out and other members of my company began to move out and learn more about the situation through contact with the Urban League, for example, we began to get some grasp of the problem. This I think, gave us a new awareness of the total nonwhite minority group employment situation. I think it might well have helped overcome some potential fears and so on. And so I would say that contact with organizations such as the Urban League is certainly a good first step to give my company a feel for the kind of programs that are necessary for them to move out into their own communities. Senator JAVITS. Was any resolution or any action taken by the board of directors of your corporation commiting the whole corporation to this policy? Mr. RICHARDSON. Well, the plan for progress was signed for the corporation by the vice president of employee relations. Whether or not there was action by the board of directors, I do not know, but the total corporation is committed. Senator JAVITS. So you feel the two steps you would recommend would be, first, a total official commitment as a matter of corporate policy, to a conscious and planned effort to have a greater degree of opportunity for Negroes and other minorities in employment; and second, contact with agents able to give technical advice, guidance, on the plans of other companies, how it has been done elsewhere, in order to facilitate your own? Mr. RICHARDSON. Yes; I would think that would be a very good start. Senator JAVITS. And third, I assume implementation in good faith of the basic corporate policy. Mr. RICHARDSON. Yes, indeed. Senator JAVITS. And fourth, can you tell us from your experience that it can be done successfully and at the same time with benefit to the company in the commercial sense? Mr. RICHARDSON. Yes. I would say so. Senator CLARK. Our next witness is Mr. Leslie Dunbar, executive director, Southern Regional Council, Atlanta, Ga. Mr. Dunbar, we are happy to have you here, I have read your testimony, which I think is most interesting, I will ask to have it placed in full in the record at this point, and we want to extract the greatest amount of benefit we can from you in the limited amount of time, will you please proceed in your own way. (The prepared statement referred to follows:) STATEMENT OF LESLIE W. DUNBAR, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, SOUTHERN REGIONAL COUNCIL1 President Kennedy in his message to Congress of June 19, 1963, combined in one discussion the goals of "fair" and "full" employment. I believe that this is the right approach and the only one on which sound national policy can be built. 2 In his Manpower Report of March 1963, the President made the startling statement that, "There are 32 million Americans who are still on the fringes of poverty, and worse." " There are differences of opinion as to how "poverty" should be defined and measured, but by almost any criteria we may use, there are an enormous lot of Americans who are poor. For example, in 1960 when 15 Forsyth Street NW., Atlanta, Ga. Manpower Report of the President, etc., March 1963, p. xx. the median money income of families was $5,625, 5 percent of our families had incomes less than $1,000, and another 8 percent had incomes below $2,000. In the same year, when the median American over 25 had completed 10.6 years of schools, 6.7 percent of our whites over 25 and 23.5 percent of our nonwhites had less than 5 years of schooling." Without reciting more of statistics that are already generally familiar to you, I think we can recognize the very deep, the very complex and involved reality of a sizable fraction of our people living in or near poverty, and therefore contributing little to the national wealth. I think we all know also that far too many of these disadvantaged persons are Negro. In the Manpower Report, the situation of Negroes was described in these terms: An unemployment rate twice that of white workers; An unemployment rate for Negro males 21⁄2 times as great as that for white males; Heavy concentration in unskilled and semiskilled occupations peculiarly susceptible to unemployment; Unemployed longer than are whites; and Victims of jobs and educational discrimination.* We need national policies that will help eradicate the racial imbalance within our economy, but also ones which will constantly search for the causes and remedies of poverty in America. We need, as a nation, to grasp the vastness of the problems, and to realize that to cure them we must prepare our people better to be productive. But I think there is bountiful evidence that racial discrimination bars Negroes from economic productivity which no amount of job training or professional education will insure. The Area Redevelopment Act of 1961 and the Manpower Development and Training Act of 1962 are steps toward the full and fair use of our manpower. So, too, are the President's 1963 recommendations for expanded programs. But we might keep in mind the painstaking analysis and conclusion of Prof. Gary S. Becker: "There is abundant evidence that [economic] discrimination against nonwhites systematically increases with their age and education. Many barriers to the education of nonwhites will probably be taken down in the future, and this will increase their education relative to that of whites. This would also increase their income relative to that of whites if there were no discrimination; but, since discrimination rises with education, an increase in the education of nonwhites may increase only slightly their incomes relative to those of whites." Prof. Ralph Turner has reached a similar conclusion. He found that “approximately two-fifths (39 percent) of the occupational deficiency of nonwhites may be attributed to the factor of education. The residual three-fifths is attributable to discrimination and types of qualification not indicated by educational attainment.'" Dr. Turner also stated that "close to three-quarters (74 percent) of the Negro's excess unemployment must be attributed to discrimination and qualifications not indicated by education." " The President rightly said in his June 19 message that complete elimination of employment discrimination would not put to work a single unemployed Negro worker who is without marketable skills. But I think we must add that unless discrimination can be brought under control, skills will not beget employment. The dreary economic indexes of Negro Americans become doubly alarming when one considers that Negroes have actually lost ground, relative to whites, in the past few years; in 1952, the median family income of Negroes was 57 percent of the median family income of whites, but 10 years later it had dropped to 52 percent. 3 Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1962, pp. 332 and 117. 4 Manpower Report, p. 43. 5 "The Economies of Discrimination" (University of Chicago Press, 1957), p. 130. Melvin M. Tumin. "Segregation and Desegregation" (New York: Antidefamation League of B'nai B'rith, 1957), p. 68. The author is abstracting from Ralph T. Turner, "Foci of Discrimination in the Employment of Nonwhites," American Journal of Sociology, LVIII, 1952, pp. 247-256. 22-287-63- -28 There is a belief abroad that Negroes are advancing economically; the above statistic casts doubt on its validity. With your permission, I would like to enter into the record the page proofs of a study soon to be published by the Southern Regional Council. It is titled "The Economic Status of Negroes: In the Nation and in the South," and is by Prof. Vivian W. Henderson. I refer you particuarly at this point to where Dr. Henderson carefully analyzes the relative economic progress of whites and Negroes, and concludes: "*** Negroes made their greater income gains between 1940 and 1954. Since 1954, they have not progressed in income as well." In 1950, the dollar gap between Negro and white median family income was $1,080; in 1960, it had grown to $1,522. And the position of Negroes in the South is even worse. Negro family income in the South is only 46 percent of white family income. In only one Southern State, Florida, have the earnings of Negro male workers gained in relation to those of white male workers. In each of 10 other States, not only did the dollar gap increase, but Negroes also lost percentage ground, ranging from a 6 percent negative change in Virginia to a 25 percent negative change in Arkansas for male workers; and a negative change in the income of all persons, ranging from a low of 7 percent in Georgia to 21 percent in Tennessee. In other words, although Negro income between 1950–60 did increase sharply, the gap between white and Negro income was growing. The fact is that most of the gains registered by Negro employees between 1940 and 1953 were in unskilled and semiskilled jobs, or in routine clerical positions and it is precisely this kind of work which is being progressively outmoded by our changing economy. There are those who contend that the low earnings of Negroes do not prove discrimination, but merely the accuracy of familiar stereotypes about Negroes as poorly qualified, lazy, or irresponsible. Undeniably, many Negroes do have low occupational aspirations and bad educations. But this condition is a part of the problem that must be overcome, not a justification for doing nothing about it. Segregated and inferior schools, denial of equal access to apprenticeship and other job training, and lack of opportunity to gain on-the-job experience necessary to promotion, these are aspects of discrimination so deeply woven into our practices that they blind many of us as to who is to blame for the hardships of the Negro. The most important manifestation of discrimination in the South is the unwritten yet thoroughly codified division of the labor market into a dual track system of "white" and "Negro" jobs. This means that a virtually impenetrable job barrier stands between Negroes and many jobs traditionally understood to be for whites only. Negroes are sometimes accepted in occupations normally reserved for whites under abnormal circumstances during a war, for example, when there is a shortage of white manpower-but even then there is a marked tendency for employers to utilize white women, wherever possible, rather than Negro men." The job barrier has also been raised at the threshold of many jobs once considered in the domain of Negroes. The group most seriously affected by outright denial of employment, of course, are those highly qualified persons who cannot find a position commensurate with their skills in the South. 7 The difficulties of the Negro worker in obtaining entry into the job market are just the beginning of his travail. Since the dual track system of job organization in the South decrees that Negroes shall neither work side by side with whites on the same type of job, nor rise to a position of authority over whites, "direct personal competition between individual whites and Negroes is limited largely to isolated jobs where a man is on his own-as in truck driving. And *** these isolated jobs are also dead-end jobs." The mechanisms utilized to block Negroes from job advancement range from the ingenuous to the ingenious. Many foremen and employers doubtless accept unthinkingly the stereotyped image of Negroes as "hands" who neither want nor are capable of filling positions of skill or responsibility. Negro protest is fast ending such notions. But lack of on-the-job experience, exclusion from apprenticeship training programs, from business and vocational training, from the services of private employment agencies, from a host of other advantages which whites have these are obstacles which protest will not overcome without the help of governmental policies. 7 Donald Dewey. "Southern Poverty and the Racial Division of Labor," New South, XVII, 5 (May 1962), p. 12. Employment discrimination is a problem of the utmost seriousness, not only for the Negro citizens of the United States, but for the Nation as a whole. It causes waste of manpower resources, it creates a sizable block of deprived and oppressed citizens who are ever more deeply alienated from the mainstream of American society, and it represents a scandalous contradiction of our political ideals." The loss of talent caused by job discrimination is in itself reason enough for prompt governmental action. The President's Council of Economic Advisers declared in 1962 that the economy is losing $13 billion annually in national income through failure to employ fully the present educational attainment of nonwhites. The Council further estimated an additional $4 billion loss through failure to provide equal educational opportunities. As Mr. Harry J. Kelley, a commissioner of the Michigan FEPC, recently observed in a speech before the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, whenever one sees a minority group person succeeding in an "unexpected" job, it should be a cause for rejoicing in more than one sense: it means that an American citizen is no longer prohibited from the full development and expression of his personal abilities, and it also means that the Nation is benefiting from those abilities, instead of letting them go to waste through forcing a talented individual to do work that could be performed by a less skilled person." In an era when rapid technological advance promises to create a demand for hundreds of thousands of skilled operatives in electronics, chemicals, precision instruments and research, full utilization of manpower resources is a national goal that deserves high priority. And this goal cannot be achieved without the elimination of discrimination in employment. Equalization of job opportunities is in the public interest, second, because it is a necessary step in the achievement of other national interests. Low income means low health standards and low physical vitality, with an attendant drain upon the public resources and personal energies necessary to productive study and work. It means a high degree of family disorganization. A study by Dr. Hylan Lewis, sociologist on the staff of the District of Columbia Health and Welfare Council, demonstrates that low family income is associated with an abnormally early cutoff point of parental authority.10 Poverty stricken parents simply lose control of their children, in most cases, at an age much earlier than adolescence. James Conant's warning concerning the "social dynamite" of discontented unemployed urban youth deserves to be pondered soberly: "In a slum section composed almost entirely of Negroes in one of our largest cities the following situation was found. A total of 59 percent of the male youth between the ages of 16 and 21 were out of school and unemployed. They were roaming the streets. Of the boys who graduated from high school 48 percent were unemployed in contrast to 63 percent of the boys who had dropped out of school. In short, two-thirds of the male dropouts did not have jobs and about half of the high school graduates did not have jobs. In such a situation, a pupil may well ask: 'Why bother to stay in school when graduation for half the boys opens onto a dead-end street?' "An even worse state of affairs was found in another special study in a different city. In a slum area of 125,000 people, mostly Negro, a sampling of the youth population shows that roughly 70 percent of the boys and girls ages 16 to 21 are out of school and unemployed. When one stops to consider that the total population in this district is equal to that of a good-sized independent city, the magnitude of the problem is appalling and the challenge to our society is clear." " When a boy or man perceives that he cannot attain the goals considered desirable by his society through the means considered legitimate by the society, he must either renounce all hope of attaining the goals, and thus lapse into apathy, or flee into some type of purposeless escapism, or he must seek to attain these goals through illegitimate means, and thus fall into crime or vicious acquisitiveness. To speak of the tragedy of human waste caused by discrimination in employment is to anticipate the third point of urgency. We ought to act fairly because not to do so is to continue to violate the ideals of this Nation. America is nothing if it is not the land of a free and upright people. 8 Ibid., p. 11. Harry J. Kelley, "Six Years of Fair Employment Practices in Michigan." 10 Hylan Lewis, "Child Rearing in Low-Income Families." (Washington: Washington Center for Metropolitan Studies, 1961.) 11 James B. Conan, "Social Dynamite in Our Large Cities," "Social Dynamite: The Report of the Conferences on Unemployed Out-of-School Youth in Urban Areas" (Washington: National Committee for Children and Youth, 1961), pp. 26-27. A NATIONAL POLICY IS NEEDED Even if all of the State and municipal fair employment practice laws were adequately drafted and enforced, the need for Federal action would be real. There are, I believe, 28 States, including all of the Southern States, which are not covered. Three-fifths of our Negro citizens live in the Southern and Border States, only two of which have any kind of fair employment practice law whatsoever. The inadequacy of fair employment practice laws on a State or local rather than a national basis is compounded by the typical mode of corporate organization. "In contrast to the partial and northern-oriented coverage of State and municipal fair employment practice laws, American private enterprise in most lines is organized predominantly on a National rather than a State or local basis. Most of the major enterprises in manufacturing, transportation, public utilities, and mining, and important sectors of construction, trade, finance, and services are national and multiregional in scope, and many have establishments in all sections of the country. This organizational feature of industry and business has an important bearing on the problem of effective administration of fair employment practice laws. Since major policy decisions in these enterprises are nearly always made at the headquarters level, the effectuation of changes in employment practices through fair employment practice agency intervention can be achieved most effectively if the agency negotiates with top management in terms of all plants-or all noncomplying plants-in a particular company or industry. The desirability of utilizing this approach is evident if one considers the difficult problem of shifting from a longstanding discriminatory (and usually segregated), employment setup to a nondiscriminatory, integrated operation in a southern plant." 12 The President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity has achieved some promising results, especially in the field of Government employment, but we have not been given, by the Committee, the data which would make possible an intelligent appraisal of its effectiveness in combating racial inequities in the employment practices of Federal contractors. Nor can there be much hope that employers will voluntarily change discriminatory patterns. With some employers, no doubt, refusal to hire or upgrade Negroes on an equal basis is the result of genuine racial prejudice. Such employers will endeavor to maintain racist practices even in the face of market realities which permit or encourage merit employment, and will not alter policies unless required to do so by enforcible law. But these men are rare. Most employers are eager to hire and promote the workmen and executives who perform most capably; indeed, many are willing to take some risk in order to provide equal opportunities for Negroes. Employers may understandably, however, shy from offending too greatly the sensibilities of their customers and employees. They feel bound by the unwritten laws which make it unheard of for Negroes to hold white-collar positions, or to hold certain jobs alongside whites or in preference to whites, and which make it improper for a Negro to have supervisory authority over whites. Such employers need the support of an unambiguous directive from public authorities to enable them to use Negro manpower in a rational fashion, and the experience of many State fair employment practice commissions is that businessmen are often grateful for this support. And as Mr. George Meany said before this subcommittee on July 25, trade unions "need the power of the Federal Government to do what we are not fully able to do." 13 APPROACH TO A NATIONAL POLICY Mr. Chairman, I am not here to support or to criticize any one of the employment bills which have been introduced at this Congress. I would, however, like to conclude my testimony by indicating certain features which a national policy, formed and founded on the basis of study and experience, should, I believe, include. 13 Paul H. Norgren, "Governmental Fair Employment Agencies: An Appraisal of Federal State and Municipal Efforts To End Job Discrimination," a paper read before the Columbia University Seminar on Labor, Jan. 24, 1962, pp. 19-20. 13 New York Times, July 26, 1963. |