Chronicle of Higher Education reports:
Buried deep in the transcript of Congressional hearings for a 1944 fair-employment bill is a telling exchange between a Texas congressman who opposed the bill and a lawyer who supported it. In tones of theatrical disbelief, the congressman demanded, "In other words, you call it discrimination to designate the color of the people you want to work for you?"The new eugenics movement.
With equal incredulity, the lawyer responded, "Well, wouldn't you?"
Indeed the congressman would not. Some jobs, he opined, demanded talents only a white man could provide. Why waste time interviewing applicants you have no intention of hiring? When he had made that same argument a few weeks earlier, another lawyer had demanded to know how a man's color alone could possibly predict his potential performance on the job.
Like today's diversity experts, the congressman held fast to his belief that for some jobs, race matters.
Proponents of "diversity hiring" insist that faculty members of color have a different perspective on issues of race and ethnicity that will increase students' understanding of the multiracial, multicultural world they will inhabit in the 21st century. The mere presence of "diverse" faculty members will prepare students for workplace realities, proponents argue. Moreover, minority faculty members are needed to serve as mentors to a growing number of students of color. Whatever costs are incurred by such policies are outweighed by the obvious pedagogical benefits they secure.
