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VIEWPOINT
Affirmative action has long way to go in hiring for city projects
BY LARRY BRATTON For The Sunday Gazette
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GLARING EXAMPLE
    In no place is it more evident than in the construction industry and projects in the city and county of Schenectady. One needs only to travel around Schenectady and visit the various construction projects under way. The common feature at most of them is the absence of minorities even in the position of laborers.
    The city of Schenectady itself received HUD money for a leadbased paint removal program. In its application, the city committed itself to working with the Minority Contractors Technical Assistance Program (MCTAP) in implementing the program. In actuality, solicitation of minority participation at any level of the program has been kept at a minimum or is nonexistent. Area contractors aren’t likely to take the city seriously concerning affirmative action if the city isn’t serious in its own activities.
    As President Johnson said, poignantly, “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘you are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.
    “Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.
    “This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.” .............

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“Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.