George Rebane
AP reports (here) that Jesse Jackson, one of the leading plantation keepers in the nation, has found a new windmill to joust from his public panderer podium. He has discovered that high tech companies don’t have enough blacks and Hispanics developing all that “inclusive technology” (it’s tough to make this up). He can’t make the case that the industry discriminates against minorities, because anyone who has worked at a high tech company knows that they are filled with people from all over the world, predominantly from Asia and eastern Europe. If there’s any discrimination going on, it’s against those who drew the short straws in education and/or brains.
But that’s not what Team Jackson is arguing. He and his traditional cohort of extortionists (read Doreen Borelli) point out that high tech company workers aren't sufficiently divers, that they don’t accurately reflect the “demographics of the people who consume their products”. Well no s#%t Red Ryder. Given the educational profile of such demographics, if we used the government gun to impose the quota system, then those companies wouldn’t be developing and marketing the products that the consumers have come to enjoy.
Private sector high tech is one of the last meritocracies left in our society. If you want to get a job there, you have demonstrate what you know and can do, and not threaten suit because the company is not interpreting Section 8 of the Civil Rights Act according to your liking.
Were Jackson in the business of helping blacks, he would be militating to get good teachers into schools that teach his favorite minority kids who have been getting screwed in their classrooms since Great Society days. He could be advocating for charter schools the waiting lists of which are filled with black and Hispanic families wanting their children to have a go at a quality education not dominated by teachers unions who do all they can to keep the double dummies employed by school districts. But Jackson and his ilk know their constituencies, and working to reduce those numbers is not good for their wallets. In the end, it all makes sense.


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