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Affirmative Action: Discrimination ?Without Any Restrictions??

I always find it instructive when people say, unselfconsciously, what they really mean when they say ?affirmative action.? Here?s a good example from the American heartland, Mason City, Iowa.

Minorities make up 1.2 percent of the city workforce ? far below the the minority makeup of the city as a whole. U.S. Census figures for 1996 show Mason City?s population at 27,740 with 93.4 percent white, 3.4 percent Hispanic, 1.2 African-American and 2 percent Asian and Indian.

Now whether or not this level of minority employment by the city is ?far below? what, by implication, it should be is open to some debate, but leave that aside. What?s interesting to me in this article is the official explanation for this deficiency (if that?s what it is), a very revealing comment about how affirmative action is widely understood:

om Meyer, human resources director, points out that city jobs are not like those in private industry where a business can decide to hire a certain number of minorities without any restrictions.

Most city workers must take Civil Service tests to qualify for their positions and then are selected from the pool of applicants who pass the tests.

Human Rights Director Lionel Foster, the only black city employee, said the city adopted an affirmative action policy years ago but has never pushed it.

He acknowledged that Civil Service testing makes a difference. ?You can?t just go out and recruit people for jobs and promise them anything,? said Foster.

Oh, so that?s the secret of private industry?s success in the ?diversity? sweepstakes! It can discriminate to its heart?s content ?without any restrictions? like those pesky exams.

Full post as published by Discriminations on February 03, 2008 (boomark / email).