I am now totally against so-called “affirmative action”, based on how I’ve seen it implemented at my place of employment. To hire faculty, it is a requirement that at least one of three search committee members be female, which strikes me as blatantly sexist. Also, if I hire any staff who is white and male, I have to explain why he was more qualified than the other candidates, whereas no explanation is required if I hire a female or minority. Due to this atmosphere, some people try to say it would be good to hire so-and-so because they’re female or a minority, so it would look good for us. Thankfully, my boss and I have too much integrity to accept this kind of thinking, and we hire based solely on merit. So far, everyone I’ve hired is female and white or Indian, not by design, but it simply worked out that way. If next year all our hires are male, so be it.
What disgusts me about this policy is not an inordinate concern for the ability of white males to get a job, but the fact that it forces me to become acutely race-conscious when I have no such inclination. I am totally colorblind in my professional dealings with people, but this policy which is supposed to cure racism has actually created racism in someone who has none. Even if candidates do not declare their race, I am supposed to “guess” and enter that on the affirmative action form. This strikes me as profoundly immoral, to gather racial data without a person’s consent. If the person is hired, our payroll won’t run unless the “ethnicity” field is filled. I wonder what foreign students think of our country when they’re asked to fill an “optional” form asking for their race.
The origin of “affirmative action” is very different from the modern understanding of trying to actively recruit underrepresented minorities over equally (or even better) qualified applicants who are not minorities. President Johnson, in a 1965 executive order, ordered federal contractors to “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” Ironically, in implementing such safeguards, most employers have chosen to show much regard for the race, color, and gender of their employees. This flows from a results-oriented ethic where the only acceptable proof of non-discrimination is the actual presence and success of minority employees. An authentically non-racist ethic would not look at demographic results, but the mode of hiring, i.e., whether the hirer dismisses candidates or mistreats their employees on the basis of race. This is a more difficult thing to measure, since it is much harder to prove a person’s motives than one’s deeds. This is probably why the results-based “affirmative action” is favored, at the expense of perpetuating benign racism.
This kind of affirmative action presumes that any gross statistical inequities in hiring must be evidence of discrimination, which would require us to accept the demonstrably false supposition that people of all races and genders will be comfortable in all career paths in similar proportions. When we outgrow this fallacy, we can accept that mathematics departments are not overwhelmingly male because of sexism (in fact most mathematicians are rather liberal in their politics). Maybe then we will also accept that diversity of character and experience is a much truer measure of cultural vitality than diversity of physical features.