Is that news to you? I thought it was common knowledge, especially in the Executive branch (Department of Justice, Department of Health and Human Services, etc). I would guess that blacks are overrepresented in all government jobs. I experienced it firsthand after a nightmarish visit to the DMV today. If you want to know what hell will be like, visit your local DMV. 
Well, I stumbled across (clumsy) that bit of information in my research of the legislative history and background of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Could “affirmative action” be the reason that blacks are overrepresented in government jobs (rhetorical)?
Columnist Paul Craig Roberts wants to know, too. He wrote a piece titled, “Whatever Happened to Civil Rights?” As you read the article, you can almost feel his contempt for skin color entitlements (I don’t like them either, Paul). Roberts writes:
The 1964 Civil Rights Act has been illegally enforced for 37 years. The result is a massive system of race and gender discrimination against white males in order to achieve proportional representation of racial minorities and women.Now comes an astonishing report from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management: “Annual Report to Congress, Federal Equal Opportunity Recruitment Program, Fiscal Year 2000,” released in April 2002.
This report to Congress makes brutally clear that despite the “equal opportunity” name of the program, the purpose of the federal program is to make certain there is no equal opportunity for whites in federal employment.
The report uses tables and bar charts to make unmistakably clear that federal discrimination against whites goes far beyond merely achieving proportional representation for blacks. In all 22 independent federal agencies and in 16 of 17 federal executive departments, blacks are massively over represented.
In the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (sic) blacks comprise 46.4 percent of the employees. The “affirmative action” or racial quota target for proportional representation (percent in Relevant Civilian Labor Force) for the EEOC is 6.4 percent black employees. Blacks are thus over represented in EEOC employment by 625 percent!
The latest release of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) report he cites is here (PDF). The report focuses on “underrepresentation” even in the face of the higher percentages of certain minority employees. That, and not underrepresentation, is the issue. Why are these numbers so high?
OPM is totally nonchalant about the overrepresentation of blacks and other minorities. “Minorities are now better represented in the FW [federal workforce] than in the Civilian Labor Force (CLF),” they deadpan, “with one exception — Hispanics. So will they get rid of race quotas for blacks in the government now? Not likely.
But this is how PC society works. Hispanics are underrepresented, so now the bureaucrats will shift gears and start hiring Hispanics in disproportionate numbers, discriminating against more “non-minorities” in the process. Down the rabbit hole, Alice!
As Roberts notes, there are no statistics for white males (Sorry, guys!). Are they being discriminated against in federal employment by design or are they not seeking government jobs at the rate other groups do? Such information would be useful, but they’re obviously not interested in the answers. Sorry, guys.
The report states that “non-minority” women (read: white – why don’t they just say it?) represented 33.2 percent of the civilian labor force in 2003 but 27.2 percent of the federal workforce. And? So? Are these government bean counters trying to achieve the magic number of skin colors and genders (excluding white males) so as to create perfect harmony? Good luck with all that. Not happening on this planet.
Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media adds his commentary about the report:
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, for example, has employed 614% more blacks than their proportion in the civilian workforce, and the U.S. Department of Education employed 473% more blacks.
The protected minority groups include blacks, Hispanics, Asians/Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, and women. The OPM Report for 2003 shows that, of the new federal jobs created, only 22.9% were filled by white males and other “non-minorities.” Tim Fay comments, “It wasn’t a very good year for white guys to apply for a federal job.”
While there is obviously no such thing as “overrepresentation” for the protected or preferred minorities, there is such a thing as “underrepresentation.” And that’s what gets the press attention. Federal Times newspaper ran a story under the headline, “New Push for Diversity: OPM Moves To Address ‘Underrepresentation’ in Senior Ranks.” The story noted that, “Overall, percentages of blacks, Asians and American Indians in virtually all federal pay grades meet or exceed those of the national work force overall. But in the Senior Executive Service and equivalent senior pay grades, all minority groups are underrepresented as compared with their percentage in the national work force overall.”
Now some people get upset with me for writing about race preferences all the time, but the quest for “equal opportunity” has gone absurdly wrong. Skin color quotas disguised as “affirmative action” are unacceptable, unfair and un-American. In my own tiny way, I’ll continue to call it out.
There is hope! Judges are striking down skin color preferences. In San Francisco, a 20-year-old sex and skin color preference program was dismantled because it violated Proposition 209, an initiative spearheaded by Ward Connerly, which outlaws race and sex preferences in state hiring and admissions.
The people are tired of this mess, too. Connerly organized the Proposition 209 campaign in sunny liberal California, and 54.6 percent of the voters chose to end skin color preferences.
Perhaps we’ll continue to see one victory after another after another!.
Speaking of “Discriminations,” check out all of John Rosenberg’s blog. John is working on his dissertation on discrimination at Stanford. His blog is good reading and a good resource.
Rest easy, everybody. I certainly will!
