Readers of this blog will be about as shocked to discover that an American institution of allegedly higher education has engaged in racial profiling as Captain Renault was when he announced that he was “shocked, shocked to find that gambling was going on” at Rick’s in Casablanca.
Oh, wait. Since these “Charges of Racial Profiling at Providence College” come from faculty and students — since, that is, they are accusations and not accolades — by now you will probably have guessed that what is agitating the academics is neither the racial makeup of the basketball team nor the racial profiling inherent in the college’s affirmative action policy, an example of the good racial profiling, but the bad racial profiling said to be practiced by the college’s security officers. “Black and Latino students say that they are followed by campus security and required to produce identification in situations in which white students don’t face similar demands.”
But not to worry; the situation (at least the bad situation) is about to be corrected. “A college spokesman said that Providence has ‘moved swiftly’ to deal with the concerns, and is requiring security staff members to go through ‘cultural competency’ training.”
There, that should make you feel better.
For those worried that the dismantling of affirmative action might dramatically increase unemployment by laying off all the “cultural competency” trainers, I have a grand bargain to offer: colleges could continue to offer “cultural competency” training to their security officers if they also offered “constitutional competency” training to their administrators, department heads, and admissions officers and made treating people differently on the basis of race or ethnicity by any college employee a firing offense.
