White Man's Burden
Arnold O'Donnell is a very unusual man. He is co-owner, with his brother John, of a small construction company that specializes in repairing streets and sidewalks. His customers are almost always local governments. He works in the District of Columbia – and he is white.
He points out that the work his company does is the very kind that is usually set aside for minorities. He says that over the years he has been prevented from bidding on "several hundred projects" because he is white. Last November, for example, all the road-building work for the expansion of Washington National Airport was restricted to "disadvantaged" businesses. Mr. O'Donnell points out that if anyone is disadvantaged in bidding for Washington, DC contracts, it is a white owner of a small construction company.
The U.S. Department of Transportation, which decides who is "disadvantaged," has designated the following protected classes: blacks, Asians, Hispanics, American Indians, and people from Burma, Singapore, Laos, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Sri Lanka or Bhutan. [Karen Riley, Bearing the white man's burden?, Wash Times, 4/5/95, p. A1.] We have never heard of racial discrimination against Bhutanese, but it is nice to know that the Department of Transportation is looking out for them.
Unemployer of Last Resort
Blacks are more than three times as likely as whites to be dismissed from federal employment. Hispanics and Asians are dismissed at essentially the same rate as whites. This news has been widely reported and has prompted the expected calls for investigation into government "racism." It has been rarely pointed out that the divergence in firing rates is strictly in the "misconduct" category, which includes embezzlement, insubordination, and violence. When federal workers are fired merely for poor job performance – apparently this sometimes happens – blacks are no more likely to be dismissed than whites. [Karen de Witt, Blacks Prone to dismissal by the U.S., NYT, 4/20/95.]