this entire crusade against diversity in hiring and admissions is based on the supposition that all white men are necessarily more qualified than any nonwhite person or woman who might be considered for the job. like, this lawsuit more or less states that outright.
for these people the mere presence of any nonwhite person, and especially any black person, in a desired and prestigious position is on its face evidence of anti-white discrimination and unfair preferences.
it’s why you have people still blaming affirmative action for why their kids couldn’t get into harvard et al. it’s not legacies or the fact that these places are hyper-selective. it’s that there is *a* black person who took *your* spot.
Moreover, if you’ve ever actually participated in hiring anybody, you know the idea that you can arrange the applicants in a line in order of how objectively qualified they are with one at the top is silly anyway. Most hiring processes involving choosing among multiple perfectly qualified people.
exactly. the idea that there is a single and reliable way to judge “merit,” that this can be purely quantitative and that job performance is a straightforward function of “merit” should be ridiculous to anyone who has held a job
but they know this too. their belief is that white men ought to be entitled to the most valuable and prestigious positions irrespective of whether they can actually perform in them.
you joke but the literal minute my hire was announced there were people at other publications screaming on the internet that i was an unqualified diversity hire
When I got my first faculty position at an R1 institution my husband’s boss, who knew NOTHING about my qualifications, sniffed “It helps to be a woman”. To my face, a sign he thought this sentiment wasn’t even something he needed to hide.
And they just cannot be persuaded, no matter what.
[jbouie posts five dozen deep dives into the American revolution and the Civil War] all this guy does is race-bait!
I’ve never encountered a diversity hire but I’ve seen plenty of homogeneity hires. I had a boss who just wanted to hire young white guys who reminded him of himself (down to “played high school football”) and told me a woman with the same education & experience as the guy he liked was “pretty green”
You, personally, are about 40% of the reason my family still has a Times subscription. Literally, without your presence, I don’t think we would continue to subscribe.
Flabbergasted, even though I’ve observed multiple settings where the small population of Black talent are much, much more impressive than their white colleagues.
The irony is you are qualified and many of your colleagues are not. I’m sorry, but it’s true. They never would have been considered but for their race and race related backgrounds. I know you may disagree or feel it inappropriate to diss your colleagues that way, but the work speaks for itself.
I remember this. It was right after the times hired Sarah Jeong and the online right mounted a full on harassment campaign against her in response. Ugly stuff.
