[NOTE! This post has been UPDATED]
Charlottesville, like the University of Virginia that it hosts, simply can’t get enough of “diversity.” (Well, that’s not exactly true. As discussed in Old Dominion Dems Decry Diversity! and Charlottesville, The Capital Of Blue Virginia…, one Republican on a five-member city council provided entirely too much diversity, and had to be replaced several years ago in an election in which the Dems “retook” the council.)
In any event the city is now about to partner with the University in several new “diversity” programs.
Charlottesville Mayor Dave Norris unveiled a plan for building and maintaining a more diverse Charlottesville workforce Thursday. As part of the plan, the City could partner with the University to increase outreach efforts to potential minority employees.
I assume this means potential employees, not potential minorities, but “diversity” being what it is one can’t be completely certain. In any event, these partnered “diversity” programs depend every bit as much on racial discrimination as the ones the University engages in all by itself. Here’s one:
Despite the University’s high black graduation rate, most black students leave the Charlottesville area after graduating, Norris said.
“What I want to see us do as a city and a community is try to reach out to third- and fourth-years at the University to whom it may never have occurred to stay in Charlottesville,” he said. “We could create internships and opportunities so that they will consider staying and adding to the local workforce.”
That’s Charlottesville for you: “Hey, black graduates! Please stay here. We’ve got jobs and internships just for you! No whites, Asians, etc., need apply.”
Here’s more:
“We are also looking at people who are mid-career — asking how we present Charlottesville as a more attractive place for professionals of color to put down roots,” Norris said.
In addition to recruiting diverse professionals from outside the area, Norris said he hopes to grow a more diverse workforce from within the community. He cited the City’s growing summer youth employment program — which he said has seen a high level of participation from black students — as an example of these efforts. Another initiative meant to expand the City’s workforce diversity is the African-American Teaching Fellows program, which Norris said aims to recruit local black citizens as teachers, as well as provide mentoring and support services.
Other fields in which the City wishes to generate minority job interest include nursing and law enforcement, Norris said.
Can a city really create a program that “aims to recruit local black citizens”? Why not? This is Charlottesville, after all, which has so little “diversity” in its government that it never occurred to anyone that race-based (apparently even race-exclusive) hiring is what, not so long ago, used to be called racial discrimination.
UPDATE [7 April]
Roger Clegg of the Center for Equal Opportunity emails:
As UVa knows, racially EXCLUSIVE programs are illegal under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which covers most federally funded programs; alas, racially PREFERENTIAL programs are sometimes still allowed under Title VI, in light of the Supreme Court’s 2003 University of Michigan decisions. But the programs here involve employment (if the positions are paid), in which case Title VII applies, and it’s unclear whether even racially preferential programs would be permissible to Charlottesville under this statute. So the partnership is not only bad policy, but likely illegal as well.
It’s a good thing Roger allowed me to quote his email; otherwise I’d have had to pretend his points were my own.
One thing I should have mentioned in my post is that UVa is an ideal partner with whom to develop programs that classify, reward, and punish employees and others on the basis of race, because it has the personnel with the experience and expertise of doing exactly that.
The Charlottesville initiative, through which the City could partner with the University, is still in its conceptual stages right now, though, said Bill Harvey, the University’s chief officer for diversity and equity. Harvey was invited by the City to work on the initiative.
“It’s a little bit too early to tell until we begin to go through the process and see what the program will look like,” Harvey said. “We will layout the framework of the University’s involvement and what the program will look like overall. I suspect once we have a couple of meetings in the summer, in the fall we will probably have a blueprint of action.”
Who better than Bill Harvey,UVa’s Vice President and Chief Officer for Diversity and Equity (last seen here), to help lay of “the framework” for a discriminatory racial preference program?
