Story Index |
(2.3) When Affirmative Action Is Nothing But
Discrimination |
| Story Index |
(2.3) When Affirmative Action Is Nothing But
Discrimination |
Excerpted from the Stuart Taylor Jr. analysis in The National Journal Mon., Sept. 23, 2002
"Dennis Worth had been working happily and winning high performance evaluations for 16 years in the Department of Housing and Urban Development's St. Louis office when things started going sour. In 1994, he was turned down for two promotions for which an independent merit-staffing panel had rated him "highly qualified." By 1995, it "kind of hit me," Worth recalls, "that minorities and women were being promoted and advanced, and white males were not."
"Of the 43 people who had been hired or promoted, 42 were African-American or female. One was a white male. Worth compared notes with colleagues elsewhere. "We started understanding that there was a very deliberate effort coming from somewhere to exclude white males from getting positions. It replicated itself over and over again to the point that [by 1995] it was blatant and flagrant."
"Since 1994, all but one of the dozen or so promotions and transfers that Worth has applied for have gone to black or female applicants whom he considered no better qualified than he, and in most cases less qualified, because they had far less relevant experience and seniority. Some of them had little or no college education. (Worth has a B.S. from Washington University.)
"Now the 55-year-old Worth is the name plaintiff in a nationwide class action against HUD and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The suit alleges unconstitutional discrimination against white males both at HUD and throughout the government.
"The lawsuit seeks no monetary damages, but rather a simple court order telling HUD and the EEOC to stop discriminating.
"... [T]he evidence cited by Worth's attorneys consists mainly of HUD's own thick, EEOC-approved "affirmative employment plan" for women and minorities, together with the government's own statistics on the racial and gender breakdowns of its employees and of the relevant labor pools.
"Among the lawsuit's statistical claims: Racial minorities as a group have a larger percentage of jobs in every one of the 40 departments and agencies listed in a federal Office of Personnel Management report last year than their percentage of the qualified labor force. ... With only 15 percent of the relevant labor pool, minorities make up 46 percent of HUD's workforce and 61 percent of the EEOC's workforce.
"A little law: The 1964 Civil Rights Act bans "any discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin" in government personnel actions. The Supreme Court has held that governmental job preferences are unlawful except when necessary to redress past discrimination or (perhaps) to reduce a "manifest imbalance" in "traditionally segregated" job categories. HUD's plan and the EEOC's regulations purport to require preferential hiring or promotion "goals" only when the percentage of blacks, Hispanics, other preferred minorities, or women is so disproportionately small relative to their percentages of the workforce as to amount to a "manifest imbalance."
"So how can HUD justify continuing to give preferences to women and to minority groups that are already overrepresented in its workforce? It does so, the Center for Individual Rights asserts, by manipulating the numbers in at least four ways, producing an intricate formula for evading the law while aggravating the already dramatic under-representation of white males. .... HUD's plan explicitly provides that the under-representation of white males is of no concern and has no bearing on the requirement of preferences for women and minorities in each and every corner of the department in which they are under-represented. Thus HUD is happy to have white males, who make up 36 percent of the relevant labor force, compose only 5 percent of the 1,200 employees in the broad "technical" job category.
"Like other agencies monitored by the EEOC's race-and-gender cops, HUD provides powerful pressures for its managers to meet their preferential racial- and gender-based goals. HUD documents state that managers are "held accountable for utilizing every hiring, promotion, reassignment, and employee development opportunity for meeting the Department's goals." Those who fail "to take the necessary actions" risk poor performance ratings and thus reassignment, demotion, or removal.
"Legal issues aside, this lawsuit raises a fundamental question of policy for President Bush and his EEOC appointees, who could end official job preferences in the federal government with a few strokes of the pen: Why should the nation's largest employer, which has been running a system of preferences for women and minorities for decades, perpetuate that system even though the white males against whom it discriminates are now under-represented in its workforce?"
(Stuart Taylor Jr. is a senior writer for National Journal Magazine.)
Excerpted from Stuart
Taylor Jr.'s article as it appeared in "nationaljournal.com" on 9/23/02:
"When Affirmative Action Is Nothing But Discrimination".
Last known link to the original
Stuart Taylor Jr. article:
http://nationaljournal.com/taylor.htm
(Caution: the story appearing at this link will be replaced with a new, different
story.)
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