Critics of racial preference often assert that it stigmatizes minorities, an assertion that preferentialists dispute … except, on occasion, when it is not being debated. Thus an article in the (Berkeley) Daily Californian on the plight of black faculty at Berkeley contains the following:
Professor Percy Hintzen joined the UC Berkeley African American Studies department in 1979, when there was a sense of urgency and necessity for increased ethnic diversity in higher education, he says.
Oh, a form of inbreeding.
Given that there’s currently only a small pool of ph.d. credentialed “people of color” (asians do not count under most “diversity” plans), there are few viable options for increasing the percentage of minority faculty members in the short-term. These are the ones that I’ve witnessed…..
1) Fight like crazy to hire from the limited pool that is available. This means offering above-market salaries to attract them to the university. Promise them extra money to do research in the summer and offer reduced teaching loads during regular semesters. Try to give them limited committee assignments but this will be difficult as the university likely has as one of its goals the increasing of “diversity” on all committees.
2) Any minority faculty members that are hired should *not* be held to the same standards of scholarship as are the non-minority faculty. This will have the positive result of increasing the chances that the minority hires get tenure which will allow them to provide diversity to the campus for the rest of their careers. Retaining these faculty members also reduces the need to return to the small pool of candidates to find a replacement.
3) Hire minority ph.d. candidates prior to the completion of their degrees. This is risky because they may never complete their degree and then the department is faced with the extremely uncomfortable prospect of firing a minority faculty member.
University administrators will not be in favor of firing minority faculty members given that it sets the school back on its diversity goals.
As an alternative, move the minority faculty member into an upper-level administrative position where they can continue to provide diversity to the university despite their ABD status.
4) Find pseduo-minority candidates. These are the candidates that when you meet them have no signs of being a minority except they have a minority surname. These candidates aren’t able to provide visual “diversity” but will make the diversity stats look better as they can be listed as a “diversity” hire.
Hopefully, in time, the number of minority ph.d. graduates will increase and the actions listed above will no longer be necessary. Until that time, I see no other way for universities to achieve their “diversity” goals (quotas) at the faculty level.
Laura,
In my experience, universities are, if anything, very reluctant to hire their own alumni. High schools may be rather different.
But I was struck, as you were, by the conflation of “black”/”minority”/”person of color” in the Daily Cal piece. My guess is that the large majority of the time, when someone talks about “minorities” or “people of color” in a university context, the intended meaning is “blacks.” In a few cases, it’s “blacks, Latinos/Chicanos, and Native Americans.” Almost never is it “all non-whites.”
Jason, that’s a very crude oversimplification. I’ve been on a search committee at a top university, and while ABD candidates were considered, it was with the proviso that the diss be filed shortly. I had two grad-school classmates (both blond, if that helps) who got jobs while ABD. One was at Yale. I suppose they were trying to fill their Nebraskan quota.
As for “pseudo-minorities,” what are you talking about? I suppose it’s people with Spanish/Portuguese surnames who don’t look “ethnic” (e.g. sufficiently swarthy) to your eyes, and don’t speak with an obvious accent. As a matter of fact, “Hispanic” isn’t a race, and there are very pale Hispanics. Or do you mean a white woman surnamed “Mbotu” because that’s her husband’s name?
Seriously, there aren’t many classes of “minority surnames,” especially if you exclude Asian ones. There are Hispanic names and African names and Arabic ones; that’s about it. But, of course, very few US-born blacks have got African surnames. So you’re really talking about the Gonzalezes and the Gutierrezes and the Lopezes, are you not? In what way are these people “pseudo-minorities”?
I know that universities don’t like to hire their own alumni, but if they’re hiring only from a specific set of schools it almost amounts to the same thing, especially if those schools also hire each others’ alumni.
I apologize if you thought my summary was a crude simplification. I find the entire system depolorable, but I don’t see any other way to meet diversity goals in the short run. If you have other ideas, please propose them. I’d love to see the plan.
One reason middle to lower-end schools have to fight so hard to attract minority candidates is that “top universities” drop their own standards when hiring minority candidates. This leads to a cascading effect through the entire system.
I resent the “sufficiently swarthy) to your eyes” remark. You don’t know my ethnicity. You may have just insulted one of those “swarthy” people. Perhaps diversity training didn’t work on you.
That’s great that your fair-haird friends found placements at top schools while abd. Great for them! I hope they have very successful careers.
However, I would caution you against generalizing from a sample of two. It will likely lead to false conclusions.
I’m sorry if this is news to you that sometimes universities make crude hiring decisions. I share your repulsion.
Jason,
I resent the “sufficiently swarthy to your eyes” remark. You don’t know my ethnicity. You may have just insulted one of those “swarthy” people. Perhaps diversity training didn’t work on you.
Oh, my. Chill, please. This is what you wrote:
Find pseudo-minority candidates. These are the candidates that when you meet them have no signs of being a minority except they have a minority surname. These candidates aren’t able to provide visual “diversity” but will make the diversity stats look better as they can be listed as a “diversity” hire.
What exactly is it you meant by “no signs of being a minority,” if it was not skin color or accent?
And which “minority surnames” had you in mind?
And which university would “list” someone as “a ‘diversity’ hire”? None that I know.
Michelle:
They don’t list someone as a “diversity” hire, but if they can claim that person in a particular group, it may satisfy their affirmative action goals. I was not aware that one of the faculty members was African-American until I was on the AA committee and read the AA plan. Yet the addition of this one faculty member, in a reasonably small college, given the racial makeup of the population of Ph.D.’s, satisfied and reversed our “deficiency” in hiring of this group.
From a recent article about a 20% hiring quote in Manitoba…
“There’s no reason to believe aboriginal people or visible minorities and women can’t do the job equally as well as anyone else,” Ashton said. “What this ensures is that we have the diversity of our province represented in the workforce.”
*Visible minorities*. What could that possibly mean?
This thread is doubtless long dead, but I still think it’s important to make a few key points.
Michelle Dulak Thomson wrote:
” So you’re really talking about the Gonzalezes and the Gutierrezes and the Lopezes, are you not? In what way are these people pseudo-minorities “?
I would say that simply having a Spanish last name should not entitle someone to preferential treatment. Spain is a white European country that is as guilty historically as the English or the French. Somewhere between 1960 and the present, the American public stopped distinguishing between white Spaniards (and a Spaniard is ‘white’ whether swarthy or not) and persons of mixed or non-white races from Latin America. Doubtless this is due in part to the fact that there are gradations of racial mixture in Latin America that defy the simplistic U.S. ‘white’ or ‘person of color’ classification scheme. In any event, giving affirmative actionm preference to the descendants of the Conquistadors is absurd, especially when no such preference are provided for the descendants of ethnic whites such as the Irish, Italians, and Jews, whose ancestors played little or no role in the transatlantic slave trade or the tragic destruction of Native American culture. Why should white Spaniards enjoy safeguards against discrinination that Asians do not? Surely a Chinese or brown skinned Asian Indian is more vulnerable to discrimination than a white Spaniard, swarthy or not. It’s absurd and irrational. Who does this recompense for past wrongs?
Also, the ‘diversity’ argument doesn’t wash. Nobody endeavors to ensure a token number of French or Belgians or Arabs or Jews for that matter. Asians, Middle Easterners, and North Africans generally do not qulaify for Afirmative Action or other diversity measures, not do othere white Latin ethnic grouos, such as the Portuguese, Italians, French, or Romanians. Nearly half of Eueope is more or less of the same complexion of the Spanish.
Moreover, why should even a person of conspicuously mixed race from Latin America should be automatically classified as ‘oppressed’? This is policy being driven by white guilt and identity politics, not reason.
If your interested. I myself am ‘swarthy’ person of Middle Eastern (Lebanese) origin. I do not qualify for affirmative action, though I am undoubtedly swarthier than most European Spaniards.
People around the world love America a mong iotehr reasons for the illusion that its a place you can come to become an American.