The Obama administration released today its report on “Advancing Diversity in Law Enforcement.” As you would expect, there is a lot in it on how important and desirable it is to have a politically correct racial and ethnic mix in police departments and how you should try your best to attain that mix, and lots and lots about how you must never ever do anything that is “disparate treatment” for, or has a “disparate impact” on, a group that is “underrepresented.”
But there is not one word in the report that reminds those in charge of the recruitment, hiring, and retention of law-enforcement officials that it is not just “underrepresented” groups that are protected from racial and ethnic discrimination, but all groups — even, say, Irish Americans who happen to be white. Indeed, footnote 119 leaves the door open to such politically correct discrimination.
So the end result is that the federal government is encouraging recruitment, hiring, and retention with an eye on skin color and national origin. This is a rather odd thing, one might think, for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and the administration’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — the two agencies releasing the report, which have the duty of protecting all Americans from job discrimination — to do. Odd, but somehow not surprising.