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"Race pay gap persists at all grad levels" Chicago Sun-Times Sunday, Jan. 4, 2004 Page 3A

          Prior to publication of his Sun-Times article on 1/4/04, reporter Curtis Lawrence interviewed both myself and Dave Diersen for the article in our roles as officers of Adversity.Net.  Below, I've included representative excerpts of the Sun-Times article.

My own interview responses to Mr. Lawrence, which did not make it into his article, were along the lines that black graduates today have the advantage of extremely aggressive racial preferences -- quotas -- in all state, local and federal government jobs as well as in virtually all private corporations of any size.  In many, if not most, situations whites, and especially white males, have less likelihood of getting hired and promoted precisely because of racial preferences and quotas.

Sun-Times Article

          At the time of my interview with the Sun-Times' Mr. Lawrence he did not ask for, nor did I supply, any data to support my assertions.  Therefore, I have included below just a few of the links to pages within this web site which provide substantial documentation of the tremendous advantages in hiring and promotion that blacks in today's workplace enjoy as a result of racial preferences and quotas.

          Mr. Lawrence included a table of Census data in his article showing a disparity in median earnings between whites and blacks, as follows:

          In order for this table to have any useful meaning regarding the purported earnings gap, the following critical variables need to be addressed:

• Employment: What were the median years of employment / seniority for the black males vs. the white males?

• Employment: What were the employer performance appraisals of the blacks vs. the whites?

• Occupation: What specific jobs or occupations were held by the blacks vs. the whites?

• Academic: What were the major courses of study for the black degree holders vs. the white degree holders in this sample?

• Academic: What was the academic standing of the educational institutions attended by black grads vs. white grads?

• Academic: What were the test scores / grade point averages of the blacks in this sample vs. the whites?

          To be fair, Mr. Lawrence did briefly treat some of these questions in his article, including the need to make adjustments for regional disparities in pay scales. 

          Further, none of the other interviewees took into account the impact of three massive federal bureaucracies (EEOC, Dept. of Justice, and Dept. of Labor), and the accompanying reams of government laws, which enforce the fast-track hiring of blacks and other protected minorities in virtually all employment situations.

          For the reader who wants to bend his/her mind a little, try reading through the Feds' play book on enforcement of racial preferences.  It is called Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures.   It is the law of the land and it states quite clearly that any job criterion or test result upon which blacks and other preferred minorities perform more poorly than whites constitutes de facto racial discrimination and must be altered in order to "pass" more minorities.

-- Tim Fay, Editor, Adversity.Net, Inc.

Selected Excerpts from the Sun-Times Article

Headline:  Race pay gap persists at all grad levels

January 4, 2004, by Curtis Lawrence, Staff Reporter, and Art Golab contributing.

          "Even advanced academic degrees don't shrink the salary gap between the nation's black and white males, new census figures show.

          "Whether they have high school diplomas or master's degrees, black men still earn roughly 25 percent less than whites at the same education level, according to soon-to-be-released 2002 census figures.

"The median income for a black man with a high school diploma was $27,224 in 2002. A white man with the same education made $35,738, about 24 percent more. The median income for black men with a master's degree was $50,763, compared with $69,655 for whites -- a 27 percent difference.

Adversity Critique

         "One explanation for the gap is discrimination in the workplace. Others say the gap comes from the overall lower quality of education for blacks, regional disparities in pay or that blacks on average choose jobs that typically pay less, such as teaching or social work.

          "... others, such as Dave Diersen, a white accountant from Wheaton who is part of a class-action discrimination suit against the U.S. General Accounting Office, feel that there are plenty of opportunities for black men and other minorities.

          " 'I'm arguing that there is not only equality [for blacks and minorities] in the office where I worked, but that there was preferences given to minorities and females because of affirmative action mandates,' Diersen said.

          "Diersen is now treasurer of Adversity.net, a nonprofit group that promotes discussions about the impact of racial preferences. He claims he suffered under policies designed to advance minorities and women and was forced out in 1997 after complaining.

          "Economics Professor ... William R. Johnson from the University of Virginia [said that while some of the gap is due to labor market discrimination,] 'most of it is attributed to different skills they are bringing to the labor market, even if they have the same years of education.'

          "When Johnson and Neal studied the wage gap between black and white men in the mid-1990s, they reduced it to 7 percent when they took early-schooling test scores into account.

          "The gaps in [Rutgers University Professor] Rodgers studies are smaller than in the census reports because he made adjustments for regional salary disparities and other factors that may have artificially widened the gap."

Last known link to the original Sun-Times story:
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-gap04.html

Adversity.Net, Inc. is a tax-exempt, 501(c)(3) educational organization.  Contributions are fully tax-deductible.

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