Diversity Employers

PREMIER 2013

Editorial objective:1- give diverse jobseekers sound information on job opportunities and how to successfully navigate the job search process,2- invite “employers of choice” to share success secrets and valuable information on where the jobs are.

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End notEs 36 For studies which survey the evolution and creation of white privilege and economic advantage, see Ira Katznelson, When Afrmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in 20th Century America (New York: W.W. Norton, 2005); Joe R. Feagin, Racist America: Roots, Realities, and Future Reparations (New York: Routledge, 2000); and David R. Roediger, Working toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: the Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs (New York: Basic Books, 2005). to exclude African Americans from union membership. This legislation granted legal protections and recognitions to labor unions not previously enjoyed and gave many working class whites access to higher wages and benefts. However, because the act also allowed unions to exclude blacks from union membership and its benefts, it legally protected white laborers from competition in the job market, creating economic opportunities reserved for whites, and further maintaining the existence of a lower paid, exploited labor pool. The failure of the Federal Housing Administration (1940s and 1950s) to grant loans to even minimally integrated neighborhoods. This agency provided lowcost governmentguaranteed loans to working class families, enabling mass home ownership and the accumulation of wealth that could be passed on to children. Ninety-eight percent of these loans were given to whites; blacks were granted less than two percent. The refusal to grant loans to integrated neighborhoods was a practice known as "redlining." Many more historical examples can be cited. These suffce in demonstrating how white privilege was deliberately created and often state-sanctioned. It also resulted in "unjust impoverishment" for groups of color and "unjust enrichment" for white Americans. "Unjust enrichment • and unjust impoverishment are critical concepts for understanding [our nation's] past and present" economic realities and the link between racism and poverty.42 The pernicious effects of this deliberate and state-sanctioned "unjust impoverishment" endure to this day. This creates a serious obligation to repair the economic injuries and material deprivation that has been inficted upon communities of color. Therefore, we support conscious efforts to correct past injustices with proactive deeds. The responsibility to repair the harm or injury done to another is long recognized in Catholic moral theology. Traditional moral teaching speaks of the duty of restitution, based on the principle that "when injustice is done it must be repaired."43 The Holy See recently has applied this teaching to the specifc issue of racial grievances and the question of reparations. This teaching recognizes that various forms of racial reparation are possible, including monetary compensation, formal apologies and statements of regret, and symbolic gestures (such as monuments and memorials to the victims of an injustice).44 As an organization, Catholic Charities USA is not yet prepared to endorse either a particular mode of reparation or any concrete proposal that is under current discussion. Instead, we call for a responsible national study and resolution of this complex question that respects the principle that "social harm calls for social relief."45 u 37 Joe R. Feagin, Systemic Racism: A Theory of Oppression (New York: Routledge, 2006) 13. 38 See U.S. Department of State, "Indian Treaties and the Removal Act of 1830," http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/ dwe/16338. htm (accessed August 19, 2007); and PBS, "Indian Removal 18141858," http:// www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/ part4/4p2959.html (accessed August 19, 2007). 39 See John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans, 9th Edition (New York: Knopf, 2000). 40 "Not All Caucasians are White: The Supreme Court Rejects Citizenship for Asian Indians," http://historymatters. gmu.edu/d/5076 (accessed August 19, 2007). See also Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Diferent Shore: A History of Asian Americans (1989). 41 The discussion of this and the following two items is indebted to Ira Katznelson's study, When Afrmative Action Was White (see note 36). 42 Feagin, Systemic Racism, 18. 43 Among others, see Henry Davis, S.J., Moral and Pastoral Theology, Seventh Edition, vol. 2 (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1958) 316. 44 Pontifcal Council for Justice and Peace, "Contribution to World Conference against Racism," #12. Available at www. vatican. va/roman_curia/pontifcal_ councils/austpeace/ documents. 45 NCCB, Economic Justice for All, #73. To read the entire brief, Poverty and Racism: Overlapping Threats to the Common Good, go to www.CatholicCharitiesUSA.org Diversity Employers | DiversityEmployers.com | First Semester December 2013 33

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