A Horror Story from the Affirmative Action Front

Our friends in the mainstream media love a human interest story. They love to put up a helpless victim on the nightly news and show how more government intervention and spending is needed. People have needs. Needs must be met.

Here’s a story that won’t make the nightly news, or a multi-part story in The New York Times. It’s a story about ordinary, routine corruption at a community college, a story about government bureaucrats in the diversity office blatantly violating the rules to get their buddy a job. You can read all about it here.

It tells you “What’s the Matter With Kansas,” and why so many New Deal Democrats are now Republicans.

Robert Allgeyer’s parents were children of the Depression, high school dropouts. But he went to the local state college.

In 1998 after selling his business he was teaching part-time at a community college just after Prop 209, the California Civil Rights Initiative, had passed. The one and only full-time instructor in his department was retiring and so he applied for his job.

But the powers-that-be had something else in mind.

[A] faculty member in another department had caused a stir. He expressed his belief that I had been originally hired, and retained, by the "white old-boy network."

...

Let me tell you something about that outspoken faculty member: he was black. But not just any African-American! He was the son of a Ph. D. from the University of Michigan. His father was on the faculty of a Midwestern private college. Junior had gone to a prep school, then to dad's private college for his undergraduate work (in the same department where dad taught), then to dad's graduate school, UMich. Can you say "legacy"?

So Allgeyer’s application was essentially blackballed. But guess who eventually got hired?

The recommended candidate was a white male, who had gone to the same private university as two members of the committee. I'm sure he was a fine man. But with or without Proposition 209, there had been several violations of state regulations or internal rules, in the review of applications. Each of them involved an "affirmative action" rule that had been written for the advancement of women and minorities. No matter; rules are rules. The violation of those rules had the direct effect of subjecting my own application to unlawful non-review.

Robert Allgeyer recommends to the people of Michigan that they pass the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative this November. Whatever they may think that affirmative action and preferences does for them, the chances are that it will allow government hiring managers to hire someone from their “old-boy network,” and it will screw ordinary people without connections.