Whitey Need Not Apply

Yes, this is rhetorical but why is it when minorities express interest in hiring people whose skin is a certain shade (Or, more accurately, not hiring people because of the shade of their skin) it's not considered racist?

If Chesterfield County [In Virginia] is going to offer a truly global education to its 58,000 or so students, the School Board and administration officials heard yesterday, it needs to do something about the wide gap in minority representation between students and teachers.

While 44 percent of the student body is nonwhite, only 13 percent of the teaching corps is, said Traci E. Teasley, the system's director of research and planning, during the board's quarterly work session. The immediate goal is 15 percent, with plans to top 20 percent in the long term.

"What gets monitored, gets done," Superintendent Marcus J. Newsome told the board, explaining the impetus behind including minority hiring among the five "Key Success Measures" for the school year.

The four other areas involve standardized test scores and student attendance.

The issue has been a priority for Matoaca representative U. Omarh Rajah, a one-time county teacher who became the board's first elected minority member when he unseated incumbent Thomas J. Doland in 2007.

So much of this is political correctness more than anything. And bonehead thinking.

If the school system really wanted to offer a 'global education', simply hiring minorities won't do it. To start with, minorities won't be able to offer the global perspective. Not if the teacher has live their entire life here in the US.

What happens when the Chesterfield school system can't find enough qualified candidates to hire? Do they buckle down and hire the white people? Or relax their standards to allow more 'preferred' teachers in to work? For the alter of Political Correctness, no wall is too high to make sure the right quotas will be filled. Of course standards will be relaxed.

What's more important? Making sure there are enough of the right kind of teachers or the quality of your children's education?

Hire the best teacher for the job. Regardless of skin color. At least that's how I understood Martin Luther King.