According to the Wall Street Journal, “Starbucks Corp. is teaming up with more than a dozen companies in a commitment to increase hiring of young, minority workers over the next three years.” It’s unclear from the article exactly how race and ethnicity are to be used in the hiring process. The definition of “minority” is also not spelled out, though as is often the case some minorities seem to be more equal than others (blacks and Latinos are mentioned, but no one else).
Nor is it clear what the justification is for this nonsense. Starbucks Chief Executive Howard Schultz (of “Race Together” fame) says, “It’s very personal for me, having grown up in public housing and understanding what it was like to be that poor kid,” but Mr. Schultz does not appear to be black or Latino, and it may come as news to him, too, that there are many blacks and Latinos who have not grown up in public housing and are not poor.
But logic and fairness aside, employment discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity is illegal, with only a few narrow exceptions that do not apply here. No doubt the Obama administration’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission will quickly explain this to Starbucks and the other companies involved.
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Here’s some better news: There may be some progress on the No Child Left Behind law. Regarding the just-passed House version of this reauthorization bill, the Wall Street Journal reports:
Though they are divided on the Senate measure, teachers’ unions and civil rights groups oppose the House bill, arguing that it doesn’t invest in high-poverty districts and hold schools accountable for individual subgroups of students, such as minorities and those with disabilities. They’ve found an ally in the business community, which wants the federal government to be able to force states to take action if one of these subgroups is falling behind, said Cheryl Oldham, vice president of education policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
As I’ve discussed before, I’m all for taking race-based targeting out of this legislation.
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Sorry to have to end on an off-note, but the administrative complaint filed with the Obama administration’s Department of Education, and alleging that Harvard’s racial preferences in undergraduate admissions violate the law by discriminating against Asian Americans, has been dismissed.
I know that nobody likes an I-told-you-so, but here is the conclusion of what I wrote when the complaint was filed: “I suspect that the Obama administration will do exactly nothing with today’s administrative complaint, because a) it doesn’t want to since it likes politically correct discrimination and b) it can say that this matter is already before a federal court.” And, alas, that’s just what happened.
