Hiring Doesn’t Favor Minorities, Report Says In Some Years, More Whites Than Minorities Were Hired Because Of State Affirmative-Action Policies

Affirmative-action policies guiding state-government hiring do not give minorities an unfair advantage, a new report concludes.

In fact, the report by the Commission on African American Affairs found that in some years, more whites than minorities were hired as a result of those policies.

“We asked whether African Americans and other minority groups gain an advantage over whites because of affirmative action, and whether it fosters reverse discrimination,” said James Kelly, commission director.

“Clearly, the data show that hasn’t been the case,” he said.

The commission was created by Washington Gov. Booth Gardner in 1989 to study how public policy affects African Americans. The commission assembled a task force of academics, business people and civil-rights activists to do the study last winter in response to efforts opposing affirmative action.

Opponents of affirmative action are circulating petitions for state Initiative 172, which would repeal affirmativeaction policies based on race, gender, religious belief and sexual orientation. They hope to place the measure on the ballot next year. A similar bill died in a House committee this year, but is expected to be brought before the Washington Legislature again next year.

Many critics of affirmative action say it unfairly hurts whites.

But the commission’s report said white women, white veterans and white disabled people also benefit from affirmative action. The study found that in 1994, white women and veterans were each hired in greater numbers than African Americans through affirmative-action policies, although minorities as a whole benefited more than whites.

In 1993, however, the opposite was true. More white women and veterans were hired through affirmative-action programs than minorities as a whole.

In both years, affirmative action affected less than 10 percent of the 6,000 people hired by the state, the study said.

The report looked at affirmativeaction policies guiding hiring by state government. Those policies require departments with more than 50 employees to come up with goals to ensure broad representation of various groups, but do not set quotas.

To implement these goals, the state allows people considered underrepresented to be hired when job openings are otherwise closed. It also requires that up to three minorities be included in a pool of people being interviewed for a job.

When departments are hiring, the state personnel department provides the names of the top seven candidates based on test scores. If the list includes fewer than three minorities, the state can interview the next one, two or three minorities with the highest scores.

In 1994, 207 of the 3,011 people hired by the state would not have been interviewed for their jobs without the affirmative-action program. Of those, 62 were minority women, 37 were white women and 35 were veterans.

In comparison, affirmative action helped 31 Hispanics, 26 African Americans and 20 Native Americans get jobs.