Affirmative action hasn't helped all

The common parlance for African-American women, in blunt affirmative action lingo, is "two-fers," "double dippers."

If you hire a black woman, this line of talk goes, you get credit twice for minority hiring once for her race, and once for her gender.

Only problem with this thinking is it's wrong.

The two-fer myth says African-American women have greater employment opportunities because they represent two minorities black and female. The myth evolved with affirmative action in the mid-'60s, when word got out that some employers were counting their affirmative action hires to improve their minority hiring records.

Today African-American women talk among themselves about the disparity between their gains and those of non-minority women, and they express distress that racial issues are still unresolved. A few are publicly vocal about the issue.

"If we're two-fers, why are we so far behind?" asks Karen Nelson, a former General Electric diversity manager who owns Nelstar Enterprises, an Elm Grove-based diversity business.

The 30-year-old affirmative action program is under fire, but attempts in Washington to weaken or even kill it raise the questions of who is a minority . . . why it's still needed . . . how to ensure fairness without it.

Nelson, who also has worked in Fortune 500 and 100 companies, said she has seen her "Caucasian sisters" benefit three times as much as she has, in terms of promotions over the years.

"I have felt far more discrimination because of my race than because of my gender," Nelson said.

Opponents of affirmative action say white women's success is the litmus test for whether we should pull the plug on affirmative action, said Nelson, who was a division manager for GE's diversity programs and the highest ranking African-American female there.

"They say `If white women made it, we don't need to continue affirmative action,' but they don't seem to realize that employers are far more willing to embrace someone who looks more like them than women of color."

There's a communication gap regarding the status of women in the corporate world probably because visible high-profile non-minority females signify achievement for all women though many have not made it to the first rung on the ladder.

While non-minority women are still fighting for change in pay and benefits, balancing work and family, breaking the glass ceiling and valuing women's work, African-American women notice a different reality.

"They're singled out for management class, they're hired in to decision-making roles, they're in high management ranks or they have their own businesses," said Ernice Austin, an underwriter for Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance's downtown office.

"I don't think affirmative action has done enough for the black woman or the black man," said Austin, an ordained minister who's enrolled in the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee's administrative leadership program with an education minor.

Austin and Nelson put the trouble with affirmative action into perspective:

"I don't think people should be hired or promoted unless they're qualified. I don't think they are. I don't care what kind of law we have; they can bring us in, but they don't have to promote us," Austin said.

"We cannot begin this fight until white women are equally out there fighting racial discrimination as well," Nelson said.

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