friday, november 10, 1978
daily nebraskan
page 5
Officials say no discrimination, stats say no blacks
Of 619 American professionals at the World Bank,
three-one official thinks there may be four-are black
Americans.
Of total professional staff of 2,484, only 69-less than
3 percent-are from Sub-Saharan Africa. Blacks from the
United States, Africa and the Caribbean constitute lees
than 4 percent of the bank's professional staff.
Racial discrimination?
Manifestly, say many of the blacks who work there.
Not a bit of it, say the whites who run the place.
The disagreement has nothhing to do with facts, on
which the two sides are virtually agreed. It has to do with
the perceptions of what those facts indicate. It has to do
with attitudes.
Little interest
For instance, several African employees told me that
World Bank President Robert McNamara, despite his gen
erally progressive reputation, has shown little interest in
increasing the number of blacks on the bank staff. Said
one:
William raspberry
"Women hold some 12 percent of the professional po
sitions (actually, 1 1 .2 percent), while blacks hold less than
4 percent. Yet McNamara is screaming for more women."
Now hear McNamara in a subsequent interview:
"There's no problem with (discrimination against)
blacks, either from Africa or from the United States. The
place where we are ghastly is on women.
"Of course we still have a long way to go, but I
can tell you that there is absolutely no racial animosity
in the bank. I do sense some insensitivity toward women."
No encouragement
Another African told me that the bank's attitude is
that Africans shouldn't be encouraged to seek careers in
the bank.
"First they say they can't find Africans who are quali
fied for the top positions," he said. "Then, when they do
find some, they tell us we ought to go back home and
serve our own people."
Said McNamara: "Let me give you an example of the
problem. In 1964, when Zambia became independent,
there were only 100- college graduates and some 1,000
high-school graduates in the whole country. Imagine
trying to recruit professionals against those odds.
"Besides, I can't really say it's in Africa's interest to
have more of their professionals here. I'm not sure we
have a right to steal their people."
Poor recruiting
"My impression," an African staffer told me, "is that
they don't even try to recruit black Americans. If they
did, they would certainly have found more than three.
And when it comes to Africans, their recuirtment isn't
effective. No wonder. You cannot go and recruit say,
the Nigerian minister of finance and ask him to come
here to a middle-level job."
Said McNamara: "Certainly we are trying. There are
four senior Africans I'm personally acquainted with that
we have tried to recruit. We recently made an offer to one
black African minister-a senior-level job."
The offer reportedly was for a director's post, the third
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tier down the bank's organization chart, beneath Mc
Namara himself and 14 vice presidents, none of them
black.
Parachuted in
According to Bernard Chadenet, vice president for
administration, organization and personnel, there
is one black among the 51 directors and another black
operating at a comparable level. Directors are roughly
equivalent to assistant secretaries in the U.S. government.
There is no black among the 160 division chiefs,
(roughly comparable to GS-16 or 17), the lowest manage
ment ranks.
The two director-level Africans were, in Chadenet's
phrase, "parachuted in," as opposed to the usual process
of being promoted from within the organization.
"Parachuting," one gathers, is the moral equivalent of
lateral entry -affirmative action, if you will.
Chadenet and his personnel director, R.A. Clarke, said
they decided not to parachute at the division chief level
because three Africans now abroad have a legitimate
chance of promotions to that tier.
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As for improving opportunities for black Americans,
Chadenet said the bank has no policy. "We are not
equipped to see which Belgian is from Flanders and speaks
Flemish and which is from the south and speaks
Walloon."
He sgugested that it is up to the individual countries
to resolve their own problems of internal discrimination.
Rather than taking a position of working to eliminate a
country's discriminatory policies, he said, the bank is
"downstream of the culture."
World Bank managers say they are aware of a "feeling
of persecution" on the part of black staff members, ut
they see it as on a par with similar feelings among, say,
Moslems and Hindus, or Corsicans and French main
landers. Blacks, on the other hand, see themselves as victims of
a discrimination that transcends religious, geographical
and cultural boundaries. For them, the one relevant factor
in their plight is: They are black.
Being black, they insist, is different. And they've got
the statistics to back it up.
Copyright, 1978, The Washington Post Company.
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PUT YOUR
ENGINEERING
DEGREE TO WORK
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Senior engineering students at
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floor. Student Union. 10 until
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