Infirmative Action or, a new inductee into the Society for Elliptical Reasoning: What is a believer in Affirmative Action (as Verbal Jazz is) to do when confronted with the following story? Verbal Jazz has two friends, "Heather" and "Jennifer." Jennifer applied for a job as a receptionist at Heather's company, a progressive-leaning company concerned with issues of social justice. Heather was told by management that they would like to hire a "person of color" for the position, but they interviewed Jennifer anyway. There were not any minoroty candidates who were qualified for the position and Jennifer (according to her own assessment) had a very good interview. The company decided not to hire Jennifer because, according to Heather, they were committed to the idea of having a "person of color" in the position and will be seeking to fill the role with a temp until they find the right minority candidate. Meanwhile, this is a receptionist position and no one else at the company could be described as a "person of color." And when Verbal Jazz says no one, he means no one; Verbal Jazz looked at the staff photos on their web page and every one of them was white: no Asians, African-Americans, or Latinos. In other words it looks like a meeting of white liberals who hang out with other white liberals and call that diversity.
Verbal Jazz should not be privy to this information and thus will decline to name the company. It strikes Verbal Jazz that if this company were really committed to developing diversity in the workplace that they would not be seeking to impose affirmative action restrictions on its lowest rung position, and would instead have sought to have a minority candidate in a position of some greater responsibility, such as project management.
Heather's company gets an induction into the society for paying lip-service to the idea of diversity by enforcing a hard and fast rule hiring the receptionist should be a "person of color." Were a "person of color" with roughly the same qualifications as Jennifer to have interviewed, well, Verbal Jazz would have no problem with that hire. Let's be honest, this is a receptionist position, one which can be learned by a variety of people regardless of their experience (sorry "Jennifer"). This commitment to a "person of color," however, is self-serving liberalism at its worst: Heather's company will get its minority receptionist and crow about diversity while all their major decision makers will remain lily white. Now are they really committed to social justice or just the appearance of social justice?
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Verbal Jazz should not be privy to this information and thus will decline to name the company. It strikes Verbal Jazz that if this company were really committed to developing diversity in the workplace that they would not be seeking to impose affirmative action restrictions on its lowest rung position, and would instead have sought to have a minority candidate in a position of some greater responsibility, such as project management.
Heather's company gets an induction into the society for paying lip-service to the idea of diversity by enforcing a hard and fast rule hiring the receptionist should be a "person of color." Were a "person of color" with roughly the same qualifications as Jennifer to have interviewed, well, Verbal Jazz would have no problem with that hire. Let's be honest, this is a receptionist position, one which can be learned by a variety of people regardless of their experience (sorry "Jennifer"). This commitment to a "person of color," however, is self-serving liberalism at its worst: Heather's company will get its minority receptionist and crow about diversity while all their major decision makers will remain lily white. Now are they really committed to social justice or just the appearance of social justice?
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