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Thursday, July 17, 1997 Page:
On the job, in the university, only ability deserves affirmation
I have no musical ability. I got an F in music in kindergarten and went
downhill from there. My wife, however, has a voice like an angel and knows
some fine musicians. Recently she told me how auditions for professional
orchestras workLet’s say the maestro needs a violinist. He sit in a room on
one side of a large opaque screen. The aspiring violinists enter the room, one
at time, sit on the other side of the screen and play.
The conductor can’t see them. For all he knows, it could be Dennis Rodman
playing. Or Mother Teresa. Or anyone in between. The selection is made on
ability alone.
This is the sort of racial preference I like: none.
The Wilkes-Barre Police Department recently followed this model when hiring
an officer. Apparently, they made their decision without regard to race and
hired the highest-scoring qualified applicant.
And lo and behold, he is black.
I don’t want to make this man’s new job any tougher. As it is, he’ll
probably be greeted by name even by people who’ve never met him. (“So you’re
the new guy!”) And then he’ll have to give some of those people tickets.
But this worked out too well to let pass without comment.
Last year there was a good-sized flap about the all-white force after a
black officer retired. Many seemed to feel that the city should take fairly
drastic measures to change that.
I disagreed.
It’s bad enough to spend scarce resources on out-of-town recruiting for a
police force that still carries revolvers. My greater fear was that, after all
that effort was invested, the city would go the way of many universities and
hire a sub-par candidate for the sake of “diversity.”
It has always struck me as un-American to reject someone for a job or a
place in a class and leap-frog a less qualified person ahead, purely because
of skin color. That’s just the way I was raised.
But in the last 30 years or so that modern liberals have risen to positions
of influence in the courts, politics and universities, that has become the
norm.
Ironically, racial preferences –commonly referred to as affirmative action
— have done a great deal of harm to the minorities they were supposed to
help. Past generations of African Americans and Hispanics may have been
scorned by white bigots, but their presence at a university, in a law firm or
on a police force was ample proof of their ability. Like Jackie Robinson, they
had to be better –and tougher — than white colleagues just to make the
grade.
As affirmative action did its insidious work, however, minorities in a
competitive positions like law and civil service came to be seen by many in
just the opposite light.
A client with legal trouble wonders whether the law firm he is paying and
the law school whose diploma hangs on its wall relaxed their standards for
this man or woman. Maybe the client even entertains the thought of requesting
a different attorney. He doesn’t want to do that — everyone would think him a
racist. But what happens next time if the outcome of this case is bad?
A good friend overheard a conversation in an elevator at a medical school.
Two students were sizing up the members of the study group they had been
assigned. Pointing to a name on the list, one said, “This guy’s black, but
he’s really good.”
That sounds like a comment you might have heard in Mississippi about 1955.
But the student wasn’t a racist. He simply knew that the school had a policy
of admitting blacks who wouldn’t otherwise get in. The goal was diversity, but
the effect was suspicion of all minorities at the school, no matter how
capable.
Segregation and bigotry robbed America of the great gifts of many people
whose skin, religion or last name didn’t pass muster. In the same way
affirmative action robs talented minority achievers of the recognition they
deserve. Neither system of racial prejudice is moral or fair, and neither
helps our progress as a community or a nation.
For now at least, folks in Wilkes-Barre don’t have to concern themselves
with that. There’s one black cop on the beat, and nobody let him in the back
door. He beat all the other guys fair and square. He may turn out to be an
excellent choice or a poor one, but no one can grumble that he doesn’t belong
here.
He’s a No. 1 draft pick, after all. We’re lucky to get a player like that.
David Parmelee is a partner and co-founder of RSA/Fox Automotive, a
Mountaintop sales consulting firm. His column appears on alternate Thursdays.