News-Record.com

One should only look to the future not the past. The color of one's skin does not make one qualified for anything. Qualifying comes from hard work and skills to perform.
"We must remember our past while improving our future"

I didn't read anywhere in Allen's post that the N&R intended to hire anyone who was unqualified.

In fact on Feb. 2, Allen posted this:
"The new hiring initiative will involve only qualified hires, whatever their race or gender. That's a given."

There's much more about the N&R's hiring initiative, including why they feel it is necessary, on both Allen's and John Robinson's blogs.

Start here:
Link: http://blog.news-record.com/staff/outloud/archives/2005/02/davenports_scre_1.html

and here:

http://blog.news-record.com/jrblog/archives/2004/11/my_sunday_newsp.html

and here:

http://blog.news-record.com/staff/jrblog/archives/2004/12/discriminatory.html

Just to switch gears ever so slightly, let's apply this to education.

If African-Americans or other minorities raise the issue of having a more diverse teaching staff so that their children will have teachers who look more like them and possibly share a more similar cultural background, is that legitimate?

I'd be willing to bet that a lot of whites would say that the skin color of the teacher should not matter. A good teacher is a good teacher, and skin color does not make a difference.

In many respects, such thinking is correct, or at least should be.

But as a male middle-school teacher, I know that I have had parents tell me every year how glad they are that I am in education so that their sons will have at least one male teacher. Some even come out and say that their sons respond better to male teachers than they do to female teachers.

This raises some interesting issues.

Is there a problem with how those parents are raising their sons? Shouldn't students respect all teachers and not show more respect to male teachers than females teachers?

Or are boys (and girls) actually better off having teachers who represent both sexes?

And then, how does this apply to race?

It's easy--very easy--for white parents to say that the race of a teacher should not matter to a child.

But what if you have a child who has never had a teacher who shares the same skin color as the child?

And what if you live in America, which has improved a great deal with regards to issues of race but which still has far, far to go?

Yes, of course, the race of the teacher should not matter.

But it's a whole lot easier to say that as a white than as an African-American.

I guarantee you that it would matter to a great many of these whites (who complain about blacks complaining about a lack of diversity) if their white children went to school without ever having a white teacher.

For most white parents, this is far beyond their imaginations because they have come nowhere close to being confronted by this.

I guarantee you that the issue would be regarded very differently under such circumstances.

And of course it SHOULD not matter if every teacher a white student has is non-white.

I remember taking an African-American literature class at UNC-Chapel Hill. The class was taught by a black professor. I got together with a black female student to study for an exam. She confessed that it meant something to her to take this particular class because it was the first time she had ever had a black teacher. So going all the way from kindergarten to her junior year of college, this young lady whose skin was black had never had a black teacher. And of course, it didn't and it shouldn't have mattered. And yet it did. She was not complaining about her white teachers. She was extremely intelligent, and I would guess that at least some of her white teachers had had a significant and probably positive impact on her intellectual and educational development. (I'd even be willing to guess that she knew and appreciated this.) But still it meant something to have at least one teacher who shared her skin color.

And if white students ever faced such circumstances, I am almost certain that it would matter to a majority of those students and their parents if the white students had at least one white teacher along the way. (Some would want many more than just one white teacher along the way.)

Fathers and mothers of sons never even seem to feel guilty telling me that they are pleased to have me as a male teacher/role model for their sons.

Should African-American parents feel guilty for expressing appreciation when at least one (or more) of their children's teachers are black?

And should this be taken into consideration when schools and school systems hire teachers?

We are not talking about lowering standards here. But if a school has only white teachers or only a very small number of African-American teachers, should the race of the applicants be given some consideration?

There may well be--and probably are--some instances where a grossly less qualified minority is hired instead of a significantly better qualified white.

But I bet there are more instances where you could flip a coin in the decision-making process.

A former News & Record editor, David DuBuisson, wrote a column once about this issue with regards to a lawsuit filed by a white student who was rejected by Duke University while a black student she knew was accepted. (I am sharing this from memory, so I hope I've got all the details correct.) As I recall, the white student claimed that she was much more qualified than the black student; her claim was that she was being discriminated against. Duke University could not share all details of the students' applications and records because of confidentiality issues, but I believe the university indicated that the white student's claims were not accurate. I remember appreciating several of DuBuisson's columns, but this one particularly stuck out as an intelligent, important piece of writing. (I need to look it up. I'm assuming it's in the archives; Mr. Johnson, would it be possible to make it available within one of your postings?)

I believe that one of DuBuisson's primary points was how difficult it was to choose between two people whose records are very similar. And yet universities and businesses have to do this, no doubt, with some regularity.

Is a university better off getting a white student with a perfect SAT score and fairly good grades than a black student with only an average SAT score but slightly better grades? (This is only one of infinite scenerios that could be painted and shared, with arguments that could go in countless directions about what could and should be taken into account when making such decisions.)

Do the same people who complain so much about race being considered share the same concerns about universities taking into consideration that the student is in-state or that the students' parents graduated from the same school to which they are now applying?

(Keep in mind that taking into consideration whether parents graduated from a previously all-white university automatically put blacks at a disadvantage in the past. And while many white students growing up today take it for granted that they will someday go to college, this is true for fewer blacks. Going to college is often a family tradition; blacks were not allowed to develop such a family tradition with the same frequency as whites. So yes, everything is perfectly equal today, and yet because of the past, it's also not. And if whites want to blame anyone for that, they may have to go where they do not want to go and that is to the place where they place more blame on white ancestors than they do on the people trying to figure out "fair" ways to undo the "unfair" legacies from the past.)

Now, I know I have not done much to contribute to the issue of diversity in the newsroom. (Just in case anyone's interested, I think diversity in the newsroom is preferable, so that different races, genders, and yes, even philosophies (and maybe even intellecutal levels) are represented.) I'm not sure if any of what I've expressed about how diversity matters to education relates to how diversity might matter within the media.

I've only touched on some concerns, and there are others.

I do feel that the people who argue that we are beyond the point of ever needing to take race into consideration are perhaps a little naive. Some bleeding-heart conservatives try to suggest that everything would work beautifully if we just stopped paying attention to race at all and only took into account ability and performance, but what these people ignore is that some of them (or at least some of their friends) would still take race into consideration and just not realize or acknowledge it--and blacks and others would suffer because of that.

You raise some very compelling points, Mr. Floyd.
I'll search the archives for the column you're referring to from my former colleague, David DuBuisson, and post it soon.

It will be a cold day in you-know-where when the N&R reflects the diversity of the community. We're 50% Bush-backers, by tally of the last presidential election.
Your staff is nowhere close to that. Not even in the ballpark. Not even in the same league. Not even...well, you get my point.
The N&R steadfastly caters to the liberal left in it's stories, editorials, and staffing. To fill your little cubicles with less qualified "tokens" of one race or color merely because they're not white does nothing for the credibility or quality of your newspaper. I consider it racist to discriminate for or against a person because of the color of their skin. Apparently the N&R doesn't care about that basic human right.
Why not a program to hire "conservatives" to level out your staff and really reflect the diversity of your community?
I won't hold my breath...

I'm still waiting for that policy on hiring real minorities: one-armed men, Icelandic women, midgets, etc. They make up a portion of the population too, so why do they get dumped on and not equally represented? I demand real affirmative action!

Allen: Any luck finding that column? Hardy Floyd has got my curiosity up.

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