The Republicans richly deserve the hard, clean punch just landed on their hypocrisy today by a Washington Post editorial taking them to task for their recently announced determination to find 200 new black Congressional staffers over the next two years even as they criticize race conscious college admissions.
Excuse us, but isn’t this affirmative action? More specifically, isn’t this exactly the kind of racial preference the Republican leadership has opposed in the University of Michigan case and, well, everywhere else?….
Once again, as in President Bush’s position on Michigan, Republicans want it both ways: pretending to be purists of race neutrality when it suits their political needs, but favoring and at times practicing some form of affirmative action when that seems more useful. They may call it “affirmative access” or “opportunities, not results” — but whatever it’s called, it is definitely not race blindness.
In theory, the Republican, er, outreach effort could be defended as perfectly consistent with the original understanding of affirmative action. That is, taking active, affirmative steps to insure that no qualified candidates are overlooked, that no candidate suffers from discrimination, etc. That, presumably, is what a spokesman for House Majority Leader Tom DeLay had in mind when he said “these black applicants would not necessarily be guaranteed jobs but would just expand the pool beyond friends of current staffers….”
In theory, this could be a persuasive point. In fact, the Republicans appear to be simply pandering. Armstrong Williams, who’s behind this, should be ashamed of himself. At least he’s smart enough to know how dumb this makes them look.
About the best (or is it worst?) that can be said of the Republicans here is that they’re no different from the preferentialists in their laying down a cover of obfuscatory euphemisms to cover the tracks of what they’re actually doing. Thus preferentialists speak of “taking race into account” or having race count “as one factor among many” when they and everyone else knows that race is the deciding factor for many, probably most, minority candidates admitted under policies based on racial preference.
The Post editorial mentions a question asked by Terry Neal, who writes its “Talking Points” (title stolen from similar to Josh Marshall’s blog) column. Since the Post thinks it appropriate for race to be a factor/deciding factor in hiring, is it appropriate to ask whether Neal was hired for his position because he’s black?
I find that an offensive question, and one of the things I find offensive about racial preferences is that they make that question reasonable.
