Reader of all things Fred Ray sends another article, this one an editorial from the Charlotte News & Observer, that has me confused.
It begins in fine and impressive form:
A rigorous probe is needed into whether deception tainted the hiring of minority-owned contractors for a state project
North Carolina is absolutely right, legally and ethically, to insist that public contracts be awarded without regard to the race of the men and women who seek the business. The state also has a special responsibility to draw in entrepreneurs who until recent decades were ignored or shut out of lucrative state contracts, no matter how competent they were or no matter how incompetent the white-owned firms benefitting from their privileged status turned out to be.
This sounds like the original version of what affirmative action was all about: hiring, contracting, admissions, etc., decisions made “without regard” to race combined with vigorous, affirmate efforts to ensure that no qualified applicants were excluded or overlooked.
But wait. Alas, there’s more.
Three prisons to be built by Centex, a Texas contractor, “come under state minority participation rules.” Those rules aren’t quoted, but if they require minority participation they violate the form of affirmative action implied in the paragraph quoted above, and, I would argue, other civil rights laws. But leave that aside for now.
Centex says it is committed to subbing work to firms owned by minorities and women. Still, the company was accused by minority subcontractors of failing to hire enough minority firms on the earlier projects. So last spring Centex pledged to do better, and it filed an affidavit with the state’s Office for Historically Underutilized Businesses listing minority-owned firms that would receive at least 10 percent of the Columbus County work.
Well, don’t leave that aside. Doesn’t “10 percent” sound like a quota to you? But affirmative action defenders always insist that they don’t like, want, or support quotas. Have any of them opposed these “10 percent” guarantees?
Next, if the News & Observer is sincere when it editorializes that it is “absolutely right, legally and ethically, to insist that public contracts be awarded without regard to the race of the men and women who seek the business,” then how can it support state contractors promising to award contracts on the basis of race?
Actually, I was fibbing above when I said I was confused. I’m not confused, but I think the News & Observer is, unless it is simply being disingenuous.
CORRECTION
Oops. That editorial was in the Raleigh, not the Charlotte, News and Observer.
