Washington. -- White males, a lot of them in Congress, are rushing headlong to "abolish affirmative action." They are going to create divisive conflict as great as this nation has seen except for the bloody battles over abortion, Jim Crow schools and slavery.
One problem is that no one is ever sure what the other person is protesting, or defending, when "affirmative action" is the subject. The overriding problem was summed up in a recent headline in USA Today on a Linda Chavez column: "Minorities Can't Measure Up?" That is what affirmative-action policies imply, Ms. Chavez argued, though you will not hear its liberal backers say so. That is a typical conservative tactic of turning the facts upside down so as to tilt unfairly the rules of debate.
I, and others who support affirmative action, have always said minorities can measure up if those who control the jobs, the schools, the college scholarships will only give them a chance.
We have never said that anyone must hire a clearly less qualified black man over a clearly superior white one. I have said, however, that the determination of superiority must not be based on some "Bell Curve" assumption that blacks "on average" are genetically inferior, or on fire or police department ratings determined by the white males who have always had priority status.
In the hiring field, affirmative action can often be based on the self-interest, the needs, of an employer, a school, a football coach.
In the late 1950s, my alma mater, the University of Minnesota, needed some black players to compete. In 1960, I recruited from Pennsylvania one of the first black quarterbacks in major-college football, Sandy Stephens. The next year I recruited a sensational black quarterback from Hickory, North Carolina, Bobby Bell. Stephens was an All-America selection. Minnesota's deep-southern coach, Murray Warmath, did not need Bell at quarterback. He needed a tackle -- the position at which Bell became an All-America selection.
With Warmath using blacks, not for affirmative action but because he needed them, the Golden Gophers went to the Rose Bowl in two successive years.
The Kansas City Chiefs drafted Bell, but they did not need a tackle. They needed a linebacker. So they shifted Bell to that spot, where he became All-Pro.
Apply that logic to the furor over the Piscataway, N.J., school where the board had to let go one of two teachers -- one black, one white -- of equal seniority, and declared equal in ability. Conservative foes of affirmative action have raised an unholy stink because the board chose to keep the black teacher.
Just as Warmath saw a need first to get some black players and a need second to make Bobby Bell a tackle, so, too, did the Piscataway board see a genuine educational need to keep the lone black on its faculty. As affirmative action? No. As a "racial preference" for an inferior black person? Obviously not. As an expression of the belief that intrinsic educational values flowed from presenting to students a bit of faculty diversity? Yes.
A football coach and a school board saw a need to do what was in their self-interest -- and was educationally and athletically right.
There are many other ramifications of "affirmative action" -- some more controversial. But could we for now give some sanity to the debate by ending the demagogic claims that someone is trying to take opportunities away from "superior" white males and give them to "minorities who can't measure up?" Could we?
Carl T. Rowan is a syndicated columnist.