear: It's your turn to be blamed now. For Farrakhan, it was obelisks and atonement; for the President, it was “about the frank admission that unless black men shoulder their load, no one else can help them or their brothers, their sisters and their children escape the hard, bleak lives that too many of them still face.” And for our friends in the national media, it was a parade of whining, mostly privileged rich kids (white and black) bemoaning the welfare state as they spend their days in think tanks on the dole of those exporting wealth out of America's core as fast as they can.
It may not be fashionable to say so, but I can see no real evidence that business people understand their own interests. On this one I'll stand with Jesse Jackson when it comes to Nike, Reebok and a host of others selling in the urban core but providing jobs in Chinese labor camps. When New Haven's mayor suggested that Starter Corp. look at a new urban location rather than a corporate campus elsewhere, few took the concept seriously.
The athletes that Starter depends on to promote its products have mostly inner-city roots, and the cultural power that defines the sports marketing craze is an inner-city inspired phenomenon. Forging a real inner-city link could be an unshakable marketing concept.
Sure, we all have to take personal responsibility. But to me that sounds like something you tell a difficult teenager, and not much of a real answer. For local business people, the economic advancement of African-Americans in Connecticut is of major significance. Population and jobs are projected to remain flat for the next decade. Incomes and gross output, however, are expected to rise. A stronger consumer, housing and overall market for us will therefore depend on the market growing from within.
So if personal responsibility is your way of looking at the problem, here's what the President said: “First, today I ask every governor, every mayor, every business leader, every church leader, every civic leader, every union steward, every student leader - most important, every citizen - in every workplace and learning place and meeting place all across America to take personal responsibility for reaching out to people of different races; for taking time to sit down and talk through this issue; to have the courage to speak honestly and frankly; and then to have the discipline to listen quietly with an open mind and an open heart, as others do the same.
“The second thing we have to do is to defend and enhance real opportunity. I'm not talking about opportunity for black Americans or opportunity for white Americans; I'm talking about opportunity for all Americans.”
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