Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

304 // JEROME A. CHANES
tale to tell. 34 United Steel-workers v, Weber (1979), however, involved a blue-collar
reverse-discrimination situation, Brian Weber, a white employee, was rejected by
a training program that had been established as part of an affirmative-action program
by a company with few skilled Black craftspersons, subject to "goals and
timetables," and facing the loss of government contracts. When Weber alleged
discrimination under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the voluntary plan was upheld
by the Supreme Court.
Jewish groups mostly sat out Weber, offering different views as to why they did
so. The ADL, which did file pro-Weber and lost, suggested that the decision was
narrow in that it did not require replacing white employees with Blacks. ADL
maintained that a "blue-collar" principle had as much merit as a "white-collar"
principle. AJC and AJCongress did not file briefs, for several reasons: Jews did not
have as clear a stake in a steel mill as they had in a university; Weber's employer
may have in fact discriminated against minorities, so the plan was justified; in
Weber the Blacks were just as qualified as the whites, whereas in Bakke the Blacks
admitted were less qualified than the whites admitted; finally, and most probably,
the failure to support Weber was at least partly intended to improve Black-Jewish
relations.
After the Weber decision, Jewish organizations called for meetings with Black
groups to make an effort to devise mutually acceptable affirmative-action plans.
These emollient calls came to naught. In 1 980, immediately following Weber,
NJCRAC noted that "affirmative action remains a subject of sharp dispute,
notably between Blacks and Jews." 35
Sharp dispute also characterized Jewish internal discourse. The divisions
between Jewish groups over affirmative action occasionally resulted in explosive
rhetoric that was aired in public. In June 1986, Rabbi David Saperstein, director
of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism and a premier—if controversial—tactician
in the Black-Jewish civil-rights coalition, suggested at an
NAACP convention that, in the ADL's opposition to preferential treatment, the
ADL might be out of step with the Jewish community. ADL national director
Nathan Perlmutter reacted viscerally. "Kissing backsides isn't the way to
strengthen relationships," snapped Perlmutter. He continued, "Every poll taken
on [affirmative action] reveals that the majority of Americans, including Jews,
oppose racial quotas." 36 Perlmutter missed Saperstein's point, as Saperstein
missed his. Clearly, intragtoup relations were as sensitive on this issue as were
intergroup relations.
Affirmative Action and the Organized Jewish Community:
The 1980s and 1990s
After Bakke and Weber, working-class whites, and many Jews, feared that their
rights and opportunities were being curtailed. For Blacks, there was considerable
uncertainty about affirmative-action programs. In Fullilove v. Klutznick (1980), the