MCRI

Although Michigan voters barred their state from discriminating against or granting preferences to individuals or groups based on race in government employment, contracting, and education, Plymouth-Canton Community Schools in Plymouth, Michigan, is doing exactly that. (Source)

“During the past school year, minority staff comprised less than 3 percent of the faculty, while nearly a quarter of the district’s 19,000 students were nonwhite. The district urged administrators to scan resumes for ‘cues’ that applicants belong to a racial minority group, including place of residence, college attendance, fraternity or church membership and employment history.

“Minority hires include two administrators and six elementary, three middle school, six high school and two special education teachers. The district plans to fill an additional 17 openings, and some of those hires could be minorities, too.

“District officials insist the effort is not reverse discrimination.”

They’re right about one thing: the practice isn’t “reverse” discrimination. It’s plain old discrimination. The district’s human resource person said the purpose wasn’t to hire blacks, but to hire the best teachers. Of course, he’s being disingenuous. The story is about the district’s “controversial campaign” to hire more blacks; therefore, the purpose is to hire blacks. Words have meaning. In Plymouth-Canton Community Schools, race is considered a job qualification.

We’ve overcome, indeed.

“Regardless of any good intentions, if you’re using race to hire someone, you’re discriminating against someone else,” said the American Civil Rights Institute‘s Jennifer Gratz.

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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.

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On November 7, 2006, 58 percent of Michigan voters chose to bar the state from granting preferences to or discriminating against individuals or groups in government employment, contracting, and education.

Western Michigan University (WMU) has gotten the message. The school’s Incentive Scholarship Program was once Hispanic-only; now it’s open to all students, regardless of race.

Now, that didn’t hurt, did it?

An excerpt:

“The university chose nine Michigan school districts and one intermediate school district, based on their percentages of free and reduced-price lunches, to participate and allowed schools to choose the students based on criteria set by WMU. The schools must also name a representative, who can be a teacher or counselor, to monitor and work with the student.
…
“[T]he use of the free and reduced-lunch standard allows WMU to continue one of the program’s original purposes: to help under-represented populations and those who might be unable to pay for college.”

WMU found a race-neutral way to target certain racial minority students, without explicitly targeting racial minority students, and students of other races may benefit.

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Last week I blogged about an ill-advised blacks-only field trip that was part of an Ann Arbor elementary school’s blacks-only “Lunch Bunch” program, since disbanded. After a group of black students visited a black “rocket scientist,” parents complained. Principal Mike Madison said he didn’t intend to segregate or exclude others; he wanted to “address the societal issues, roadblocks and challenges that our African American children will face as they pursue a successful academic education in here in our community.”

Leon Drolet, chair of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI), wrote an op-ed for the Detroit Free Press. As you may know, MCRI launched a campaign to amend the state constitution to bar the government from granting preferences to and discriminating against individuals or groups in contracting, hiring, and admissions based on race. The measure passed in 2006 with 58 percent of the vote.

“The school’s fifth-graders proved more adept than school administrators at recognizing the blatantly immoral and unjust nature of the segregated field trip,” Drolet writes. “After the trip was over, those who went returned to their fifth-grade class and were greeted by boos by those who didn’t go on the trip, according to the school district spokeswoman, Liz Margolis. Margolis said Madison heard the boos, and went to talk to the class.

“What happened next is disputed: Margolis claims that Madison had a ‘discussion’ about race issues with the class, but several parents and students claim that Madison yelled at the students and belittled a Muslim girl who said she also had experienced racism and discrimination.”

Madison played to racial stereotype that blacks are inferior and require special treatment, says Drolet. As is common with human nature, we don’t view special treatment as suspect if the treatment is “good.” We raise a ruckus only when it’s bad. The point is that the government should not be authorized to treat people differently based on race. Back to Drolet.

“The Ann Arbor Public Schools have a well documented history of race-based blundering at the expense of students. In 1978, the district lost a court case after one school had casually mislabeled two-thirds of the black students coming from a housing project as ‘disabled.’ The court ordered training for teachers on culturally relevant teaching and assessment strategies.

“The district was in trouble again as recently as 2008, when the state Department of Education found it was inaccurately classifying a disproportionate number of black students as ‘cognitively impaired’ and ordered corrections…When it comes to matters of race, Ann Arbor Schools can’t seem to get it right.”

Treating each child as an individual rather than as a member of a racial group (radical!) is the goal, and not a lofty one. But the government, pressured by the civil rights industry, continues, even after the people vote to restrain it.

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