(originally published in The Washington Post on 10/20/2011)
What Obama could learn from Clinton and Johnson on racial inequities
By Maya Wiley
I remember when Sen. Barack Obama confronted race in America in an eloquent and powerful 2008 speech, promising to work for a “more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America.” He pledged to take on “the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through.” Sadly, Obama is falling short of the president who accomplished the most for communities of color since Lincoln: white Southerner Lyndon Johnson. He is also falling short of another white, Southern president who pursued a national dialogue on race: Bill Clinton.
History shows that when presidents confront racial inequity, America sees vast improvements. President Johnson pushed for passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. Black voter registration rates in the covered states soared. In 1964, less than 7 percent of eligible blacks were registered to vote in Mississippi. By the end of 1966, nearly 60 percent were registered. And Johnson’s “War on Poverty” helped reduce the black poverty rate from 55 percent in 1959 to 33 percent in 1970.
Clinton’s record is not as good as Johnson’s was, but his willingness to confront racial injustice does trump Obama’s. Clinton supported hate-crime legislation and opposed racial profiling. Unemployment rates for blacks and Latinos dropped steadily during his presidency. He also instituted a national commission on race relations, which did little to fix racial inequities but demonstrated his willingness to push for a national dialogue on race.
Obama has done some good for communities of color but not nearly enough. His proposed jobs bill hopefully will put some Americans back to work, but it will not alleviate the broad economic exclusion of people of color. This group is the fastest-growing segment of our working-age population, yet they have the hardest time finding jobs. One in six blacks and one in eight Latinos are jobless, compared with one in 12 whites. A study by the Center for Social Inclusion shows that of the seven occupations with the highest salaries, six are overrepresented by whites. Three of the six lowest-paid occupations are disproportionately represented by people of color.
And read the our new study cited in the article about Jim Crow jobs and pathways to employment equity.
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