What do you think that the Chief Justice Roberts and the other five members have?
What do you think they don't understand about America today?
Well, I think what they have not taken into account is the reality that our
great history in this country also has some regrettable dimensions.
The racism that has regrettably been a part of our country's history.
The vestiges of that remain with us. We are still a highly segregated society
in our educational system, our workplaces, our criminal justice system
and other systems in this country. And to simply say in order to stop
discriminating, we must stop discriminating creates a false moral
equivalency between those who historically sought to keep the Jim Crow
hierarchy, the racial hierarchy that characterized this country for most of
our history. Those people are doing the same thing as
those of us who have sought to bring about more justice and redress the
history, the vestiges of racism that unfortunately remain with us today.
Have we made real progress with what is called by some affirmative action?
I mean, we can go back. It's been around for a long time now.
Go back to the key decision in 1978. That's a long time ago now.
Did having affirmative action help us make progress in the direction we should
be making progress? Well, David, I would not be here with
you today were it not for affirmative action.
There is no doubt that an entire generation of African-Americans and
Latinos in this country have been propelled forward, in part because of
affirmative action. I'm a proud affirmative action baby.
I benefited from living in a country that believed in my potential.
And even though I was a poor kid living in a rural community.
America cheered me on. This country wanted me to win and
succeed, and that manifest in the ways in which my public education, the Pell
Grants, graduating from college without any debt.
All of this made it possible for me to get on the mobility escalator and ride
it as far as I could and my talent would bring me.
But there had to be a sense of understanding of racial consciousness
and what the Supreme Court and others seem to be saying is that it is time for
us to move beyond having any consciousness of race.
We're not saying I don't profess to believe that race has to be the deciding
factor, but to say that it is unconstitutional to have any
consciousness of race and the legacy of racism that remains with us I think is
not good for our democracy. The Supreme Court's rulings this week
came in the context of higher education to universities.
There are questions now about how much farther the ramifications may be in the
future, and particularly in the private sector.
Let's talk about corporations, because a lot of corporations have their own
version of affirmative action in hiring and promotion and developing of talent.
What are the possible ramifications in the private sector for what was decided
here with respect to colleges and universities?
Well, there is no doubt that there will be some who will challenge private
sector policies around promotion, around the business policies
for diversity. But diversity is a business imperative.
Today, no public company, no private company that has customers, consumers,
stakeholders, investors can ignore the need for diversity.
Now, the research, the data tell us you can't ignore it either.
If you want to be a high performing enterprise, if you want to be an
organization that succeeds, you are less likely to succeed.
The research tells us if you are less diverse.
So every indicator of success in the economy in the corporate world, I
believe, requires looking at diversity. So race is one form of diversity.
It's not the only one. You have ethnicity, you have
socioeconomic status, you have religion, lots of different issues, not
necessarily the same history for the United States of America.
Are there surrogates? Are there other ways to achieve some of
the diversity that you describe without it being specifically race?
That is something that's discussed and some of the opinions.
For example, socioeconomic struggles that people have had.
I think we should be very sensitive to socioeconomic background.
I am concerned in this country about what is happening to working class white
Americans, rural people who feel left out and left behind.
And we need to absolutely understand the needs of those communities because we
have not done enough to ensure their economic success.
And part of the reason for that, their feeling of vulnerability, is because of
the growing inequality we have in this country.
To your question. Of that, is socioeconomic background a
proxy? What The Wall Street Journal reveals
today in a very good report, they looked at a number of of
states that had implemented non race based criteria, not allowing race to be
considered. And in each of those states, the
numbers, particularly of African-Americans and Latinos, went down
sometimes by 50%. So it is not true, as some have
suggested, that by simply finding a proxy for race, we will be able to come
back to the levels of of enrollment that we saw before.
So it is not a proxy. The thing, David, that I also find
interesting on this question is those who are fighting so aggressively to
undermine racial consciousness in higher education admissions have not, with the
same fervor, went after the other ways in which bias is built into the system,
most notably the legacy programs that exist at most selective
schools in this country that give privilege and bonus points to the
children, the grandchildren, the legacies of people who have attended
these institutions who are primarily white and primarily wealthy.
This is patently unfair. And yet the opponents of affirmative
action have been silent, at least silent in the courts on this issue.
And so I think the genuine sincerity that is sometimes voiced by opponents of
affirmative action are, in my mind, questionable when they're not as
aggressively looking at the other ways the system might be deemed unfair.
Darren, part of what you describe interferes with what we call mobility
ability for people to raise up the sort of the American dream from the lower
ranks, socioeconomic and the upper ranks.
When you took over the Ford Foundation, you embraced justice as your fundamental
tenet. That's what you're pursuing.
What can we do to promote mobility? Because I would say that's not just a
matter of fairness or justice. It's also, in the long run, could help
us economically grow our economy more robustly.
We have to have a country where hope is at the center, as it has been for most
of our history, the hope, the optimism that has propelled generations of
Americans forward. Part of the reason for that hope was a
belief that the playing field was fair. And what we know today, David, is that
the playing field is not fair. The playing field tilts towards those
who are already advantaged and compounds the disadvantage of the already
disadvantaged. And so if we want America to be great
and to realize its potential, we have to have a fairer playing field so that the
mobility escalator that I got on is possible in the future.
And unfortunately, we know from the research the data on economic mobility
that there are many other countries outperforming us.
If you want the American Dream, move to Canada.
They are outperforming us on the very idea of what opportunity, equality,
mobility means in a country. I don't want America to be beaten by the
Canadians on an idea we created a democracy that is unparalleled in its
history and its potential. I want America to be America.