because, despite the anguished protests, the branches closed. The areas had been redlined not by heartless bankers attending only to their bottom line but, rather, by thieves.
I felt the two closings were both inevitable and justified, but I also followed another happier case in which city fathers with a feeling for social justice arranged for a beleaguered grocery store to remain in place, but with an enlarged group of watchful detectives paid for from public taxation. I applauded this effort, even though I can see obvious weaknesses were the plan widely copied. It shouldn’t require a city to be terrorized before the community provides the services it must have to survive.
If black frustration grows and we do nothing to improve the economic prospects of blacks, there will be fearful consequences, and we already have one striking example of what these consequences might be. In Miami, the sudden influx of white Cubans in the late 1950s resulted in a flood of educated and industrious Hispanics who moved quickly into the workforce. Almost thirty years later, the forced emigration of mostly black Cubans, cynically thrust onto our shores by Castro’s henchmen during the Mariel boatlift of 1980, resulted in a second deluge of far less desirable citizens. They consisted of criminal elements who created havoc in the camps to which they were assigned and who, in time, usurped most of the service-sector jobs traditionally held by African Americans: hospital orderlies, janitors, clerks in grocery stores, practical nurses. Many blacks in Miami were thus deprived of their means of earning a living. And an even more galling disadvantage faced them: to keep or find the kinds of jobs in Miami that blacks had always filled, blacks found that they must now learn Spanish. Their ancestors had been in America for hundreds of years, the Hispanics in Miami only thirty years, yet the blacks had to surrender to newcomers. Blacks went on a rampagein 1989 that tied up the city for several days and destroyed much property. Rebellion, when one group feels it has been victimized by another, is an understandable form of social protest.
I have long been a supporter of affirmative action as a means of helping disadvantaged blacks. In the 1930s I was profoundly impressed by the results of a study I made in a postgraduate class of the workings—or machinations—of an important union of electrical workers. The members, wanting to keep the union small so that they and their sons and nephews would always find a profitable job, had restricted the number of members. In the course of the century not a single African American had ever attained membership—indeed, had never even been considered for membership. Grievous damage was being done black workers by restricting equal employment opportunities.
In my study I concluded that similar historic wrongs have been inflicted on our black population in many fields, a carryover from the days of slavery and the poll-tax device of refusing blacks the vote. I became an ardent supporter of moves toward affirmative action; an evil had been perpetrated and a correction was called for.
I even supported quota systems. If a community had never had any black police officers even though a significant percentage of its population was black, this was ipso facto an imbalance that ought to be corrected. I saw nothing wrong with some agency of the government handing down an order such as this: ‘The next three promotions to the police force must go to African Americans.’ I became so convinced this was a justifiable move that I advocated it in all aspects of American life. Did the private schools in which I had taught have no black students? They’d better get some. Did my distinguished college have none? Rectify that immediately. Did a business tycoon who was a friend of mine have almost no black employees? Advise him to hire some right away.Did prestigious law schools and schools of medicine admit almost no black students?
I felt the two closings were both inevitable and justified, but I also followed another happier case in which city fathers with a feeling for social justice arranged for a beleaguered grocery store to remain in place, but with an enlarged group of watchful detectives paid for from public taxation. I applauded this effort, even though I can see obvious weaknesses were the plan widely copied. It shouldn’t require a city to be terrorized before the community provides the services it must have to survive.
If black frustration grows and we do nothing to improve the economic prospects of blacks, there will be fearful consequences, and we already have one striking example of what these consequences might be. In Miami, the sudden influx of white Cubans in the late 1950s resulted in a flood of educated and industrious Hispanics who moved quickly into the workforce. Almost thirty years later, the forced emigration of mostly black Cubans, cynically thrust onto our shores by Castro’s henchmen during the Mariel boatlift of 1980, resulted in a second deluge of far less desirable citizens. They consisted of criminal elements who created havoc in the camps to which they were assigned and who, in time, usurped most of the service-sector jobs traditionally held by African Americans: hospital orderlies, janitors, clerks in grocery stores, practical nurses. Many blacks in Miami were thus deprived of their means of earning a living. And an even more galling disadvantage faced them: to keep or find the kinds of jobs in Miami that blacks had always filled, blacks found that they must now learn Spanish. Their ancestors had been in America for hundreds of years, the Hispanics in Miami only thirty years, yet the blacks had to surrender to newcomers. Blacks went on a rampagein 1989 that tied up the city for several days and destroyed much property. Rebellion, when one group feels it has been victimized by another, is an understandable form of social protest.
I have long been a supporter of affirmative action as a means of helping disadvantaged blacks. In the 1930s I was profoundly impressed by the results of a study I made in a postgraduate class of the workings—or machinations—of an important union of electrical workers. The members, wanting to keep the union small so that they and their sons and nephews would always find a profitable job, had restricted the number of members. In the course of the century not a single African American had ever attained membership—indeed, had never even been considered for membership. Grievous damage was being done black workers by restricting equal employment opportunities.
In my study I concluded that similar historic wrongs have been inflicted on our black population in many fields, a carryover from the days of slavery and the poll-tax device of refusing blacks the vote. I became an ardent supporter of moves toward affirmative action; an evil had been perpetrated and a correction was called for.
I even supported quota systems. If a community had never had any black police officers even though a significant percentage of its population was black, this was ipso facto an imbalance that ought to be corrected. I saw nothing wrong with some agency of the government handing down an order such as this: ‘The next three promotions to the police force must go to African Americans.’ I became so convinced this was a justifiable move that I advocated it in all aspects of American life. Did the private schools in which I had taught have no black students? They’d better get some. Did my distinguished college have none? Rectify that immediately. Did a business tycoon who was a friend of mine have almost no black employees? Advise him to hire some right away.Did prestigious law schools and schools of medicine admit almost no black students?
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