Urban League CEO talks on politics

With a last minute change of topic, National Urban League President and Chief Executive Officer Hugh Price addressed a small audience in Steinberg-Dietrich Hall yesterday afternoon on issues of affirmative action and politics. The talk, a part of the Wharton Public Policy Forum Series, was originally entitled "Developing Our Children for the 21st Century." Instead, Price chose to defend affirmative action, a topic that has sparked serious debate in Washington recently. He began by describing a meeting he had attended earlier in the week with President Bill Clinton. "The President is deeply engaged in this issue," he assured the audience. And he briefly explained the problems facing America's cities. "Macro trends have wreaked havoc on urban economies," Price said, attributing much of this to an industrial "process of shrinkage." He attributes these problems to a deepening rift between the races. "There is a pressing need to overcome poverty among our people," he said, adding that children are not getting proper skills for "a ruthlessly competitive world." "The job of integrating minorities?isn't done by any stretch of the imagination," he said. He also predicted that affirmative action would be a major issue in the 1996 election, and that it should not be dismissed because of "anecdotal evidence" of abuse. He added that he thought objective tests have been used unfairly to compare races, saying that there are many different types of intelligences. Price also discussed the role of the urban university and its relation to the community. He said universities should be "inclusive," and act as a "training ground" for future urban policy planners. "They must adhere to their tradition of liberal education," he said. He used Cooper Union in New York, where he is a trustee, as an example. Although Cooper Union has only 1,000 undergraduates, it sponsors a summer program for between 2,000 and 3,000 city youths. "Scapegoating and demonizing does not solve the problem," Price said. "We must get on with our future as a multi-ethnic society."