Hispanics make up about 13.3 percent of the population — and I’d wager that more than a few illegal aliens, who are not supposed to be here, are represented in that number — surpassing blacks (about 13 percent) as the largest minority group.
For the past 30 years or so, blacks have enjoyed preferred minority status, ostensibly to make up for past injustices like slavery and government-mandated racial segregation. Hispanics, who were never slaves in the U.S., are staking a claim on preferred minority status.
Hispanic groups are coming out in full force, demanding their piece of the skin color entitlement pie. See “Hispanic groups blast OPM.” They represent 7.4 percent of the federal workforce, while blacks make up 17.4 percent (“No fair!”). Download the comically titled Federal Equal Opportunity Program Annual Report to the Congress for fiscal year 2005 (PDF).
Proportionately speaking, hispanics are underrepresented in the federal government, while blacks are overrepresented. Ironically, blacks are grossly overrepresented (a whopping 44.3 percent) in the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the bloated and unnecessary agency charged with enforcing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
But proportionality is an unsustainable way to measure “equal opportunity”; it’s nothing more than a thinly disguised quota system that must discriminate against one race to make room for another. Let’s face it, resources are limited, and as long as the U.S. government sanctions skin color preferences, so-called minority groups will try to grab the goods.
I’ve blogged ad nauseam about skin color preferences. I don’t want to reinvent the microchip in this post, so I’ve linked to related posts below. But I’ll say this: Somewhere along the affirmative action line, reaching out to hire, promote, and admit underrepresented races based on the same criteria as the rest was replaced by hiring, promoting, and admitting underrepresented races based on lowered, less rigorous standards. Racial proportionality by any means necessary became the goal.
[Note: At what point did the idea of proportional representation come into play? If you support proportional racial representation, why do you believe it's a laudable and/or necessary goal? I'm deeply curious.]
The “past injustices” argument, once a noble proposition, has become a laughably oblique screed used to help disguise or downplay underachievement and justify government-mandated “reverse” racial discrimination and its attendant immoral transfer of wealth.
It is wrong to treat people differently because of their race, a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. That clause does not guarantee equal outcomes. No policy can or ever will guarantee equal outcomes. The idea that everybody must have the same stuff and that every profession must reflect the proportionate racial make-up of the country or else racism is involved is idiotic, illogical, and unworkable. But the notion is entrenched, and the ignorance is passed on from one generation to the next.
The government is already trending toward bestowing preferred minority status on hispanics, for whom affirmative action was not created. Blacks who support and rely on race preferences — particularly for skin color-based government contracts and college admissions — and reject fair and consistent standards of performance will live to regret it.
They’ll get a mouthful of their own bitter medicine, and I’m going to enjoy watching them swallow it, especially since they’re powerless to stop it and have no moral authority to claim that it’s “unfair.”
Reconstruction is over.
Related posts:
- The Immorality of Race Preferences
- Blacks Are Overrepresented In Federal Government
- Quotas
- “Good” Discrimination
