[Excerpted from The Washington Times, staff editorial]

     "Two major TV networks — CBS and FOX — have announced a new "diversity agreement" that includes "commitments" to buy more goods and services from minority-owned vendors, mentoring programs for minorities, minority-specific internships, the hiring of writers, directors and actors from "diverse" backgrounds, and, most alarmingly of all, a "commitment" to reward managers for hiring minorities to fill executive slots.

     "... Not since the Jim Crow South has so much virulent attention been given to racial characteristics, quotas and bean-counting. While Mr. Mfume and other supporters of the "diversity" push always couch their message in the language of fairness and opportunity, what it all comes down to, ultimately, is skin color. Not talent. Not resume. Race.

     "... Decent people should abjure this kind of race-hustling. It's more than just unfair to the people who are being implicitly tarred as racists — which is egregious in and of itself. But even worse is the fact that this kind of browbeating and neurotic obsession with skin tone fosters and creates anew the very animus most persons wish could be left behind in the past. This is not Alabama in the 1950s and Fox and CBS are not run by latter-day Bull Conners. But it's not easy to leave this obsession with race behind when Mr. Mfume insists on reviving it under another name."  (The Washington Times 02/07/00)
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