Beyond Liberalism? (Ann Speaking)
						MAIN PATH: John

On one point I agree with Vera and Malik. To guarantee a wide range of substantive equality would take us beyond the limits of the liberal tradition. But I disagree with their view that we must guarantee that equality in order to substantially reduce racism. Maybe this is the difference between liberals and radicals. I guess I'm just a good little liberal after all.

Everything you are saying ignores the enormous progress that we have made in the fight against racism over the last 50 years. That progress was made possible by identifying strategic points of intervention. The civil rights revolution identified several such points:

• Formal (i.e., legally enacted) discrimination on the basis of race in a wide variety of situations: public schools, public transportation, housing, accommodations, restaurants, etc.

• Discrimination in hiring

• Discrimination in admission to higher level education

• Discrimination in voter registration

Our progress in some of these areas is very poor. I'm thinking of segregation in lower level public schools and in private housing. But in other areas there has been a lot of progress. Perhaps the greatest achievement has been in registering southern blacks to vote. There has been modest but considerable progress made in changing the employment open to blacks and in bringing black students into the formerly white universities. Another great achievement has been in the ideas on race found in the major media and taught in major educational institutions. Those ideas have shifted very substantially in the liberal direction. Older notions of black inferiority and segregation get little sympathy in these areas.

My point is that we need is to identify the policies that will have strategic impact on the problems we have. If we do this properly, we can get results without major interference with private parties.

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