New York’s Asian Knicks
The New York Times has this fascinting article about New York City’s Human Rights Commission — it’s going to start levying fines against the city’s ad agencies unless they hire more black managers. In response, a number of the agencies, “have promised to set numerical goals for increasing black representation on their creative and managerial staffs.” In other words, the agencies are being pressed to violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by making race a very important consideration in employment.
Let’s see . . . law firms . . . ad agencies . . . . What’s next? How about requiring New York’s professional sports teams to “reflect the increasing diversity of the American consumer.”
By the Human Rights Commission’s reasoning, if only 20% of the people in New York city are black, then just 1 out of 5 players on the New York Knicks should be black. If 10% of the people of New York city are Asian, then for every two black Knicks, there should be one Asian.
Just think of all the Asian kids in New York who long for a career in professional basketball. There are absolutely no role models to help inspire them. All they see are black players, and the occassional white player, but no Asians — not one. (And if some sports writer should claim that Asians just can’t compete against Africans, he must be a racist.) The Human Rights Commission should do something about this (the Knicks failure to find a single Asian player, not the sports writer’s racist rant).
After that, the commission can look into diversifying the diamond district, where 5% of the population controls 95% of the action. And the commission can make people feel good about New York by requiring taxi drivers to reflect the diversity of the people they drive around town. New York needs more cab drivers wearing yarmulkes and fewer drivers wearing turbans! And the textile industry is dominated by Asian workers, but how many clothing designers are Asian? The commission should do something about that.
Why stop with jobs? How about housing? You don’t find too many Haitians or Dominicans living in Chinatown, and you don’t find too many Chinese living in Washington Heights. That’s a clear sign of racist housing policies, right? So how about requiring the city’s neighborhoods to be racially balanced? How about requiring the residents of Little Italy to refect the demographics of the city? We could rename Chinatown; we could call it Diversity Town (as soon as we reduce the number of Chinese living there to their fair share of the place — they get 10% of everywhere in town).