I dated a woman in the admissions office of a state university. She told me when she wanted to recruit at a "majority minority" school, she had to justify why she wanted to recruit at the school. Many times, she was asked to provide statistics about the number of applications received from the "majority minority" schools and the rate of acceptance to rejections. When her co-workers wanted to recruit at a "white school," such information was not required before the recruiting visit was allowed.
She told me of her hard fighting for minority candidates in the admissions process. Many times white students with questionable credentials were admitted while minority candidates of equal questionable credentials were put on hold or rejected. She told me that a few times, she brought up the disparity in the judging process.
At some companies where I worked, I was told by people in human resource the added justifications they had to go through to add HBCUs to the college recruiting tour.
At one company where I worked, I helped interview a candidate for a technical position. I, along with another Black engineer, stated that a Black candidate was the best fit for the open position. A white co-worker rated the person very low and suggested another candidate, white, who had less experience in the area that was needed. The company hired the less qualified candidate, despite the affirmative action program in place.
I support affirmative action. However, I don't support the justification of affirmative action by using proportional representation.
When I graduated from college, I was one of a total of about 10 who graduated with a computer science degree that year. Later, in the workforce, I would often be the only Black person, or one of less than a handful, on a software project. If "12% of Blacks" who graduate aren't getting computer science/information systems degrees, how can anyone expect 12% of software engineers to be Black? That doesn't make sense.
If you want more detail, look at this link.
Oh, one other thing: I don't place any belief in "Thomas Clarence" idea that affirmative action is an admission that Blacks are inferior. In my mind, anyone who thinks that way about affirmative action, probably thinks that way in general. As such, it is more a personal problem than my problem.
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