A Special Affirmative Action Policy for Conservatives?

At the same time the U.S. Justice Department was in court opposing the affirmative action policy at the University of Michigan, it was putting together a hiring program that gave conservatives preferential treatment.

A new report says those practices were illegal, and the Justice Department’s inspector general,says that is only the  first in what will be a series of investigations growing out of last year’s scandal over the firings of nine United States attorneys, The New York Times has reported.  Now there is evidence to back up critics' contention that the Justice Department had become overly politicized during the current administration.

As it turns out, Justice Department officials felt the need to correct a liberal bias in this department.  Diversity of thought is a wonderful and worthy objective. I sincerely applaud that goal.  Though we must note that was precisely the point leaders at more than 30 corporations made in their brief supporting the University of Michigan's affirmative action plans. 

''The nation's future depends upon leaders trained through wide exposure to the ideas and mores of a diverse student body,'' they said in a joint statement.

DOJ got into trouble - not for recruiting conservatives -  but rather because it appears to have made decisions solely on the basis of political ideology.  That's where they went wrong. 

Independent reports like these help restore faith that the system of justice, though imperfect, tries to be fair. In a democracy, it's hard to hide truth because so many detectives with flashlights are walking around in the dark corners. That's the good news.

Here's the scary part.   

 A couple of years ago, while writing a column called The Cultural Coach, I received an email from an attorney working in the Houston office of the US Attorney..During our communication, the attorney wrote, among other things, that affirmative action helped lazy African Americans and incompetent leaders get jobs they didn't deserve. I told the attorney that it was unsettling to have such racially charged emails come from a DOJ attorney - the very folk who were supposed to be out there protecting my community's civil rights.  I asked him to stop emailing me from his work computer, He continued to send me emails from the DOJ address, even after I asked him to stop. I viewed this as an act of intimidation.

I contacted the U.S. Justice Department in Washington to say so. They took my number but nobody there ever called me back. I contacted the Houston office, and a supervisor said officials had read the emails and talked to the employee. By the way, they wanted me to know it was not a violation of departmental rules to use DOJ computers for personal activities such as emailing journalists.  I wondered if  pro-choice emails had been sent to journalists from that computer, would DOJ been as understanding?

The moral of this diversity fable is simple: A diverse workforce enriches us all.  Workplaces need to have conservatives and value their views.  We need diversity of thought in the DOJ, even within the civil rights division. Somebody had a good idea but didn't know how to make it work, legally or ethically..(This is scary considering we are talking about the U.S. Department of Justice.)

True diversity means we embrace inclusiveness, not conformity. Liberals, as well as conservatives, often have difficulty with this. We all need a lot more practice. 

Comments

[Art Fuller]

This is America!!!

1. Congress and the president borrows against our tax debt and sends some of us $300 or $600 of our own mney and tells it is a gift from the government for us to spend bailing out failing businesses. They then give about 25% of that money directly to those companies which are going to take back their houses anyway.
2. They encourage us to buy new cars at $15,000 to $40,000 on credit to "save on gas".
3. They tell us we own the houses that we owe tens of thousands of dollars plus interest which doubles and triples the cost when actually all we own is the liabilities like the note, R. E. Taxes, Home Owners Insurance and maintenance. In other words, we have total responsibility for a property that really belong to the lender who then controls what we can do with it. We have to borrow with interest whatever equity we have in the property that we call our own.
4. Congresspeople are paid $167,000 per year plus at least two offices with staffs, travel and benefits after they voted themselves a raise this year for a "part time job".
5. Brainwash us with the farce that businesses are paying taxes when every penny that businesses get comes from the tax paying cuctomers. So they are really paid with bisiness tax deductions for collecting taxes from us in the cost of the products and services that we purchase on avrage salaries that amount to about 10% of what they earn and spend each year. When the congress increases the taxes on business, where will those businesses get the money to pay those taxes with?
6. The "Criminal Justice Syatem" is criminal for sure. An Adjunct Associate American gets 20 years in prison for robbing a convenience store and a wall street or business executive gets 6 months probation fro robbing clients of $XX billion. The attorny's fee are too prohibitive for the average American to affrod to sue for damages but their taxes pay for the legal fees of the company and their executives.
7. etc.
8. etc
9. etc
10.etc.