by Arthur Ashe
“Why? Affirmative action wasn’t meant for you, surely. You were born and brought up in luxury, with the best teachers and private schools from kindergarten on up. You’ve lived a charmed life.”
“As a black, I belong to a group that has been historically abused and discriminated against. I’m entitled to redress.”
“Is that your best argument?”
“Also, we need a greater ethnic diversity among lawyers, even if we don’t need more lawyers. And law-school entrance requirements are probably slanted to favor whites.”
“So you would accept affirmative action?”
“Yes, I would. Don’t you think I should?”
“No, Bobby. Philosophically, intellectually, I think affirmative action is just about indefensible.”
“Well, Arthur, all my friends think like me.”
“Yes, I know. We have a problem there. A serious problem.”
If American society had the strength to do what should be done to ensure that justice prevails for all, then affirmative action would be exposed for what it is: an insult to the people it is intended to help. What I and others want is an equal chance, under one set of rules, as on a tennis court. To be sure, while rules are different for different people, devices like affirmative action are needed to prevent explosions of anger. Practically, affirmative action is probably necessary. But I would not want to know that I received a job simply because I am black. Affirmative action tends to undermine the spirit of individual initiative. Such is human nature; why struggle to succeed when you can have something for nothing?
THE PROBLEM OF leadership continues to plague black America. The very fact that we speak of “leaders” and “role models” as much as we do tells of our lack of power and organization. No reasonably coherent body of people would think in terms of “leaders” and “role models.” Jewish Americans, for example, do not have leaders and role models, as we define them, even though certain highly influential people are Jewish. But we depend on all sorts of blacks to be leaders and role models for the community. We even think of athletes and entertainers in this way; we see basketball players and pop singers as possible role models, when nothing could be further, in most cases, from their capacities.
We blacks look for leadership in men and women of such youth and inexperience, as well as poverty of education and character, that it is no wonder that we sometimes seem rudderless. One major reason for the ineffective record of Black Power was that the major exponents were young people—almost all of them young men—who had few qualifications for leadership beyond bravery. Vision, learning, experience, the wisdom that age often brings were all generally lacking. We are also afflicted, it seems to me, with the Messiah complex, which is another sign that we as a people are wandering in the wilderness. I often think that if the blacks of Memphis had organized themselves properly, they would not have felt the need to send for Martin Luther King, Jr.—the Messiah—to help them with a local crisis involving garbage collectors. Then he would not have been killed, like a Messiah, doing what others should have done for themselves.
I must also confess, although I know I may offend some people, that I did not fully share their passion for Malcolm X. I was fascinated by his autobiography, but until his conversion following his pilgrimage to Mecca, I found him in other ways hard to accept. Having lived under white-imposed segregation, I was not about to deliver myself to the black-imposed segregation central to the Nation of Islam. I thought that his teachings on race (derived from the Nation of Islam), about blacks as the superior people and whites as mutant devils produced by the mad scientist Yacub, were preposterous. I admired Malcolm’s bravery and his determination to educate himself. I admired and still admire the self-help ethic of the Nation of Islam, and the emphasis on cleanliness and self-discipline. Sometimes I bought copies of the newspaper Muhammad Speaks, simply to find out what was going on, or what the Muslims thought was going on. But the “white devil” rhetoric made little sense to me. Nor was I completely impressed and convinced by the story of Malcolm’s conversion. “Malcolm,” I wanted to ask him, “do you mean to say that you had to go all the way to the Middle East and actually see some blond, blue-eyed Moslems before you would believe that some existed? I’ve met a few on my travels. I could have saved you the trip.”
The current passion for Malcolm has less to do with the actual Malcolm, admirable as he was in certain ways, and much more to do with both the hunger among our young people for guidance and their capacity to grasp at straws, to fantasize about power and authority. We leave whole worthy sections of Malcolm’s character and creed untouched, such as his thirst for knowledge and his prolonged effort to educate himself; his self-discipline; his ability to grow. I think the Spike Lee motion picture, whatever one may think of it as cinematic art, gives a fairly rounded portrait of the man; and yet, in the world, Malcolm lives mainly as an embodiment of black rage at and defiance of whites, and Martin Luther King, Jr., seems to have few followers or admirers among those who admire Malcolm. It is as if King spoke only to whites, Malcolm only to blacks.
In any event, Malcolm was more than a cut above certain leaders today who talk militantly but who, compared to Malcolm, seem to have few genuine ideas or ideals, or the courage for which he was justly famous. In this category I would place New Yorkers such as the Reverend Al Sharpton and Professor Leonard Jeffries. Such men may mean well but need to be challenged. In my opinion, the key to such leaders is their instinct to build and maintain a power base that is usually small but also distinct and their very own. I am well aware that for such people, I hardly count. “I don’t give a damn,” I imagine them saying, “what Arthur Ashe or anyone else like him thinks. I must guard my power base.” To maintain that power base, the “leader” has to talk and act in a militant way, no matter what he actually thinks. Sharpton, in running in 1992 for the U.S. Senate (a distressing thought, were it not for the various white demagogues who have sat in the U.S. Senate, some no more qualified than Sharpton), has attempted to broaden his base; but his record is not encouraging, especially escapades such as his defense of the unhappy Tawana Brawley, who helped to polarize the state of New York along racial lines with an unlikely story of abduction and rape by white men. Jeffries, the chair for nineteen years of the Department of Black Studies at City College of the City University of New York, represents to me the almost complete subversion of an intellect by race. His blanket, pseudo-scientific attacks on whites, and Jews in particular, are indefensible—and he himself has hardly defended them, since he has published virtually nothing of his own in his years as a professor at the college.
Whenever I visited my father in Virginia, we would usually watch the news on television together. Quite often, after listening to some black leader speak, Daddy would shake his head. “Now that don’t make any sense to me,” he would say. “Arthur, does that make any sense to you?” Often it didn’t; yet I had to assure my father that, semi-literate though he was, he hadn’t taken leave of his senses.
Worried about the quality of black leadership, a small group of well-to-do blacks, of which I was a member, some years ago met regularly in such resort settings as Hilton Head, South Carolina, and Miami. Each time, we paid the expenses of one prominent black politician to visit and talk with us. Among those who came were the former mayor of Atlanta Andrew Young, and Douglas Wilder when he was lieutenant-governor of Virginia. We wanted to stimulate an exchange of opinions among the leaders, because we found that many did not speak to one another but instead strove to protect their individual turfs. It was a tiny gesture, but I hope it helped.
Although Sharpton and others like him in the African American world gain the headlines, I am grateful for those other blacks who quietly prepare themselves to occupy positions of authority and to represent all of us in a morally responsible way. I refer to talented, farsighted blacks such as Andrew Young, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; Douglas Wilder, the governor of Virginia; John Lewis, the former civil-rights worker, now a co
ngressman from Georgia; Maxine Waters, the California congress-woman whose district includes many people tragically affected by the recent Los Angeles disturbances; Kurt Schmoke, the mayor of Baltimore; Maynard Jackson, the mayor of Atlanta; Willie Brown, the speaker of the California Assembly; Sharpe James, the mayor of Newark; and David Dinkins, the mayor of New York. Some, like my friend David, may have made a few political mistakes; basically, however, they are all persons of integrity and ability.
In many ways I am philosophically closest to Young; our temperaments also seem almost to mesh. An ordained minister, Young is a reconciler rather than a divider of persons; he is pragmatic in a way that apparently involves no compromise of principle. True pragmatism, I believe, takes into account the moral consequences of an action. If the action leads to immorality, then one has not been genuinely pragmatic, merely opportunistic. And yet one must be able to act. Speaking about the need to make decisions, Doug Wilder said to me once, “You have to be willing to pull the trigger. First you have to think that you are right, that what you are doing is morally defensible, that it is good for the people you wish to help. Then you have to be willing to pull the trigger. You have to act.”
The black electorate must also act. The habit of electing and reelecting demagogues and characters with dubious records, such as Marion Barry in Washington, D.C., is unfortunate. On this score, I thought John Lewis’s recent election in Georgia something of a watershed in African American political history—a small watershed, perhaps, but one nevertheless. Lewis defeated the favorite, Julian Bond, who was his opposite in almost every way. Light-skinned, handsome, and aristocratic in his bearing, Bond comes from a distinguished family; he is highly educated, politically sophisticated, and has a long personal history of activism. In 1968, at the national convention of the Democratic party, he was even nominated for the vice-presidency of the United States, before someone discovered that he was too young to qualify for the job. His honesty was unquestioned. Lewis was none of these things, except for his honesty and his record of activism; as a civil-rights worker, he had been beaten repeatedly. But he was perceived as morally above reproach, one of the masses and yet no demagogue; in addition, he was clearly responsive to the needs of both blacks and whites. Against the odds, he won the election. Much as I admire Bond, I thought the largely black electorate showed wisdom in making its choice. We have not always chosen wisely.
I think of myself as being in some respects a “race man,” an expression that black Americans use to describe someone committed to his people and vigilant about racial injustice. Still, I am appalled by the level of irrationality in our community and especially by the complicity of some newspapers and radio stations in encouraging this excess. Irrationality certainly also exists among whites, but it seems to be fostered more readily within our community by people who should know better. Our suspicion of whites and hostility to them routinely go beyond the dictates of reason. When I read certain newspapers aimed at blacks, however, I sometimes wonder whether race is not abused to some extent as a subject by these weeklies, so inflammatory and irrational they can be. In the past presidential election, for example, certain papers repeatedly mauled Jesse Jackson for allegedly having “sold out” to Bill Clinton. In the first place, Jackson had been lukewarm in support of Clinton; in the second, only a short-sighted African American could fail to see that to win the election Clinton had to steer his campaign down the middle, to recapture many of the white Democrats who had defected to the Republicans. To the editors of such newspapers, however, this logic meant little; the opportunity to be divisive was there, and some seized it.
The same is true of the call-in radio shows on WLIB, a radio station that probably reaches more blacks in New York City than any other station. Many of my black middle-class friends refuse to listen to WLIB, or claim not to. They insist that what is spoken there is often unsubstantiated, reckless, and even racist. The comments of many of the callers, and even some of the hosts, indeed often seem irresponsible. Nevertheless, I know I have never turned off the station in anger or disgust. No matter how absurd the comments, I believe that whatever little effectiveness I have depends in large part on knowing what our people think. In addition, all is not confusion and discord, as some of my friends insist. In fact, I agree with much of what is said on the station, either by callers or the hosts, on the subject of race. Above all, I sense the hurt and sorrow behind the wild accusations. These are people who suffer and have suffered. A radio station like WLIB is one of the few vents for their seething emotions, their frustrated thoughts and dreams. Still, I will not support racism or extremism, no matter what the source.
I look for responsible, intelligent African American political leaders. At one time, I had high hopes for the Reverend Jesse Jackson. In 1984, when he made his first run for the presidency, I even founded an organization called Athletes for Jesse Jackson. (To tell the truth, few athletes were for anyone but themselves, and fewer were for Jackson after dealing with his staff. One athlete, the football player Butch Woolfolk, had so much trouble getting a simple reimbursement for his expenses on a trip for Jackson that I finally gave him the money myself.) I was determined to support him all the way. The first iota of doubt came when Jackson began to claim that Martin Luther King, Jr., had died in his arms; people who were at the Memphis motel when King was shot told me that such a thing never happened. I began to wonder about someone who would exaggerate his relationship to King in order to enhance his stature as a leader. I also began to think that Jesse liked the limelight a little too much; I was irked by the fact that he almost never spoke to me in public without looking around to see to whom else he might want to talk. I was not flattered by this lack of focus.
When Jackson formed the Rainbow Coalition, several of us were asked to contribute $5,000 each. I was prepared to send the money, but I doubted that it would be wisely spent. What was Jesse Jackson actually going to do? What was his mission? After the 1988 election, I began to drift away. When he moved to Washington from Chicago, I assumed he would run for the mayoralty of the District of Columbia. To my disappointment, he didn’t. All I saw was an ineffectual maneuvering to stay out in front, to remain the black leader in America without having any executive experience whatsoever, without once testing his ideas and abilities in the crucible of public office. I thought he was determined to monopolize the attention of the media so that no other black leader, such as Kurt Schmoke or Maynard Jackson, could ever rival his fame. Rather than develop a plan, he seemed restlessly to seek one photo opportunity after another.
Accordingly, his reputation has suffered in many circles. Talented, intelligent, and shrewd, he needs to decide on a few areas of involvement and focus on these, rather than try to be Minister Plenipotentiary from black America to the world. Like most of us, I still admire and like him; but he must settle down if he is ever going to be effective. If he does settle down, he could be an even greater force for social progress than he already is.
WHILE I THINK that the concept of the “role model” is an indication of our instability as a people, I know that it is a valid concept in our culture, where failure is so much a part of our lives that anyone who succeeds is scrutinized for his or her secrets to success. Whether I like it or not, it seems clear that blacks who succeed have a special obligation to try to live exemplary lives. When someone like the entertainer Eddie Murphy appears to flaunt his children born out of wedlock, it probably appears to impressionable young people that the way to success is to turn one’s back on institutions such as marriage. In a special Newsweek investigation of the black male published a few years ago, many young men openly declared that they felt a strong obligation to have as many children as possible, but no obligation whatsoever to these children or their mothers. Behavior by celebrities that reinforces such thinking is unfortunate. When Vice President Dan Quayle spoke out against unmarried single women having children, he did so by criticizing the television comedy series “Murphy Brown.” I believed that he was right in pointing
to the potential negative impact of television images of fatherless children (although we must always respect the freedom of expression); he simply picked a poor example in attacking the fictional character Murphy Brown.
I am also appalled by the number of celebrities who become involved in crimes of one sort or another, but especially crimes involving sex. Of these, athletes are probably among the prime offenders, with Mike Tyson the most celebrated—although not necessarily the most delinquent. Statistics indicate that a high percentage of sexual crimes reported on American campuses involve college athletes. That a disproportionate number of these are blacks distresses me. I remember a sorrowful conversation some years ago with Julius Erving, once a basketball superstar but a man who even then set high standards of behavior for himself and met them. Erving had been so shocked at some words uttered by a promising young basketball player, Quintin Dailey, that we talked at length on the telephone about it. Responding to questions about the charge that he had sexually assaulted certain women, Dailey seemed to brush off the matter. “That’s all over now,” he reportedly said. “All I’m concerned about is getting back to basketball.” Julius and I both wondered how he apparently could turn his back on the severity of what had befallen those women and ignore the seriousness of the allegations against him. But we were dealing with a new generation, and the old morals and sense of discretion apparently no longer apply.
I do not think that every black athlete or entertainer has an obligation to thrust himself or herself into positions of leadership. However, our situation is increasingly desperate, and I admire those athletes and entertainers who consciously try to give something back to the people, if only by exemplary behavior. I admire former stars such as Julius Erving in basketball, or Lynn Swann in football, for what they have made of themselves. I am less happy with the demureness of someone like Michael Jordan, who is as popular as he is rich. While I would defend Jordan’s right to stay out of politics in general, I think that he made a mistake in declining to give any open support to Harvey Gantt, the respected black politician who ran for the U.S. Senate in 1990 from Jordan’s home state of North Carolina. For me, the main point is not that Gantt and Jordan are both black; rather, it is that Gantt’s opponent, Jesse Helms, has a long history of supporting segregation, and the contest was close. For blacks across America, that Senate contest was the most important in decades. Instead, Jordan stuck to his apolitical position. “I don’t really know Gantt,” he said, in response to criticism of his silence. “Well, Michael,” I would have told him, “pick up the telephone and call him!” A few appearances with Gantt might well have made the difference. Instead, Helms returned to the Senate.
