Race Based Hiring and Firing Decisions

I am not one of the subset of conservatives who denies that there are still race problems in the US.  I disagree with affirmative action in most cases because the small plus factors which are argued for often become much larger in practice, and because I think such programs can actually cause or deepen racial resentment and suspicion.  Even so, such effects tend to be subtle and therefore difficult to prove.  That is not the case in the recent goings-on at the District Attorney's office in New Orleans: 

Eight days after taking office in 2003, Jordan fired 56 Connick holdovers — all were non-lawyers, such as investigators, clerks and administrative employees, and all but three were white. Over the next six months, Jordan hired 69 people, 64 of them black. Among the non-lawyers, the number of blacks nearly tripled, while the number of whites in the office declined by about two-thirds. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, in a preliminary determination, found evidence of racial bias.

Veterans with years of experience in law enforcement were replaced by younger blacks, some of whom had never done police work.

One white man fired by Jordan testified that he was one of the few fingerprint and ballistics experts in the district attorney's office. The résumé of the man who replaced him showed he had little experience other than being a lifeguard and doing some office work at a law firm.

Arthur Perrot, a fired white investigator, had a perfect 24-of-24 score when interviewed by Jordan's transition team, but was fired, while a black investigator who scored 16 out of 24 was retained.

One of the interesting things about this case is that it represents the ascendence of the diversity justification for even extreme examples of racial decision-making:

Jordan has said that he had the right to choose his staff and that the firings were done for reasons of racial balance.

"This is not discrimination; this is a political effort to create diversity," his lawyer, Philip Schuler, told the jury of eight whites and two blacks. Schuler noted that in New Orleans the workforce is overwhelmingly black — nearly 70 percent — and that Jordan merely wanted "a work force more reflective of the community."

In this formulation, political efforts to create diversity are not even couched as justified discrimination--they are instead transformed into allegedly non-discriminatory diversity efforts.  The disturbing thing about this case is that it isn't ridiculously illogical in view of the current social understanding on diversity projects.  If when hiring you can justify a small plus based on race, which in practice can be permitted to be a large plus so long as you are protecting diversity you are in fact costing one person a job in favor of another based on race.  Firing the low-level white and Hispanic people (he kept the white lawyers) to make room for black people is just another form of it.  If that step is not allowable, we are going to have to make clear why it is not allowable in the face of our current justifications. 

Comments

[Gary Farber]

"Casting is done (in large part) based on looks."

Yes, exactly. (Along with the "acting" part, of course.)

Appearance, not "race." People commonly mentally place other people in various "racial" categories all the time, and even such guesses frequently have no relationship even to their ostensible "racial" categories. There's simply no way to get it right, above and beyond the question of why anyone should try. "Race" is irrelevant; ancestry is irrelevant; all that matters in acting is whether the actor appears convincing.

"Nonetheless, a director casting Othello is still, in most cases, going to for good reason cast a black actor, regardless of whether he conceptualizes the decision as 'casting a black actor' or as 'casting an actor which the audience will percieve as black.'"

I believe our mental constructs are of crucial importance in regard to fighting racism, since they're pretty much all that exists as relevant fact. Getting over deciding to categorize people as being members of one "race" and not another is inextricable from that, in my view; it's simply a false and destructive category error.

Directors should not be thinking of casting a "white" or "black" actor, because they simply can't think that way without thinking racistly, by definition; they should think of "is this actor portraying the role convincingly"? Because that's all they can actually measure; it's that simple. (I'll avoid digressing into historical analysis of how and why a drop of "black" blood, metaphorically and racistly speaking, turns people "black," but the reverse isn't true of people becoming "white," but it's directly relevant.)

That "appearance" isn't "race" is something that simply eventually either has to be knocked into everyone's skulls, or find some other way in, and that's where I started, and that's where I finish.

[LizardBreath]

While I agree with you that the world would be a better place if 'race' disappeared from everyone's mind as a useful way to categorize people, suggesting that it's either desirable or possible for a director not to consider the race of actors in casting a play about race for an audience that will interpret the play in terms of race seems unworkable to me -- it's like that story from the Arabian Nights(maybe?) about the flying carpet that would work as long as the user didn't think of a white camel. Not much use in practice.

But we agree on the basic goals, and clearly we aren't going to convince each other on this particular point.

[Anarch]

Directors should not be thinking of casting a "white" or "black" actor, because they simply can't think that way without thinking racistly, by definition; they should think of "is this actor portraying the role convincingly"?

What if the role has race as a central conceit?

[Gary Farber]

"What if the role has race as a central conceit?"

With great respect to both Anarch and LizardBreath, if what Anarch quoted of what I said doesn't answer that question, I have nothing better to add, and since I'm clearly not succeeding in making my point, I now shut up on this.

[rilkefan]

By the way, the "race is imaginary" position is probably more arguable than people may think.