What Racism?

At some point the media needs to come to grips with the fact that identifying people and categorizing people according to the color of their skin is racism. It doesn’t matter what race you are dealing with, we need to remember the words of Martin Luther King, Jr.,”I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Job applications, college applications, and employment decisions should be considered on the basis of qualifications–not race. Evidently there are still a lot of people walking around that don’t understand that.

On Saturday, Red State posted an article about a recent decision by the Minnesota Public Schools.

The article quotes the new policy:

Starting with the Spring 2023 Budget Tie-Out Cycle, if excessing a teacher who is a member of a population underrepresented among licensed teachers in the site, the District shall excess the next least senior teacher, who is not a member of an underrepresented population.”

The article notes:

Following the decision, constitutional lawyer Hans Bader wrote an op-ed, as noted by my colleague, which states:

“It is illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. When it comes to termination (as opposed to hiring or promotion under an affirmative-action plan), an employer can’t racially discriminate even against whites. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 1996 that an school district can’t consider race even as a tie-breaker, in deciding who to lay off, even to promote diversity, because that (a) unduly trammels the white teacher’s rights — even affirmative action plans are supposed to be mild and not unduly trammel someone’s rights, and getting fired as opposed to being denied a promotion unduly trammels someone’s rights — and (b) putting that aside, the school district couldn’t consider race to promote diversity when black people weren’t seriously underrepresented in its workforce as a whole. That ruling was Taxman v. Board of Education of Piscataway, 91 F.3d 1547 (3d Cir. 1996).”

The article continues:

Despite the backlash this blatantly racist policy has received, it was recently defended by the president and vice president of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers. On Friday, in an appearance on ABC, Greta Callahan, president of the teachers’ union, said:

“This contract language was something that we are, first of all, extremely proud of for achieving but it also doesn’t go far enough … We need to support and retain our educators, especially those who are underrepresented, and this language does one tiny, minuscule step towards that but doesn’t solve the real crisis we’re in right now.”

If a particular group of people are underrepresented, maybe you should look into the cause rather than use racism to try to correct the problem. Have you worked to improve schools in neighborhoods where the underrepresented people live? Have you set up mentoring programs to encourage underrepresented people to become teachers? What have you done to improve the overall quality of education for all students?

The policy of firing teachers based on their race is a losing idea for everyone. If downsizing has to happen, fire the teachers that are not getting the job done–whatever color they are.