OK. Perhaps it's a bit unfair to
throw Connerly under this particular bus. But then again, Connerly has
enthusiastically positioned himself as one of the leading opponents of
affirmative action. He's been largely responsible for measures that have
effectively ended affirmative action in California, Texas,
Washington state and Michigan. And affirmative
action is exactly why Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith will be facing each other on
their sport's biggest stage Sunday. So perhaps it's not that unfair after all.
While it may be easy for some to
dismiss now--given the recent success of Dungy and Smith--just a few years ago
there was such a dearth of black coaches in the NFL that a group led by the late Johnnie Cochran and attorney Cyrus
Mehri released a report scrutinizing the NFL's hiring practice of black head
coaches and admonished them to change.
"The solution was to use a diverse
candidate slate," Mehri writes in an upcoming column in the April
issue of DiversityInc
magazine. "After an in-depth study and review, they adopted the Rooney Rule that
requires that they now interview at least one minority for each head-coach
position. In a matter of a couple of years, we went from two black head coaches
to seven head coaches in 2006. It truly changed the mindset and the culture of
the NFL. Now they use a diverse-candidate-slate concept for every position,
including the commissioner and the 32 clubs." For more of Mehri's comments, subscribe
to the magazine.
The connection hasn't been lost on
some. Harrison Chastang muses in an op-ed piece on Beyond Chron that it's a good thing
Connerly has nothing to do with running the NFL.
"With Ward Connerly talking about
expanding his anti-Affirmative Action crusade to up to 10 more states, the
success of Dungy, Smith and other African Americans hired after the NFL made a
proactive move to diversity its head coaching ranks should put to rest claims
that Affirmative Action benefits the unqualified and hurts the concept of
meritocitiy," Chastang says.
While some continue to see the
race of the two respective coaches as a non-story, others view it as the
inevitable end result of blacks having improved access to head coaching
positions. ESPN columnist Michael Smith writes,
"In the African-American community, the excitement of having Dungy and Chicago's
Lovie Smith -- two of the league's six coaches who happen to be members of said
community -- make history by becoming the first such coaches to reach pro
football's biggest game (played during Black History Month, no less) is similar
to when Halle Berry and Denzel Washington and Jamie Foxx won Oscars for leading
roles," writes Smith. "The difference is that awards and elections are
subjective. Having two coaches whose skin happens to be darker than most of
their peers lead teams to the Super Bowl simply is the inevitable result of
equal opportunity."
Regardless of the game's outcome,
the victory has already been noted in the ledger.
So who is Ward Connerly rooting
for? He's not available today, but as soon as he contacts us, we'll update this
story and let you know his rooting interest.
For more on the business case for
affirmative action, see the upcoming issue of DiversityInc magazine. Subscribe
here.
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When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America
Author, Ira Katznelson, demonstrates that all the key programs passed during the New Deal and Fair Deal era of the 1930s and 1940s were created in a deeply discriminatory manner. This was no accident.
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