Following is another guest post from Roger Clegg, President and General Counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity.
The Obama administration has a figured out yet another way to push preferential treatment on the basis of race, ethnicity, and sex: Convene a big White House conference and extract “diversity”commitments from corporations. The administration has done it twice this month already. Big business is terrible on this issue anyway, and is certainly not going to resist any pressure from the federal government. So everyone wins — except, of course, the principle of nondiscrimination, the law, and those who end up getting discriminated against in the name of “diversity.”
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Allow me to elaborate, starting with the point that business is all-too-often happy to go along with this nonsense. Xerox announced this month that it will require at least one minority and one woman to be in the final applicant pool for any leadership hire in the United States. This is a variant of the National Football League’s “Rooney Rule,” which violates Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Another example in the news: Microsoft awards its outside law firms cash bonuses for hitting predetermined “diversity” targets. Likewise, its in-house counsel receive bonuses based on diversity.
At the Washington Post, Catherine Rampell had a recent column titled (in the hard copy), “Yes, Corporate America: Diversity Pays.” It explains how it can be very useful to have employees who bring different life experiences to the table. That’s certainly true, but the problem is why we should use skin color or what country someone’s ancestors came from as a proxy for having had a particular life experience. That’s usually called stereotyping. Not that anything Ms. Rampell writes might suggest an unflattering stereotype, of course. For example, one of the “life experience[s]” she talks about is being a prison inmate. Oh, wait – oops!
Meanwhile, USA Today had an article about how Pinterest “is setting ambitious goals to hire more women and minorities — and it’s making those goals public to hold itself accountable.” But on closer inspection it turns out the problem is not that it isn’t hiring enough minorities — the company is only half white — but that it’s the wrong kind of minorities: too many of those darn Asians. As for women, the article concedes the company “has more women overall than most tech firms: 42%.”
But, comrades, we must work harder, diversity-wise. And Jesse Jackson has “commended Pinterest.” Says Reverend Jackson, “Pinterest is putting a huge stake in the ground by setting specific, measurable goals, targets and a 2016 timetable to achieve its diversity and inclusion goals.” He adds, “We have said it: ‘If you don’t measure it, you don’t mean it.”
Can you say, “Quotas”?
By the way, no justification — none — is given in the Pinterest article for this (illegal and immoral) focus on race, ethnicity, and sex.
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And, as noted, the Obama administration is all for this sort of thing. In fact, Xerox’s announcement was made in conjunction with the White House’s first “Demo Day” this month, aimed at bringing greater “diversity” into the tech world. And the White House also convened a meeting this month of business school deans and the business leaders on “expanding opportunities for women in business.” Here are some excerpts from the White House “fact sheet” on Demo Day, and you can also read more about it in Terry Eastland’s excellent editorial against it in the current Weekly Standard here.
There’s more from the Obama administration: The Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) has a new poster for your workplace! And the neat thing is that it’s really two posters in one since, as is typical in this area, it points in two different directions: It warns against discrimination, but it also promotes “diversity,” which is typically achieved through discrimination. The fine print at the bottom also endorses “affirmative action,” which likewise has an ambiguous history: Originally it meant nondiscrimination, but that’s no longer the way it’s understood. OFCCP’s regulations on the subject are themselves illegal, and also point in different directions, so the problem is not new with the poster but is reflected by it. A great conversation piece to have next to the water cooler!
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Let me give one last example of a businessman who’s okay with politically correct discrimination: Donald Trump, whom you may have heard of.
Here’s what he said in an interview on Sunday: “I’m fine with affirmative action. We’ve lived with it for a long time. And I lived with it for a long time. And I’ve had great relationships with lots of people.”
What a silly answer. So Mr. Trump is “fine” with treating people differently — some better, some worse — on the basis of skin color, national origin, and sex. How come? Because “I’ve lived with it for a long time.” How does that make such discrimination more acceptable? Indeed, in this instance, the longer it has been around the less defensible it is, if the rationale is somehow to make up for past wrongs. And, of course, you can have “great relationships with lots of people” without discriminating against them. In fact, it might actually improve your relationships with lots of people.
Sheesh.
