Equal, quality education for all needed

STEVE SMITH

My father was a man of very few words. He did not often initiate

conversations with me, and I could not tell you today whether he

voted Democratic, Republican, or whether he was a closet communist.

I inherited my big mouth from my mother, who never had an opinion

she did not wish to share.

Poles apart as they were, one of their common beliefs was evident:

They had a less than zero tolerance for discrimination of any type.

That behavior, that kind of talk was strictly forbidden.

My father was the plant manager for a large company that

manufactured mirrors. He was very good at what he did, despite his

sixth-grade education. One of the things he learned early on was that

female manual dexterity was far better than that of men. Looking at

one of the assembly lines in “his” factory, one would see women at

the end, sans gloves, picking up 12” squares of glass with sharp

edges and tucking them neatly into packages without missing a beat.

No one looked at the end of the assembly line and was outraged at

the absence of men.

I could offer countless examples of similar employment situations

in both the public and private sectors in which the staff does not

reflect the ethnic make-up of our society or even our local

community.

That may or may not be a good thing, or it may not be a thing at

all, depending on the circumstances. Private enterprises have more

control over their hiring practices. What I am concerned about is the

knee-jerk reaction to have every aspect of our public employment

numbers become a direct reflection of a community’s ethnic makeup.

Two potential discrimination issues have popped up recently, one

public, one private. Through a letter in the Daily Pilot yesterday,

if the facts are taken at face value, we were told that the ethnic

makeup of the faculty at Orange Coast College falls far short of

matching the ethnic make-up of our population.

The other development was a report by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance

Against Defamation that stated that gay, lesbian or bisexual

characters on scripted network shows fell to its lowest count since

they began keeping track in 1996.

We have 10% Asians? Well, then, 10% of our teachers and

administrators must be Asian, too.

Got 5% Hmong here in Newport-Mesa? Don’t forget to ramp up those

employment figures to match that count.

And whatever figure there is for the gay, lesbian and bisexual

community, we must make sure that the exact number, no more, no less,

is shown on TV.

Or is more OK? I wonder whether those who advocate these mirror

images would be pointing all this out if their group had

proportionally higher numbers than the society at large. Something

tells me that such a group would have a hard time calling a press

conference to advocate the hiring of more heterosexual middle-aged

white men for, for example, OCC faculty positions.

This is the type of mess in which we find ourselves when we play

only by the numbers.

If there are not enough black, Asian or Latino public employees

anywhere, I want to believe that it is not a conscious decision to

exclude these groups but rather that it was a matter of hiring the

best, most-qualified people for the positions and that, sadly, there

were not enough minority candidates.

If, as I believe, there were not enough people of the right

ethnicity to fill what would be a quota, it is largely because they

did not have a chance at the same quality of education many years

ago.

The case in point here are the results of the recent API scores

for the Newport-Mesa School District. On the Westside of Costa Mesa,

some of the scores were so low, one would think we are living in a

third world country, not one of the richest areas in America.

Yet, I have not read or heard one syllable of outrage or despair

from anyone on the school board. No one stood up and said “Enough!”

and offered to come up with a plan to move these kids toward the

higher test scores of the rest of the community.

I don’t like that there aren’t more Asians or Latino or Nepalese

on the OCC faculty, not because of the numbers and their relationship

to the community, but because it tells me that too many kids are not

getting the right start to their education, the type that will make

them qualified candidates for college faculty positions.

The corrective action we need to take starts in an equal, quality

education for all from elementary school through high school, not in

hiring people simply because they are a percentage point.

My father would have hired a man for an assembly line position if

that guy could handle the products the way the women did, not because

he was seeking perfect harmony in his employment numbers.

Actually, he did hire a guy to work the line one time. But I was

so bad at it, I spent most of my time sweeping up broken glass from

the factory floor.

* STEVE SMITH is a Costa Mesa resident and a freelance writer.

Readers may leave a message for him on the Daily Pilot hotline at

(949) 642-6086.