In 2006, 58 percent of Michigan voters barred the state from discriminating against or granting preferences to individuals or groups in government employment, contracting, and education. A school district in Detroit seeks to circumvent the law and hire teachers and administrators based on race. (Source)
The Plymouth-Canton Community Schools “urges” schools to look for cues on resumes that may indicate an applicant’s race. These race proxies include colleges attended, Greek organization membership, and job history.
Here’s the strange (and inconsistent) thing about people who support this nonsense: they’d raise Cain if employers looked to these cues to eliminate people based on race, particularly applicants’ names. The same people would agree that so-called bias against “black” names is wrong. But a bias in favor of someone who belongs to “black” organizations is okay? Double standards irk me to no end.
The “problem” as reported in the article is less than three percent of staff are minorities, while almost 25 percent of the students are minorities. To that I say, so what? Would proponents of government-sanctioned race-based hiring support government-sanctioned segregated schools? If the paucity of black teachers poses such an educational crisis for black students, why not create and maintain separate schools for black and white students, and hire only black teachers for black schools, and white teachers for white schools?
Well, that’s obviously ridiculous and illegal, right? Why is it any less so to hire teachers based on race in integrated schools?
“I would remind them that Michigan voters, in 2006, passed an initiative that makes it unconstitutional to use skin color when making hiring decisions within the realm of public education,” Jennifer Gratz told the Detroit Press. Gratz was a plaintiff in Gratz v. Bollinger, in which the Supreme Court ruled the University of Michigan’s use of race in admissions violated the Equal Protection Clause. “They should hire the most qualified teachers, and race and gender should not be a factor.”
Parent Ann Marie Hudak said, “Who says minority teachers can’t be qualified? Our teaching population should reflect the student population, because, based on statistics, kids who see themselves reflected in teachers tend to score higher on tests, and it’s important for our children.”
To answer Hudak’s question, nobody said minority teachers weren’t qualified. The point Gratz was making is employers should hire based only on qualifications, not skin color. There definitely are qualified minorities, but their membership in a racial group isn’t, nor should be, a job qualification.
And why should the teaching population’s race reflect the student population’s? Is this an edict handed down from on high, or an ethical principle, or a law? I’d like to see statistics that purportedly show black students “tend to score higher on tests” if they have black teachers. Even if true, in a parallel universe, the government may not consider race a job qualification.
Comments on this entry are closed.