Ellis Cose - Color-Blind

I am grateful to many people who contributed to the making of this book, and none more so than Paul Rogers, my researcher, who anticipated questions well before they were asked and came up with many materials long before I realized they would be needed. He was a valuable partner who has moved on to what I am sure will be a distinguished career as a journalist.

I am indebted as well to Michael Congdon, my agent, who provided not only guidance but calm reassurance that wrestling with such a contentious subject would have a constructive result; to Diane Reverand, HarperCollins editor-in-chief, whose enthusiasm for the project was contagious and essential; and to Peternelle van Arsdale, an editor who has a knack for asking the questions that take the text to a higher level.

Bill Lynch, Milton Morris, Eve Thompson, Dumisani Kumalo, Ulric Haynes, Mondli waka Makhanya, and Joe Contreras ensured, through their counsel and contacts, that my travels in South Africa would be both enjoyable and productive. Emilio Pantojas and Marya Muoz Vzquez were of invaluable help in Puerto Rico. Dolores Prida, Maite Junco, and Ral Cotto Serrano provided wise and invaluable advice.

Alexis Gelber, Maynard Parker, Aric Press, and Mark Whitaker of Newsweek have been consistently supportive colleagues. Oliver Cromwell and Youtha Hardman have been steadfast in their feedback and their friendship. Finally, Lee, my wife, has served so many rolesas researcher, interviewer, proofreader, occasionally even transcriptionist, and always as a source of boundless faith and love.

Trapped in the dominant dialogue

Martin Luther King, Jr., would probably be more astonished than anyone to hear that conservatives now claim him as one of their own, that they have embraced his dream of a color-blind world and invoke it as proof of the immorality of gender and racial preferences. But even if he had a bit of trouble accepting his status as a general in the war against affirmative action, he would appreciate the joke. And he would realize that it is the fate of the dead to be reborn as angels to the living.

King no doubt would be pleased to have new friends in his fight for justice, but he would approach them with caution, for he would recall, as he did for readers of Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? , that friendship has its limits. With Selma and the Voting Rights Act one phase of development in the civil rights revolution came to an end, he wrote.

A new phase opened, but few observers realized it or were prepared for its implications. For the vast majority of white Americans, the past decadethe first phasehad been a struggle to treat the Negro with a degree of decency, not of equality. White America was ready to demand that the Negro should be spared the lash of brutality and coarse degradation, but it had never been truly committed to helping him out of poverty, exploitation or all forms of discrimination. When Negroes looked for the second phase, the realization of equality, they found that many of their white allies had quietly disappeared.

After sharing his disappointment over past alliances with people whose commitment to change did not match his own, King would address his new associates bluntly. All right, he might say, understand why you oppose affirmative action. But tell me: What is your plan? What is your plan to crush the tragic walls separating the wealth and comfort of the outer city from the despair of the inner city? What is your plan to cast the slums of our cities on the junk heaps of history? What is your program to transform the dark yesterdays of segregated education into the bright tomorrows of high-quality, integrated education. What is your strategy to smash separatism, to destroy discrimination, to make justice roll down like water and righteousness flow like a mighty stream from every city hall and statehouse in this great and blessed nation? He might then pause for a reply, his countenance making it unmistakably clear that he would accept neither silence nor sweet nothings as an answer.

That King is now a hero to those on both sides of the anti-affirmative-action aisle is arguably a sign of progress. It is also a simple reflection of the fact that the ways in which we remember people often have more to do with our needs than with the actual focus of their existenceeven when those people are not nearly as famous as Martin Luther King, Jr.

Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher, for instance, is hardly a household name. Yet the New York Times presented her October 1995 obituary (Ada Fisher, 71; Broke a Law School Color Barrier) as a glorious parable of triumph and hope.

Mrs. Fisher was black, and that fact was paramount in her life or, at least, it was back in 1946, when, as an honors graduate of Langston College, she applied to the University of Oklahoma Law School. She was rejected but not deterred. Backed by the NAACP, she appealed her case to the Supreme Court, which ordered the state to provide her with a legal (though not necessarily an integrated) education. It took time, and there were setbacks, even an attempt by the state to accommodate Ada by setting up a separate black law school just for her. In the end, the state caved, but not exactly with grace. The school admitted her in 1949 but insisted that she sit in a raised chair behind a sign reading Coloredseparated in status and by space, chain, and a uniformed guard from the law schools white students. But those students were better than their elders. Whenever the guard took a break, they would climb under the chain and offer encouragement, Come on, Ada, they would say, weve been waiting for you.