Apartheid. USA 1988

November 5, 1987:

The results of the 1987 state and local elections offer powerful evidence of the continuing importance of race in American politics. In Mississippi, Ray Mabus, a Democrat, was elected Governor on a wave of black votes while losing the white vote by about 3 to 2. Race was the overwhelming factor in the bitter mayoral contest in Philadelphia, where the incumbent, W Wilson Goode, a black Democrat took 98 percent of the black vote and just enough of the white vote to squeeze out a victory over former Mayor Frank L Rizzo.

The elections produced other significant victories for black mayoral candidates, notably in Baltimore and Hartford. But Harvey Gantt, the first black Mayor of predominantly white Charlotte, North Carolina, was upset by Sue Myrick, a Republican, in a contest in which race was not an overt issue. In the Miami Mayoral Contest, blacks will hold the balance of power in a November 10 run-off between Mayor Xavier Suarez and former Mayor Maurice Ferre. Voters set up another run-off in the San Francisco mayoral contest, and so forth.^168.

A new study by Gail Thomas, a sociology professor at Texas A & M University found that the percentage of blacks enrolled in non-professional graduate schools, particularly in engineering and the physical sciences, declined in the six years after it peaked in the mid-1970's. The percentage of blacks among all graduate students dropped to 4.2 percent in 1982, from a peak of 5.1 percent in 1976. Black enrollment

168. The New York Times, from a report by EJ Dionne Jr.

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in professional schools such as law, medicine and dentistry remained stable at 4.6 percent. ‘Black students remained highly underrepresented in graduate and professional schools relative to their availability in the baccalaureate pool,’ wrote Professor Thomas. She cited a variety of reasons for the disproportionate enrollments, including poor elementary and secondary schools in predominantly black areas, failure of guidance counsellors and parents to encourage blacks to pursue advanced degrees, and poor performance by blacks on standardized tests, including Scholastic Aptitude Tests.^169.

169. The New York Times, from a report by the Associated Press