As we enter a new century, a problem from the old one continues to haunt us.
It is the color line.
In 1902 the black scholar W.E.B. Du Bois forecast that “The problem of the 20th Century is the problem of the color line, the question is how far differences of a race which show themselves chiefly in the color of the skin and the texture of the hair will hereafter be made the basis of denying over half the world the right of sharing to their utmost ability the opportunities and privileges of modern civilization.”
Since then, when lynchings were common and racial segregation was legal, Americans of all colors have come a long way. But not as far as some of us would like to think we have. The progress Americans have made in easing the color line has lulled too many of us into thinking the line has been erased.
Some critics, including some who have their own radio talk shows, even believe that government, after years of protecting everyone’s rights, actually has become the problem and should remove itself from the racial equality business.
In fact, the color line endures, if only under new names like “redlining,” “steering” or “racial profiling.”
In 1948 the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed housing covenants that kept neighborhoods segregated by race and religion. But “redlining,” a practice that denies conventional home loans and insurance to targeted neighborhoods, endured, despite laws passed in the 1960s to outlaw such discriminatory practices.
In 1997 a federal study found that regardless of income, blacks were twice as likely to be turned down for home loans as their white counterparts, regardless of income. Bank officials insist they are judging people based on their credit histories alone. Yet another study in 1994 by the Federal Reserve Bank in Boston found that even when credit histories were comparable, blacks still were substantially less likely than whites to have their loans approved.
That would not have surprised most of the 800 white voters, 200 black voters and 200 Hispanic voters polled recently by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, which tries to increase investment in lower-income and minority communities.
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Of the voters surveyed, one third of blacks and almost a fifth of Hispanics said they or someone they knew had experienced discrimination by banks, compared to about 15 percent of whites.
All groups agreed by an overall ratio of 5-1 that white males have an advantage in getting their loan applications approved. A similar majority of 60 percent felt that, all other factors being equal, a male loan applicant would have better chances than a woman in getting approval.
The coalition hired Republican pollster Frank Luntz and Democratic consultant Jennifer Laszlo to conduct the bipartisan study of white and black attitudes toward bank-lending practices.
To zero in on some of the attitudes behind those numbers, Luntz and Laszlo conducted focus groups of white suburbanites last summer in Des Moines; Austin, Texas; Manchester, N.H.; and Levittown, N.Y.
In Texas, for example, a white woman said her experience told her blacks have less of a chance of getting a loan because “they’re more scrutinized. (The banks) want more papers, they want to see more proof, more of this, more of that, than they do if I went in for a loan.”
John Taylor, NCRC president, used the survey to call for stricter enforcement of anti-discrimination laws and regulations. Unfortunately, Congress and the White House have been moving the other way. The recent rewrite of the nation’s banking laws actually has relaxed data collection requirements for 80 percent of the nation’s banks, by NCRC estimates.
Washington’s ambivalence about enforcing its own anti-discrimination laws was reflected in the focus groups. Most of the participants agreed that discrimination was bad, but they disagreed over how to get rid of it.
The New York group, for example, waffled over whether strong enforcement would lead to “racial quotas” and complaints by “some political hack like Al Sharpton or something,” as one white woman put it.
As I read those words in the transcripts of the focus groups, the comment made me wince. When Americans are confusing civil-rights enforcement with racial quotas, we have a bigger problem than I thought.
By 2050, if current projections hold up, non-Hispanic whites will be less than half of the nation’s population. If all goes well, that shift will accelerate our movement toward a society where, as Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed, all can be judged by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin.
If not, the color line is going to be America’s problem next century too.