Willem Oltmans • 14 juli 1987

• Willem Oltmans (1925-2004) was een Nederlandse journalist. In 1988 publiceerde hij een journaal over apartheid in de Verenigde Staten: Apartheid. USA 1988.

July 14, 1987:
After decades of fighting ‘apartheid’ in the United States, none of the 500 top American companies as identified by Fortune magazine is headed by a black American. The number of blacks holding policy-making and managerial positions in the Federal Government has also dropped dramatically since before President Ronald Reagan took office, from 44 in 1980 to 20 in 1986, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The number of racial discrimination complaints filed by Federal workers is also on the rise. ‘We are getting more calls for help,’ said Rubye Fields, President of Blacks In Government, an organization representing 5 000 Federal, state and local government employees. Black employees frequently say that there is ‘a glass ceiling’ - invisible but very real - that keeps them from the top. Those interviewed said they faced obstacles peculiar to black people in predominantly white institutions. Besides plain prejudice, which often manifests itself in the implication that blacks ‘are not intelligent enough’, according to those interviewed, there are factors even more subtle. These include, black executives said, the predilection of some managers to promote people similar to themselves, and the social and professional estrangement that many blacks say they feel among white colleagues, especially in the absence of a black mentor. ‘You always feel like you are being watched and judged,’ said a black investment banker with a big Wall Street firm, who asked not to be identified.
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July 17, 1987:
On the evening of July 8, 1986, two white police officers killed a black man wielding a deer-hunting rifle in Norwalk, Connecticut. Witnesses disagreed about whether the victim, Ralph Fuller (27) pointed the gun at the officers. The rifle was unloaded. Three months later, the racial tension in Norwalk, that had swelled after the killing, was heightened further when another white policeman fatally shot a larceny suspect, Jay Reyes (21) a Puerto Rican, who had hit the officer with a rock while trying to escape from custody. Inquiries by the FBI and other officials exonerated the white officers in both incidents, but the victims' families started law suits. Of the Norwalk Police Department's 159 officers 26 percent are of black or Hispanic origin. However, the Times found that the streets are ‘steaming with fear and anger and resentment.’