EEOC Diary: February 23, 1967

Title: EEOC Diary

Date: February 23, 1967

Overview: PCR keeps a diary of his first two months working at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. For background on this diary, see the earlier post “EEOC Diary: February 6 to April 4, 1967.” I still haven’t finished proofreading the whole thing, so I still don’t have a link to the full document. Here’s an excerpt from February 23, 1967.

Introduction: In this segment, he relates a discussions with Al Blumrosen concerning what he then called “affirmative action” but which would now be called “voluntary compliance.” Toward the end of the excerpt, he calls it “accelerated voluntary action.” Perhaps we should have adopted that terminology!

We had lunch together very early after my arrival and I have had numerous contacts with him since. He quite early expressed the view to me that the key struggle going on within the agency was basically the struggle between what he called the “hawks” and the “doves”. By this he meant that the “hawks” were those who favored a strong enforcement approach and that the “doves” were basically those who favored using the affirmative action approach under which individuals who were considered to be discriminating were urged to take voluntary action to amend their ways. He indicated that one of the current on going disputes that focused this issue was the dispute over what would be done by way of follow up to the EEO-1 forms and whether they would be used for the basis of initiation of enforcement action or simply as triggers for the initiation of other commission action under which individuals who were low utilizers would be called in for discussions as to the reasons for their low utilization and gentle request that they take action to improve the situation. Of course, my own leanings are very much along the lines of strong enforcement. But I have recognized throughout my entire service in Missouri that there is a real conflict and pressure upon an agency as to how to handle this problem. I deeply believe that in the long run the in depth change in employment patterns that we want to achieve in the United States economy will depend in large part upon voluntary action which employers take to increase their recruitment of minority group members. Although emotionally I can make and could accept an argument for preferential treatment based upon past inequities it has always seemed to me unfair, and if not unfair at least politically impracticable, to make a demand that an individual employer conduct preferential treatment. The economic pressures of making a profit which are imposed upon individual private employers and the realistic pressures of getting the work done that are placed upon any employer make it very difficult for him to accept in a slot an individual less well qualified than the best obtainable. But I have also felt that to frame the question in these terms really does not adequately define the problem. Many employers hire large quantities of marginally skilled workers and train them on the job for a wide variety of tasks. The thing that has always bothered me in this context is the layer of subjective discrimination about the trainability of the Negro that seems to keep the Negroes from getting into these jobs in a degree which is proportionate to his numbers in a given area. As to any one particular individual it is always possible for an employer to make a logical argument that that individual does not meet certain objective criteria but when the net impact of the thousands and thousands of individual cases is that the average Negro ends up being excluded a great deal more often than the average whites and you have a serious dislocation in the economy and misallocation of resources. I relate this back to my original thought about preferential treatment by saying that it is my feeling that the massive inroads which I want to see made into the discriminatory patterns against Negro in the American economy are only going to come when the employer realizes that his existing pattern for whatever objective or subconscious reasons is resulting in an exclusion of Negroes and puts the pressure on his personnel office to deliver in the employment field as he puts it on his other top level management personnel to deliver in their respective fields. For example, if a salesman or a sales manager were told that his quota for a certain month were to sell a certain number of units and he consistently failed to meet the results the company president would not be interested particularly in the reasons if he thought he could get someone to replace the sales manager who would deliver results. Similarly, in the long run it is always been my feeling that the leaders of industry have to take the position with their personnel manager that they want to see a reasonable quantity of Negroes employed in the business and that when these results fail to be achieved they are not really interested in the reasons or excuses and that they replace the personnel manager with someone who will get results. Now– this ties back in to Al Blumrosen’s dispute between the hawks and the doves in a theoretical sense with the argument that if you are going to try to get the leaders of industry to undertake this kind of action you want them to be friendly with you. If you undertake vigorous enforcement against them they will become unfriendly and will not undertake the voluntary actions which you want.
Now I stated that I felt this was somewhat of a conflict that would torture the soul of those trying to administer fair employment practices agencies and to the question of whether they allocate their resources heavily for enforcement or for attempts to obtain voluntary action. I resolved this appearing controversy in a fashion which is perhaps shaped considerably by my own assumption. I start with the assumption that most businessmen are simply at best non-crusaders interested in producing their product and very difficult to convince that they should enlist in a social cause. The fact that this social cause may in the long run produce the extra production benefits of increased efficiency in their own operation and an improved labor market in terms of supply of skilled workers is irrelevant to the fact that they view the kind of accelerated voluntary action which I anticipate to be necessary as basically a charitable act on their part and one which they are generally ill inclined to take. I said at best they are non-crusaders – – at worst many of them are still subjective or even overt discriminators against Negroes feeling that generally Negroes are unsuited for the work in their plants and unqualified and willing to engage after some pressure in some form of token hiring but not willing to engage in any meaningful overall change in their employment patterns unless extensive pressure is put on them. I remember in the course of the Rives School District case in Missouri we consistently told each other that that school district would do nothing more than it was “forced to do”. It is quite frankly my feeling that this is the view and the posture of most employers and that the necessary first step to obtaining from them meaningful voluntary action is an enforcement procedure to convince them of two things. First, they need to be convinced that if they do not obtain results there will be a penalty for failure to obtain results and that this penalty will be administered through the enforcement procedures of fair employment practices legislation. Secondly, many businessmen now simply refuse to believe that there is a need for them to undertake action within their company to change this employment pattern. Most of the larger firms have at the top undertaken to enunciate a strict policy of nondiscrimination but they simply will not believe that this policy is being carried out at the lower level so one of the reasons that you need strong enforcement is to root out and find the provable deliberate or subconscious discrimination at the lower level and convince higher level management of its existence so they can undertake the remedial action that you feel necessary. I remember for example the remarks of the employment manager of McDonald Aircraft, a company which has one of the strongest reputations for affirmative action in this field — during the heat of the investigation of a complaint against them when he turned to me after proud protestations of nondiscrimination and a good company attitude and shouted “who the hell are you going to believe me, the white company personnel manager, or some unemployed Negro.” Needless to say the unemployed Negro was a Negro who they had discharged and who had filed the complaint.

Note, too, that this problem has persisted for almost 60 years: ”Most of the larger firms have at the top undertaken to enunciate a strict policy of nondiscrimination but they simply will not believe that this policy is being carried out at the lower level.”