The Audacity of Hope

by large corporations, trade unions, or branches of municipal government, goals and
timetables for minority hiring may be the only meaningful remedy available.
Many Americans disagree with me on this as a matter of principle, arguing that our
institutions should never take race into account, even if it is to help victims of past
discrimination. Fair enough—I understand their arguments, and don’t expect the debate
to be settled anytime soon. But that shouldn’t stop us from at least making sure that
when two equally qualified people—one minority and one white—apply for a job,
house, or loan, and the white person is consistently preferred, then the government,
through its prosecutors and through its courts, should step in to make things right.
We should also agree that the responsibility to close the gap can’t come from
government alone; minorities, individually and collectively, have responsibilities as
well. Many of the social or cultural factors that negatively affect black people, for
example, simply mirror in exaggerated form problems that afflict America as a whole:
too much television (the average black household has the television on more than eleven
hours per day), too much consumption of poisons (blacks smoke more and eat more fast
food), and a lack of emphasis on educational achievement.
Then there’s the collapse of the two-parent black household, a phenomenon that is
occurring at such an alarming rate when compared to the rest of American society that
what was once a difference in degree has become a difference in kind, a phenomenon
that reflects a casualness toward sex and child rearing among black men that renders
black children more vulnerable—and for which there is simply no excuse.
Taken together, these factors impede progress. Moreover, although government action
can help change behavior (encouraging supermarket chains with fresh produce to locate
in black neighborhoods, to take just one small example, would go a long way toward
changing people’s eating habits), a transformation in attitudes has to begin in the home,
and in neighborhoods, and in places of worship. Community-based institutions,
particularly the historically black church, have to help families reinvigorate in young
people a reverence for educational achievement, encourage healthier lifestyles, and
reenergize traditional social norms surrounding the joys and obligations of fatherhood.
Ultimately, though, the most important tool to close the gap between minority and white
workers may have little to do with race at all. These days, what ails working-class and
middle-class blacks and Latinos is not fundamentally different from what ails their
white counterparts: downsizing, outsourcing, automation, wage stagnation, the
dismantling of employer-based health-care and pension plans, and schools that fail to
teach young people the skills they need to compete in a global economy. (Blacks in
particular have been vulnerable to these trends, since they are more reliant on bluecollar
manufacturing jobs and are less likely to live in suburban communities where
new jobs are being generated.) And what would help minority workers are the same
things that would help white workers: the opportunity to earn a living wage, the
education and training that lead to such jobs, labor laws and tax laws that restore some
balance to the distribution of the nation’s wealth, and health-care, child care, and
retirement systems that working people can count on.
This pattern—of a rising tide lifting minority boats—has certainly held true in the past.
The progress made by the previous generation of Latinos and African Americans