NAACP chair: New racism harder to fight

Julian Bond, chair of the NAACP, explored the continuing problems of racism and… Julian Bond, chair of the NAACP, explored the continuing problems of racism and discrimination in America, in a speech that doubled as the first public event of Pitt’s Center on Race and Social Problems.

The event, which took place Wednesday at 3:30 p.m., drew a standing-room-only audience to the seventh floor auditorium of Pitt’s Alumni Hall. He said that, while issues pertaining to racism were more blatant 40 years ago, the issues we face today are more difficult to combat. He added, however, “If we have more to do, we have more to do it with.”

Bond cited survey statistics saying that the majority of whites felt racism was no longer a problem in America.

To disprove this sentiment, he cited an experiment done in Boston wherein 5,000 applications were sent in response to “help wanted” ads. The names on the applications followed racial stereotypes of characteristically white names or characteristically black names.

“The resumes from the Emily Walshes and the Brendan Bakers received 50 percent more callbacks than did the Lakisha Washingtons or the Jamal Joneses,” Bond said.

The backlash against people of Arabic appearance in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, was also symptomatic of the prejudice in America, Bond said.

He also criticized the Bush administration, saying Bush used Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice as “human shields” to protect himself from criticism regarding his civil rights policies.

Another of Bond’s criticisms maintained that recent tax cuts were not only designed to benefit the richest members of society, but also to “starve the government” so the administration can claim that it lacks the finances to take care of social needs among America’s poorest citizens. In effect, Bond said this would be “signing a death warrant for social programs, for decades and decades to come.”

Bond also discussed the upcoming Supreme Court case regarding the University of Michigan’s affirmative action policy. He said some people opposed affirmative action because it attached a stigma to minority success. He wryly noted that this was not a worthwhile criticism, because minorities were accustomed to stigma. Moreover, he contended, affirmative action has been condemned by some, “not because it has failed, but because it has succeeded.”

Evaluating the current state of the civil rights struggle, Bond said, “Too often today, we wait for others to sanction our protests or to lead us.”

Bond also felt that many efforts were “[putting] gas masks on the canaries, instead of eliminating the poison in the air.”

Despite the serious topic matter, Bond displayed an excellent sense of humor. The biggest laugh came before his speech, when he spoke about his experience hosting Saturday Night Live. “You know,” he said, “it used to be a comedy show.” He said the cast was “very welcoming,” and while in the dressing room before rehearsal, “they only had one cigarette, but they passed it around.”

Bond was born in 1940, in Nashville, Tenn., but was raised in Bucks County, Pa. Before he was elected chair of the NAACP in 1998, he spent four terms in the Georgia House of Representatives, and six terms in the Georgia Senate.

The Center on Race and Social Problems was recently founded by Larry Davis, the dean of Pitt’s School of Social Work, along with some of his colleagues. The institution works to research social issues that are impacted by race, in order to facilitate solutions to such problems.