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On the other side, the heads of civil rights organizations -- and most African Americans -- insist that racial discrimination is so entrenched at all levels of U.S. society that only affirmative action can overcome it. They charge that Steele and other critics greatly understate white resistance to black progress. To support their view, they note that self-reliance has long been a part of the black gospel for advancement. "There's nothing new in the statement that we can and should do more for ourselves," says John Jacob, president of the National Urban League. "It's not a debatable issue." But, say supporters of affirmative action, expecting blacks to pull themselves up by their bootstraps alone is unrealistic. Argues Benjamin L. Hooks, executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People: "It's still the responsibility of the government to provide a good school system for us and fair and equal access to jobs."
Adding irony to the dispute is an often overlooked fact: government efforts to "level the playing field" by giving blacks special treatment were first adopted not by blacks or white liberals, but by conservative Republicans. In 1959 then-Vice President Richard M. Nixon, as head of President Eisenhower's Committee on Contracts, recommended limited "preferential" treatment for qualified blacks seeking jobs with government contractors. Following up that recommendation, John F. Kennedy issued an Executive Order in 1961 calling for "affirmative action" as the means to promote equal opportunity for racial minorities in hiring by federal contractors -- the first official use by the government of the now controversial term.
Eight years later, Nixon, as President, beefed up the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, which, along with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, has become one of the government's two main enforcers of affirmative-action policy. It oversees 225,000 companies, with a combined work force of 28 million, that do business with the Federal Government. In 1971 Nixon's Labor Department started the Philadelphia Plan, a quota system & that required federal contractors in Philadelphia, and later Washington, to employ a fixed number of minorities.
Such efforts have vastly expanded job opportunities for blacks. But they have also touched off complaints from many whites that blacks are benefiting from reverse discrimination. Much of the anger is aimed at so-called race norming, in which scores on employment-aptitud e tests are ranked on different racial curves. Whites usually score higher on such examinations than blacks and Hispanics. To be ranked in the top 99% of applicants on one widely used test, for example, a white applicant must score 405 out of a possible 500 points. To get the same ranking, a black would have to achieve a 355.