AFTERMATH OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION RULING : Minorities Fear Opportunities Will Disappear : Advancement: Widespread concern exists that firms that once stressed affirmative action may ease their policies.

Randy Uchida has known discrimination since he was born in 1945 in the Manzanar war-relocation camp in Inyo County. And he has spent much of his adult life enduring the racial barbs that, he says, came with being a Japanese American in the steel industry.

“People would look me right in the eye and call me a Jap and not think there was anything wrong,� Uchida said.

Last year, Uchida felt he finally attained a small measure of vindication by starting his own company--Uchida Pipe & Industrial Products in Encino. That might not have been possible, he acknowledges, were it not for his Asian heritage--and affirmative action programs that helped him gain customers.

But now Uchida and many other minority entrepreneurs fear that the types of crucial opportunities that enabled them to get started in business will disappear by virtue of the Supreme Court ruling Monday undercutting affirmative action.

To be sure, business authorities say, well-established minority firms--even those that have benefited mightily from affirmative action--will survive the impact of the court decision. And many white business owners were delighted by the ruling.

Still, widespread concern exists among minority business owners and others that an important path to economic success for many Americans is being largely closed off.

Legal experts were still puzzling Tuesday over the potential scope of the Supreme Court ruling, but there was widespread agreement that contractors that have relied on minority set-asides face a tougher future.

The issue of set-asides drew sharply divided reaction among entrepreneurs at the White House Conference on Small Business meeting this week in Washington.

Kevin Reger, who builds houses in Illinois, thinks set-aside programs for minorities are unfair.

The 34-year-old contractor said he started his business in Sandwich, Ill., eight years ago with $2,000 in cash and, later, a $17,000 loan from his parents. By plowing every dime earned back into his company, Reger said, his company grew to sales of $2 million yearly, a staff of seven employees and 30 subcontracting employees, and a possible home-building contract in Germany.

But two years ago, he said, he decided against trying for bigger government road construction and building projects because he could not compete against large construction companies or even firms his own size because he wasn’t a minority.

“It’s unfair for certain businesses to have an unfair competitive advantage over anybody,� Reger said.

Paul R. Valteau Jr., who expanded his New Orleans-based nut shops to 18 airports nationally under FAA set-asides for minorities, thinks it is unfair that, growing up, he received second-rate health care and a second-rate education in a second-rate neighborhood simply because he is black. For him, minority set-asides simply adhere to the American ideal of providing opportunity for all.

Both men are attending the conference and typify the divided reaction there to the ruling. Although the 1,790 small-business owners bring sharply opposing ideas about affirmative action to the conference, the delegates are expected to approve a resolution supporting affirmative action.

Such a resolution would be included among the 60 recommendations due to be approved when the conference ends today. The recommendations will then be forwarded to President Clinton and Congress.

Reger said he will vote against the affirmative action resolution even though he’s certain it will pass. The minority and women business owners at the convention are organized, intelligent and politically savvy, he said. “If they can win here, they can there,� he said referring to the business world.

As entrepreneurs such as Uchida see it, affirmative action programs have brought diversity and opportunity to industries that were long unfriendly to minorities.

“My parents lost everything in those postwar years,� Uchida said. “I think there were things done to all minorities, and I don’t see where a little help hurts anything.�

Uchida said he was able to secure big contracts with Chevron, Southern California Gas Co. and others largely because they have been looking to boost minority representation among their suppliers. Such contracts are usually out of reach for start-up firms, he said.

That is also the outlook of Harriet Michel, president of the National Minority Supplier Development Council in New York, which represents 16,000 minority-owned firms. She said minority-owned businesses need extra help getting off the ground because they typically have less access to capital than established businesses or new firms started by whites.

In addition, big companies that have emphasized the importance of retaining minority contractors in the past may ease their policies.

At McDonnell Douglas Corp., 11% of the approximately 400 suppliers that have earned the distinction of “preferred supplier� are owned by minorities, spokesman Tom Williams said.

Williams said the company will continue to contract with minority-owned firms that have served McDonnell Douglas well, but he conceded that finding new minority businesses to work with may not be as high a priority as it was.

He said it is still “an important item, but the thing you really have to keep in focus is that you have the best product.�

Meanwhile, lawyers stand to gain a lot of business as a result of the ruling, at least in the short run. San Francisco management lawyer Lindbergh Porter Jr. cited two of his clients: a minority contractor and a government agency.

The minority businessman, Porter said, felt he was denied contracts in the past because of discrimination. However, instead of litigating, the businessman focused on securing contracts from firms with set-aside programs.

Now, Porter said, the businessman’s attitude is, “If I don’t get business now, I’m not going to go out of business--I’m going to sue somebody.�

Meanwhile, Porter said, officials at the government agency he represents now worry that they could be sued for discriminatory contracting practices by either white or minority contractors, depending on how their program is perceived.

Their concern, he said, is, “We’re damned if we do, and we’re damned if we don’t.�

However, specialists in employment law said that because the court case dealt specifically with a contracting issue, the impact will fall on set-aside programs, not on hiring initiatives.

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Times staff writers Nancy Rivera Brooks and Rebecca Mowbray in Los Angeles and Don Lee in Orange County contributed to this report.

* AT ODDS

Clinton vows to protect programs. A1

* AIRWAVE AUCTION

FCC assessing minority preferences. D2