LETTER: Time to end diversity programs

[Senator Jim] Webb is absolutely correct, and I admire him for having the courage to address this issue, since doing so automatically makes him a target of many special interest groups. “Diversity” programs (the name changed because, after more than 40 years, it became ludicrous to continue calling them “Affirmative Action” programs) are among the greatest institutional injustices in our society today.

I knew a black man who told me he was “lucky” to have been chosen over 65 other applicants for an accounting job at a small-town university (there are few large employers in the area, and almost none where an entry-level accountant could have a chance at a decent career path, hence the large number of applications). This man was a recent immigrant from the West Indies, which is where he obtained his accounting degree. He had almost no work experience; obviously his race was the overriding factor in his hiring.

Given the “diversity” policy in place at the university (which I read online), the person making the hiring decision had virtually no discretion: if there was a black or Hispanic applicant who met the minimum qualifications for a job opening, that person had to be hired. Doubtless, many of the 64 rejected applicants had more experience, and many had accounting degrees from expensive American universities, and were struggling to make payments on huge college loan debts.

Although he was a good man, the West Indies immigrant’s “luck” was hard for me to take, because I was one the rejected applicants. I kept track of job openings at that university, and applied for every one for which I was qualified OVER A 10-YEAR PERIOD, but was never hired.

It didn’t matter that I had a B.S. in Accounting from a Pennsylvania college, that I had graduated in the top third of my class, or that my employment record, work experience, job skills, community involvement, and references were all excellent. I am a white male, and, at many of the best employers, white males need not apply (unless they have highly specialized skills that are specific to the job opening, and no minority applicants have those skills). The only way I could escape my dead-end accounting job was to move to a more populated area and start my own business.

Now suppose one of the applicants for that university accounting job was a refugee from the killing fields of Cambodia, and had put himself through an American college while working as a dishwasher in a restaurant. That person, being Asian, would also have been rejected in favor of a black immigrant from the West Indies, the decision based solely on race.

Don’t people of East Asian, Indian Asian, or Arab descent (both immigrants and those born in the U.S.) add to the diversity of a college or workplace? Of course they do, yet because they aren’t members of a “preferred” minority they are discriminated against, rather than aided, by “diversity” programs. In college admissions, white and Asian students from poor and working-class families are discriminated against, even if their grades and SAT scores are superior to the minority students who are given preference over them (and even if those minority students are from upper-class families).

Is this any American’s idea of equal opportunity? 47 years ago, Martin Luther King said: “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.” In “diversity” programs, race trumps character every time. Sen. Webb wrote: “The time has come to cease the false arguments and allow every American the benefit of a fair chance at the future.” It is long past due.