RACES: Wanted: Qualified Negroes

In the labor-hungry whirlaway of U.S. production, job discrimination against the Negro has begun to melt. Swept off farms since 1930 (when they made up 35% of rural labor), Negroes by this year made up nearly 72% of the unskilled and semiskilled manual labor force. But only about 10% of U.S. middle-class white-collar workers are Negroes.

Last week, presided over by Vice President Nixon, 55 key U.S. business leaders met in Washington to discuss job equalization. All heads of major companies that together account for $43.5 billion of total U.S. production, they arrived at some interesting conclusions. Examples: ¶The Vice President set the cost of discrimination to the U.S. economy at $30 billion a year.

¶Large companies have found their fears about practicing desegregation in the South unjustified. Example: Westinghouse has put Negroes and whites to work on the same semiskilled jobs in South Carolina without incident. Said Westinghouse President Gwilym A. Price: “We found out that people fear and resist change, but experience overcomes the fear of the unknown.”

¶Non-discrimination must come from the top. Said Pitney-Bowes’ WaUe” Wheeler: “The head of the corporation has to lay down the policy definitely and insist that it be carried out.”

The confreres felt that primary discrimination is fast disappearing. For nearly a decade, every company doing business with the Government has been required to shun it; a 1953 Presidential order set up a Government-business committee headed by Nixon to enforce stricter compliance. The example has persuaded industry to follow in non-Government work as well.

Concluded the businessmen: the problem of Negro workers is no longer one of getting hired but of getting promoted. To that end, they urged Negroes to equip themselves for better jobs now open to them. Said RCA’s David Sarnoff: “We have spent proportionately more time, effort and money seeking qualified Negro engineering graduates than we have had to spend to recruit young engineers in general . . . Negroes do not sufficiently seek technological careers.”