Apartheid. USA 1988

[p. 190]

Conclusion
by professor Carl Nöffke
Director of the Institute for American Studies, Rand Afrikaans University

The realities about racism in the United States - and of equalism

The Civil Rights Act of 1960 and subsequent action appear to indicate the disappearance of racism in the United States.

Recent academic studies in the United States have indicated bare progress over the past thirty-five years with respect to closing quality-of-life gaps between races.

Professor Calvin A Woodward, Director of the Institute for Geopolitical Studies at Valdosta State College in Georgia, summarized their findings in an article which was published in the Spring 1987 edition of AMERICAN REVIEW, a quarterly published by the Institute for American Studies at the RAND AFRIKAANS UNIVERSITY in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The most recent evidence comes from findings concerning southern states where almost half of the Black population in the United States resides. According to the Commission on the Future of the South, the average income of White families is almost double that of Black families.

Furthermore, the unemployment rate for Black Southerners in turn are twice that for White Southerners.

Similar disparities are evidenced by research recently done by the Southern Center for Growth of Public Policy at Clark College in Atlanta. One major finding is that employed Blacks are underrepresented in all higher paying and higher prestige occupations in the region, there being twice as many employed whites as there are blacks in professional, sales and managerial positions. The ratio is exact-

[p. 191]

ly reversed when it comes to low paying and non-prestige occupations, employed blacks providing the bulk of labourers, service personnel and agricultural workers in the south. According to Prof Woodward, quality-of-life profiles at the national level show essentially the same result. According to figures from the US Bureau of the Census, there were three times as many Blacks living beneath the poverty level in the United States in 1985 than there were Whites, a ratio that has steadily remained the same since 1959 when statistics were first made available.

In most respects Blacks in America have made progress relative to their status in earlier years. But the essential point is that so have whites, in most cases at a faster pace. In consequence, according to the Director of the Southern Labor Institute, Blacks have had to run twice as fast just to keep up.

There are gains, but again, also great human tragedies in the racial field.

One indicator is family breakdown, the proportion of intact husband-wife families dropping from 73 percent in 1965 to 59 percent 15 years later. In the same period illegitimate births among blacks rose from 28 percent to 48 percent of all black births. In similar vein are facts about Labour-force participation (LFP) of black young people, the LFP for blacks falling far below that for whites when thirty years ago the ratio was almost equal.

And many gains made in education have been negated by disorder in mainly black inner-city schools where achievers are more often than not jeered at and taunted by their racial peers. This while today more blacks than before may remain longer in school and while funds for black education have increased, the quality of their education and the value of the diploma they receive, remained low.

According to a recent study Apartheid in America by James A Kushner residential segregation is pervasive. In addition, the degree of separation is increasing so that today ‘the overwhelming majority of urban blacks reside in predominantly or solidly black census tracts.’

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It is against the background of American realities that the American value system should be judged. American policy, under both the Carter and Reagan administrations, has increasingly been committed to the global export of American values, expressed by Mr George Shultz, Secretary of State in the Reagan administration, as ‘peace, democracy, liberty and human rights; racial justice; economic and social progress; the strengthening of cooperation and the rule of law.’

Apart from the disparities which continue to exist in the United States it is also evident that American values cannot be exported.

As was stated by Dr Adda Bozeman, professor emeritus of International Relations at Sarah Lawrence College in the United States.

‘Democracy,’ she said, ‘is not a value either in the West or in non-Western societies if its core meaning is simplistically identified with elections, held regularly American-style in accordance with the one person, one vote principle.’

Certain ‘values’, as was discovered by Mr Willem Oltmans' careful perusal of the American news media over a brief period, do not fit in with what Mr Shultz believes to be the American value system. If these inequalities remain in the States the question arises how the United States can judge other countries and offer prescriptions for racial injustices elsewhere.

PROFESSOR CARL NÖFFKE

Director of the Institute for American Studies, Rand Afrikaans University