TRUTH IN NUMBERS

By Derrick Z. Jackson, Globe Staff

FRIDAY, March 24, 1995

A Globe guest columnist recently chided proponents of affirmative action for wanting workplaces where women and people of color get a share of jobs equal to their percentage of the population. ''However,'' the columnist wrote, ''no minority group leaders have called for a cutback in areas where they are overrepresented, whether it be in the Postal Service, sports or academia.''

This statement underscores the arrogance of the new white civil rights movement. The movement does not chide white leaders for not demanding cutbacks in areas where they are overrepresented. White men make up 43 percent of the nation's workers, but are 63 percent of managers and officials and 74 percent of building trades workers and other skilled crafts workers. Of Fortune's top 1,000 industrial and top 500 service firms, 95-97 percent of senior officials are male. Of the men, 97 percent are white.

It can mean only one thing when the movement even remotely asks overrepresented women and people of color to give up their jobs without asking the same of overrepresented white males. The movement wants more than just the end of affirmative action. It wants those historically discriminated against to defrock themselves of even the labors they were channeled into because of discrimination. It wants everyone else in the back of the bus until all white males are employed.

Millions of people of color and women would be happy to resign if they had the chance. No one can plausibly argue that African-Americans, 10 percent of the workforce, want to be 21-30 percent of pressing machine operators, welfare aides, nursing aides and orderlies, laundry and dry cleaning machine operators, assembly-line sorters, garbage collectors, maids, janitors, jail guards, recreation workers, cleaners and servants, telephone operators, social workers, shoe salespeople, bill collectors, and bus and taxi drivers.

Only the ignorant would say that Latinos -- 8 percent of the workforce -- want to be 59 percent of vegetable and fruit sorters, 38 percent of farm workers, and 18-31 percent of textile sewing machine operators, pressing machine operators, cleaners and servants, private household childcare workers, groundskeepers and gardeners, hand packers, car washers, construction ''helpers,'' assembly-line sorters, slicing and cutting machine operators, packaging and fitting machine operators, maids and menial restaurant help.

You have to be Neanderthal to think that women, 46 percent of workers, love being 86-99 percent of child care workers, cleaners, servants, dental aides, textile machine operators, nursing aides, orderlies, secretaries, receptionists, payroll clerks, tellers and phone operators.

There is evidence that the movement has already ''taken back'' working- class jobs held in recent history by African-Americans. Most American plants for Japanese cars as well as several new factories for American makes are in nearly all-white Midwestern towns. Seven years ago, Honda paid $6 million in back pay to 370 African-American workers whom the government said it tried to avoid.

As for academia, sports and the Postal Service, the white civil rights movement is simply suffering from Multicultural War Syndrome. This syndrome is identified by a propensity to imagine a handful of women or people of color as a herd of wildebeest. The higher up the education ladder you go, the fewer women and people of color you see. Women go from being 98 percent of kindergarten teachers to 15 percent of college presidents. African-Americans go from 12 percent of kindergarten teachers to 2 percent of professors at predominantly white universities.

The movement does not ask why pro basketball, 80 percent African-American among players, is 75 percent white among coaches, especially when many coaches are ex-players. Unless it admits to racism, the movement obviously believes, like Al Campanis and Charles Murray, that African-Americans do not have the ''necessities'' or the IQ.

As for the Postal Service, African-Americans are 28 percent of clerks. Just as African-American dominance in basketball is due to black boys being dissuaded at a young age from academics, public sector work has been a parking lot for much older African-Americans after the private sector made academic our ambitions.

Many anti-affirmative action commentaries say white people are so collectively wonderful, that that day is over. A Newsweek columnist, citing ''great job gains for women and blacks,'' said ''the remaining problems have more to do with low skills and poor work habits than racial bias.''

The Labor Department last week released statistics that betrayed the low skills and work habits of white managers in reducing racial bias. African- American men and women with professional degrees respectively earn 79 and 60 percent of like white males at the same jobs. Ninety percent of African- American professional women, 83 percent of both white and Latino women professionals and 70 percent of African-American male professionals have been driven into government agencies or firms generally concerned with human services and education.

Only 56 percent of like white males are so employed. No wonder the right wing has targeted this sector for budget cuts.

The Globe guest columnist, saying that there was no evidence that affirmative action assures economic equality, wrote, ''Who can respect the beneficiaries of invidious favoritism?''

Multicultural War Syndrome is also noted by total memory loss beginning with the year 1954, when this country began realizing it was being torn asunder by invidious white male favoritism.

A century ago, the Ku Klux Klan ascended by getting white people to feel sorry for themselves. Today, the self-pitying white civil rights movement uses the same tactic to drive this country into a winner-take-all-jobs race war. It offers no evidence that a return to a pre-Rosa Parks America, with no government policies to assure access and promotion, will do anything but plant a burning cross on the working spirit -- if not bodies -- of people of color and women.

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