The effect of discriminatory employment practices is felt long before a Negro actually becomes a job-seeker. There is no minimum age requirement for victims of bias. More often than not, children of preschool and elementary school age are aware of the problem. They see their fathers laid off or unable to find jobs, they see their mothers taking servants' posts, they see older brothers or sisters sitting idly about the house after leaving or finishing school. They hear from early childhood of the well-paying jobs that are closed to the Negro. Thus it may well be asked:

"What is the incentive for them to continue in their education,
to seek technical training and then have the door closed to them? 1/
The Reverend Geno C. Baroni of the Catholic Interracial Council

cited a specific case:

*** what do you do with a boy named Larry--in our 8th grade
clase--whose father is unemployed, an unskilled laborer?
Larry is old enough to know that his father never had a
chance to be a part of the trade union that he wanted to
be in. You tell Larry to work, to discipline himself,
and get an education, and throw off the slings and
arrows of his environment to aspire to an affluence
that he doesn't see? It's a very difficult thing. 2/

Washington's public school enrollment is predominantly nonwhite.

Each year over two thousand students--the vast majority of them Negroes-

3

drop out of school. "It's an impossible situation," said Hyman Perlo,

job counselor for drop-outs with the D.C. Schools.

1/ D.C. Employment Conference. (P. 2 of statement of Isadore Seeman, Executive Director, D.C. Health and Welfare Council.)

2/ Id. at 39. (Testimony of Father Geno C. Baroni.)

3/ Id. at 65. (Testimony of Hyman Perlo)

They feel they are not needed; they are not wanted. They are completely unfamiliar with the facts of life and the responsibilities of a job. *** I don't know whether any of you have taken an untrained youngster out for a job, but if you haven't, you ought to try, because you really then are going to get the real picture. 4/

A significant number of Negro youths with substantial ability receive vocational training, but, because of discriminatory employment, particularly in the skilled trades, they find no work. Often they are counselled or directed into non-vocational, academic studies for which they are not fully suited, merely in the hope that they may find jobs in a professional area. Yet eight out of ten of these youngsters never complete college. The community loses the important contributions which could have been derived from their unutilized skills.

5/

Some who seek employment after graduation soon run head-on into the barrier. In the experience of Fred Z. Hetzel, director of the U.S. Employment Service for the District:

Discrimination frequently perpetuates a flagrant waste of the
skills of our young people graduating from Washington's
excellent vocational high schools. Many of these graduates
desperately need the opportunity to raise themselves by their
own bootstraps. You can't preach democracy and opportunity
to an 18-year old boy who has the aptitude to become a first-
rate craftsman, but will never make it because the union won't
apprentice him and employers won't hire him. If this boy takes
a third-rate job, he will sooner or later--probably sooner--wind
up on the unemployment rolls. 6/

Students who graduate in non-vocational curricula find much the Se situation. Many Washington private schools still discriminate in accepting applicants for technical training.

4 Id. at 65-66.

5/ Id. at 59. (Testimony of Lemuel Penn, D. C. Public Schools.)

7/ Id. (P. 5 of statement of Fred Z. Hetzel.)

A central factor in training discrimination are the restrictive admissions practices of the leading business schools. With only one or two excepvions, they have intransigently maintained these practices. There has developed a circular pattern in which Negroes cannot get office train8/ ing, and then are denied jobs because they do not have the training. One of the bright spots in the generally dismal picture is the Business and Distributive Education program sponsored by the public schools. There are two kinds of training: the High School Cooperative Program, in which students attend school half the day and work the other half; and the Adult Education Program, which accounts for 90 percent of Albert DeMond, director of the programs, was asked why

the students.

so few high school students participate.

First they are drained off by academic courses, the counselors
send them into other fields, and when they do come into businesses
many times they go into stenography or typing in Government jobs,
etc. So we have to do a hard selling job to get the students to
accept distributive education and we need the cooperation from
workers who can really show these students that there are some
aareers available. They don't believe it because nobody in
their family, or nobody they have ever knwon, ever had a good
job in selling. 9/

The adult program concurrently places and trains workers for occupations in selling and distribution. Although many of the employers who participate still practice discrimination, Mr. DeMond gave one heartening example:

A laundry and dry-cleaning association would be glad to recruit
Negro driver-salesmen right at this moment--men who can earn

$8,000-$12,000 a year. And we have people who have passed

the eighth grade, never went to High School, and are driving
laundry trucks making $7,500-$8,000 per year. This I can prove. 10/

For the few fortunate Negro students who, because of family circumstances or exceptional ability, are able to complete college, the situation is steadily improving.. And while jobs of a particular kind

may now be open to Negroes, they have a much narrower range of choice
of positions within their profession than do their while colleagues.
"For the first time," testified Mrs. Marian Coombs of Howard University's
placement office:

We are receiving a release on placement opportunities * * * in
the District. In addition, we are having a very decided
increase in visits from various agencies of the Federal
Government. * * * The increase that we have noticed since 1961
in the number of recruiters from industry, business, and Govern-
ment * * * reflects a rise of something like 400 percent. * * *
Traditionally, medicine, law, dentistry, religion, and teaching
were the areas which were commonly considered to be professions
to which our graduates might aspire. Now we have every assur-
ance that we can place all of the engineers--Negroes--whom we
are able to produce ***(though) they may not be placed
where they want to be placed. We do not, however, have the
same success with the liberal arts people, and they recognize
that. 11/

From drop-outs to college graduates, job inequalities persist, but those with the most advanced training obviously fare much better. The gravest problem, of course, is to overcome the legacy of discrimination which has resulted in lack of motivation and academic interest among Negro students.

11/ Id. at 110.

(Testimony of Mrs. Marian Coombs.)

Repeated references were made at the Conference to the lack of qualified applicants among Negroes, in nearly every kind of job--from 1/

skilled crafts to behind-the-counter sales. There is undoubtedly
some truth to the complaint; it would take a miracle to suddenly
produce a qualified labor force after decades of discrimination.
But the significant fact is that in all too many cases, different
standards exist for qualified whites and "qualified" Negroes.

Companies cited lack of clerical skills, poor mathematical back-
ground, and undesirable personal charachteristics as some of the
principal failings. It is within that final category that a subtle
but pernicious form of discrimination may be taking place--not
necessarily because of outright bias--but because it tends to
penalize the Negro applicant for having been a victim of earlier

discrimination.

Philip Stoddard Brown, a Washington economist, analyzed the cyclical nature of the problem:

2/

Most employers say that they will hire any competent person,
or one that has a good basic education. They do not say much
about police record, the ability of applicants to get along
with others, about manners, dress, way of speaking and so
forth, yet I suspect that these considerations are often the
most important. This is often the big, unspoken reason for
refusing to hire many Negro boys and girls. There are still
lots of jobs for stupid people in the world, but not so many
for those who have a police record or some emotional imbalance
--yet it is a remarkable boy, living in a slum area, who has
not had a brush with the police, or some cause to be emotion-
ally disturbed. 2/

D.C. Employment Conference. (See statements submitted by the
Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company, Washington Gas Light
Company, The Evening Star, Western Union Telegraph, Giant Food Stores,
Peoples Drug Stores, American Security and Trust, and the Riggs
National Bank.

Id. at 80. (Testimony of Philip Stoddard Brown.)