“No Irish [Whites, Asians, Jews, Whatever] Need Apply”

The historian Richard Jensen has argued that the still-burning Irish-American “memory of humiliating job discrimination, which featured omnipresent signs proclaiming ‘Help Wanted–No Irish Need Apply!'” is the result of what he termed a “myth of victimization.” No one, he writes, “has ever seen one of these NINA signs because they were extremely rare or nonexistent.”

Ironically, however (is this really an irony, or something else?), in our age of rampant equality, the papers are crawling with want ads and announcements that could accurately appear under a banner reading, “Jobs Available: No [Irish, Jews, Etc.] Need Apply!” A good example is in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, p. D8 of the edition I saw. It’s a large display ad, sponsored by the WSJ itself, CareerJournal.com, and the Lucas Group, announcing that “Minority Executives can find Major Opportunities” at The Executive Diversity Career Fair” in Chicago on April 28. The online version of this notice states the same thing:

Companies recruiting at the fair are strongly committed to seeking executive, managerial and professional minority candidates and women.

The business side of the Wall Street Journal obviously doesn’t pay much attention to the paper’s editorial objections to racial preferences, but there is nothing at all unique here. Minority job fairs have become a big business.

The mission statement of one such job fair is typical.

The Northwest Minority Job Fair’s (Job Fair) mission is to foster access to employment opportunities for historically underrepresented persons in the practice of law and to provide a networking forum for legal employers and minority law students. Based upon the original purpose of the Job Fair and limited resources, the focus of our mission is ethnic minorities.

The Job Fair does not condone or support discriminatory hiring practices by any employer against any Job Fair participant on the basis of sex, race, age, creed, religion, color, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, or marital status.

Talk about a fig leaf! If this mission statement passes your smell test, ask yourself if you would feel (or smell) the same way if “white” or “Jewish” appeared in place of “historically underrepresented,” “minority,” etc. That this year’s sponsor of this particular event is Dorsey & Whitney, a large national law firm, makes the implicit discrimination even more odious.

The fact that such racially and ethnically exclusive programs strike so many people as a Good Thing, or at worst innocuous, is a measure of how far we’ve come from the days when “civil rights” meant treating individuals without regard to their race or ethnicity.

And it also clearly reveals the dissonant clash between the words we still mouth about “civil rights” and what is generally meant. Consider this typical statement from, of all places, the state of Michigan:

Advertisers need to be conscious of how they advertise for jobs or housing in order to avoid violating anti- discrimination laws. The following guidelines will help you determine what language is appropriate to use in your advertisements.

Generally, it is unlawful to indicate any preference or restriction based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, familial status, marital status, arrest record, height, or weight.

Such statements echo the original understanding of civil rights, and even of “affirmative action” as laid out in, among other places, President Johnson’s Executive Order 11246 (1965) requiring government contractors to affirm that they

will not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, creed, color, or national origin. The contractor will take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin. [Emphasis added]

I’ve quoted this passage before (and the identical one in the preceding executive order by President Kennedy), but I’ve not quoted another item in Executive Order 11246:

(2) The contractor will, in all solicitations or advertisements for employees placed by or on behalf of the contractor, state that all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, creed, color, or national origin.

It would be interesting to hear how all those employers “seeking” racial and ethnic minorities can do so “without regard to race, creed, color, or national origin.” Maybe they could hire Dorsey & Whitney to explain it for them.