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Continued from page 10 "A Challenge to Black America" Benjamin L. Hooks, Executive Director NAACP Speech delivered, Sunday, June 23, 1985 76th Annual Convention Dallas, Texas [[image - NAACP - logo]] We come to Dallas, Texas for the NAACP's 76th Convention, thirty-one (31) years after we last assembled here. When we come here in 1954, conditions were vastly different from today. Our meetings were held in hot, un-airconditioned halls, we slept in private homes and black guest houses. We were confronted by a system of rigid segregation and overt discrimination, with signs that proclaimed boldy—no blacks allowed, or-wanted, whites only—were clearly clearly lin evidence. Despite these conditions, the winds of optimism were blowing and hope abounded. For on May 17, 1954 the United States Court issues its unanimous decision that segregated public schools were inherently unequal. This decision reversed the "separate but equal" doctrine of the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896. At the 1954 Convention there was jubilation for we believed, correctly so, that the Brown decision was a decisive blow against the illicit barriers of racial segregation. Today, America is a changed society. It has changed because of the persistent work of the NAACP, men and women who believed that evil should not rule and that injustice should not reign. In small towns and urban cities, black and white Americans fought discrimination in the trenches, in the streets, in the halls of Congress and in the courts. We fought racism, bigotry and discrimination because of our firm conviction that the Constitution, if it were to be a living document with meaning, must protect the rights of not just white Americans, but all Americans. We fought because we believed that skin color and sex were facts of birth; that they did not confer inferiority or superiority upon any group or gender. We have never accepted the notion that the Declaration of Independence intended that libert should be divided into installments and doled out on a deferred-payment plan. Today, we are determined that when the locomotive of history roars through the remaining years of the 20th century and on to the 21st century that black Americans not be left standing forlornly at dismal and desolate terminals of second class citizenship. It is no secret that we in the NAACP and in the black community have substantial differences with the policies of the present Administration. These differences are on record and run deep. Our differences include the belief and conviction that affirmative action is a necessary and legitimate remedy to right the wrongs produced by years of systemic discrimination, segregation and slavery. We believe that if public policy and practices were used to exclude entire classes of people from participation in the public and private sectors because of race, gender or color: then, color and race and gender conscious remedies must be used to include those who have been systematically excluded. Under our system of jurisprudence and common law, courts have prescribed appropriate remedies for those who have been wronged. We differ on many of the priorities which have been set by the present administration on social programs. We believe it is the appropriate role of any civilized society and enlightened government to provide humane assistance to those persons who need it for whatever valid reason, be it old age, a handicap, an infirmity, or some other valid reason. This must also include our children, the family farmer, the steelworker thrown out of work and those who cannot find work through no fault of their own. We differ sharply with the policies of this administration in its failure to appoint blacks and women in meaningful numbers to vacancies in policy marking positions and to the federal courts. We are unalterably opposed to the appointment of William Bradford Reynolds, Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights Division, to the post of Associate Attorney General of the United States. Our opposition is based upon documented evidence of his blatant hostility toward civil rights, his proven track record of circumvention of court decrees, Congressional intent and anti-discrimination laws and policies which have been upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeal and the U.S. Supreme Court. This is the man who urged the giving of tax-exempt status to schools that discriminate against students based upon race. • He has willingly participated in exacerbating differences between groups, white and black, male and female, Jewish and non-Jewish. • He has given aid and comfort to the enemies of civil rights. • He has made a mockery of the civil rights division by his spoken word and by his reactionary actions. • He has narrowed the meaning of fair housing laws by restricting fair housing enforcement to cases of "intentional" discrimination. • He has sought to modify affirmative action consent decrees in some 51 cities, states and/or municipalities. • He has advised federal agencies to discontinue maintaining records which document racial and/or sexual imbalance. • He has challenged legally sanctioned set asides for minority contractors. The NAACP refutes Mr. Reynolds' position that: • a misplaced emphasis on school segregation has led to a neglect of education quality (this simply is not true); • that magnet schools alone will desegregate that nation's public schools (there is no body of evidence that substantiates this assumption); • that volunteer programs of school segregation will work (the fats indicate otherwise); • that court-ordered busing has been counter-productive (less than 5% of busing has anything to do with desegregation orders); • that the confining of the Department's requests for relief in employment discrimination to injunctive relief, and increased recruitment efforts and limited back-pay awards will resolve the endemic problem of racial/sexual discrimination in employment (this is at best a mockery, and at worst a cruel hoax); • that the U.S. Justice Department may willfully ignore judicial decisions that fail to meet the Department's superimposed criteria; • that the U.S. Justice Department has been diligent in enforcing the Voting Rights Act. The evidence against Mr. Reynolds' confirmation runs deep, it is compelling, it is irrefutable. His confirmation by the Senate would be an insult to black Americans, women and other minorities. His confirmation would signal the surrender of the U.S. Justice Department by our elected officials to the forces of darkness; legal terrorists bent on bombing the 14th Amendment, hijacking the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1964, 1965 and 1958 and holding hostage those who have been locked out of the sunlight of opportunity. We would be ill-advised here tonight to engage in endless recriminations of the Reagan Administration. While we have many differences with many of its policies, we are cognizant of the fact that even if there were no Reagan Administration or William Bradford Reynolds, black Americans would still be confronted by innumerable and difficult problems which do not lend themselves to easy solutions. Black Americans have experienced different degrees of adversity with all forty of the Presidents who have led this nation, from George Washington to Ronald Reagan. Black Americans have never received, even during the most progressive periods of our nation's history, equality, parity or justice. Black Americans are not strangers to adversity. What could be more adverse than the period of slavery, or post-reconstruction, or the Woodrow Wilson era. We must not just recriminate. We must rise to the challenge of erasing every vestige of inequity and inequality. We must rise up. Dr. King used to say that in life there is an "oughtness" and and "is-ness." Black Americans in 1985 ought not to have to struggle for rights which others take for granted. The "is-ness" is that we have no alternative but to fight, for equal rights as long as doors remain closed to us. Black Americans ought to be employed and fully integrated in every industry, and in the public and private sectors. The "is-ness" is that we have been historically and systemically denied many opportunities. Black Americans ought to be better represented in managerial and professional levels. The "is-ness" is that we have a long way to go before achieving parity in closing the gaps in income, between black and white Americans. 231
