We can't do too much.

Despite a study finding that less than 2% of the 394 law clerks hired by the nine U.S. Supreme Court justices were black, Chief Justice William Rehnquist refuses to meet with the National Bar Association, telling the 17,000-member group of black law professionals that their proposed discussion of ways to recruit more minorities--would serve no useful purpose." On the same day, three white Ku Klux Man sympathizers are arrested in Texas for chaining a 49-year-old black man to a pickup truck and dragging him to his death.

Is this 1998--or 1968?

Of course, things have changed during the three decades since the year Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. joined the thousands of faceless, nameless casualties of the crusade for civil rights and racial equality--the very existence of BLACK ENTERPRISE magazine is proof of that. In 1968, the idea that law clerks for the Supreme Court should be anything other than white was unheard of. And back then, the lynchers of black boys and men were as likely to be celebrated as heroic defenders of all that is good and pure as they were to be arrested and charged with murder. So, we have made some progress as a nation.

However, the fact that Rehnquist does not see the dearth of minority law clerks--a key access point to the elite levels of the legal profession--as a problem shows that institutional racism undermines the integrity of even justice's last refuge, the Supreme Court. As horrendous as the murder of James Byrd Jr. is, it is racism in institutional decision-making that remains the most daunting obstacle to our achieving full freedom and equality as African Americans. That is why it was important for the Association to not just note the lack of black law clerks, but also to do something about it. It's also why retired federal judge A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. led the charge to get the Association's executive committee to rescind an invitation by a local chapter to justice Clarence Thomas to speak at their national convention. I strongly support the executive committee's position.

The bottom line is this: as I've said in this column before, and will continue to say, those of us in positions of power and influence cannot remain deaf, dumb and blind to racial inequities in our companies, professions or industries. They don't invite African Americans to join corporate boards--or Wall Street investment banks, the White House staff or even the Supreme Court--because they ran out of smart white men. We cannot fail to do as much as we can simply because we do not want to be seen as doing "too much-for other deserving African Americans. Those of us who have won opportunities have an obligation to, in turn, work, sacrifice-and even risk all we have gained-to ensure that we are not the only or last African Americans to do so.

If we fail to make and keep this commitment, the America of 1968 will always seem closer to us than our American Dream deferred, for which so many bled, sacrificed and died to make a reality.