Sorry, you're too WHITE to work in our school district.

If this had happened to a black teacher, there would be no question that unfair racial discrimination had taken place.

A New Jersey teacher went through the interview process at a school district and was assured he had the job, the school only had to go through the formality of approving the hire through the school board. He had interviewed with the school principal and the superintendent and had proven to them that he was the best person for the job. Unfortunately, some rabble rousers at the school board meeting had other ideas.

Teacher lawsuit: Denied a job because he's white

Brian Shields, of Logan Township, applied for a teaching job at Field Street Elementary School in summer 2013. Shields interviewed in early August with the school principal Mary Kwiatkowski and Joseph Massare, superintendent of Penns Grove Carney’s Point Regional Schools. The superintendent allegedly offered Shields a job teaching second or third grade at the elementary school and discussed salary and benefits. Massare told Shields the school board would have to approve the hire, but assured Shields that the board always approved his recommendations, according to the suit.

The board met Aug. 12. During the meeting, “some individuals” accused the school board of not hiring enough minorities. Massare allegedly assured the board that several recent hires had been minorities, the suit states.

Despite the assurance, the board voted against hiring Shields and also rejected a second white job candidate. Massare called Shields after the meeting to tell him the board had refused to approve him because he was not a minority, the suit states.

Shields is seeking more than $150,000 in damages.

Philly.com

Apparently, a "community organizer" and some locals wanted more color in their schools and were upset that a local hadn't been hired. I guess appearance is more important to some people than having the best people available to teach their children.

Audience members said they were frustrated by the candidates recommended because both live outside of the Penns Grove-Carneys Point Regional School District.

Tension then escalated at the meeting when community activist Walter Hudson took the microphone to question board president Gregory Wright.

“I’m just going to get straight to the point — Mr. Wright, what is your position on minority hiring? Do you feel qualified minorities were overlooked?,” Hudson questioned Wright.

Wright responded that he has always been concerned about minority hiring in the district, but added that many things go into hiring a teacher.

Penns Grove-Carneys Point BOE meeting brings frustration from the public~ NJ.com

In the end, the board buckled to public pressure and rejected both hires.

What ever happened to the concept of hiring the BEST QUALIFIED candidate for a job, especially one as important as teaching our children? Now, political correctness rules to such an extent that the only thing that is important is the "cultural diversity" of the workplace and what's best for the kids be damned.

I hope the people of this school district get the quality of teachers they deserve

a reply to: FortAnthem

I agree that this is blatant racism!

However I am all for people to go join their local school and council boards and to have a direct say in their community and what transpires in their community!

If their community is racist then we are all the better for knowing that and we can plan our lives accordingly so as to endorse or not endorse such a community with our funds or seek out or conversely avoid such communities.

But before I start ranting about how unfair this is ... sometimes people got quotas to fill and in this case its clearly members on the school board who seem to have a majority voice currently on this issue!

Do the local conditions merit more minority demographic based teachers being hired in extreme preference to ANYONE else?

If they are having trouble sourcing such minority demographic based teachers then what does that tell us

Eh, that's just the way it is, don't get too bent out of shape over it.

a reply to: FortAnthem

I have Celtic roots. All my teachers bar three, all the way through school, had similar heritage in that regard. I would rather have had BETTER TEACHERS, of any colour, creed, or species even, than the sorry bunch of lackwits who mistakenly thought themselves intellectually capable of informing me of anything.

As it was though, one of my geography teachers was more fond of screwing one of the art teachers in the supply room next to the class room... loudly, than he was in teaching, or any aspects of geology as applied to continent formation, and that was the sort of class of gormless moron which taught most of the subjects. Many of the teachers at my old schools were multi taskers, the sort who would teach PE, and do maths on the side...

Frankly, I am appalled that the minimum requirement for teaching is not as follows:

1) And most important... Genius IQ. In order to be capable of imparting knowledge, one must possess an abundance of it, not just enough to qualify in a subject. No one should be forced to place their intellectual development in the hands of someone who has barely developed their own. Trust me. I had to, and it STINKS.

2) Decade minimum of subject experience in the field. There should be no teachers who have not had academic careers of some merit, outside of teaching.

3) All teachers should rigidly specialise. For example, no one should be teaching science as an umbrella subject, unless they have had practical experience in each discipline covered by it. That is basically the same as saying, that the person who teaches biology should never be the same person who teaches physics, unless they are a polymath of course, but they are so statistically rare as to be irrelevant to this discussion, realistically speaking.

4) In addition to 3) above, teachers should only teach their expert level subject. Your geography teacher has no business instructing a drama class.

THAT is a formula for proper teaching.

What colour a persons skin is, has no bearing on whether they are good teachers or not. These things should be decided on an individual basis, not as a blanket set of rules, which demand x amount of teachers of each shade of man, but on the intelligence and capability of the applicant for a position.

What an utterly disgraceful mess.

This is why US do not do well on PISA tests.. when its all about politics not teaching.

I had the same thing happen to me. I served my 6 years in the military and when I got out I went to apply for a job at the company my father had worked for and retired from after 30 years. I took my resume to them and asked to fill out a application and the manager told me it would be a waste of my time because they were not hiring. he then proceeded to tell me if I would have been black or a woman he would hire me on the spot.

I think that this type of thing should happen more often. Not the discrimination, but the fighting of such injustice. How does it make any sense that non-white individuals can file lawsuits or claim they are being discriminated against, as well as claim there should be equality, yet turn around and say that equality is fine unless you're white? There are individuals like this, as I have witnessed such hypocrisy firsthand.

First of all equality exists. If there is any discrimination, it is done on a personal level, not on a legal level. Therefore the color of one's skin should not be an issue when applying for a job, or pretty much for anything else either. There could be extreme circumstances where the color of your skin would be important for a specific job, but such occasions are quite rare indeed.

I also find it discriminatory that one cannot get certain jobs unless they speak Spanish, or some other language. Even if the job entails dealing with people who don't speak English here in the United States. People apparently forget that we speak English in the US, therefore it is discriminatory to deny a US citizen a job within the US because they do not speak another language. The only way this would be appropriate is if the employee were dealing with individuals from another country. But if the job entails dealing with US citizens, and takes place within the United States, English should be sufficient.

There are other issues as well that could be considered discrimination. It just really irks me that so many people feel that discrimination works only one way, or for a particular race, when the truth is that ALL races are discriminated against in various capacities. This is a perfectly good example. Another example of discrimination is affirmative action. How is it that we wished to reach equality within our society, only to achieve that goal and still have to set people apart because of the color of their skin? Shouldn't one's performance dictate whether they are qualified for a specific job, or qualified to get in to a specific university, or whatever else the affirmative action is being applied towards?

It is just extremely hypocritical to want equality yet still wish to have the benefits of non-equality. That makes absolutely no sense to me. Until every single person is judged on their personal character, abilities, and other internal attributes, and that alone, we will not have reached equality in this country.

As the saying goes...

It's lonely on the top.

Oh man, I hope he get's all $150,000 and then some. I've seen this kinda sh!t more times than not. It would be hilarious that minorities have to resort to getting jobs this way if I wasn't so pissed off.

They should find a way to hire teachers without knowing what race they are. You don't necessarily need to see a person to talk to them and learn about them to know if they are right for the job. And it should be that way with most things. Why does almost any form you fill out have a box to check for race? You take that box away and you remove a lot of racism right there.

a reply to: JHumm

Agreed I think if he/she possesses the credentials to be a licensed teacher some sort of test be given, to make sure they know the subject they are teaching sort of a aptitude test, along with a personality test. A offer is made contingent on passing a background and verification of credentials.
This way you have a faceless stranger who a) knows there material, b) can pass a psychological/personality test. C) is offered a job contingent on backgrounds and credentials. Race will not be known till the third part of the hiring process in which a contract was offered and nulling that contract of race would be against EOCC.

a reply to: FortAnthem

According to this news article from NBC-News that i came across, the white Americans will become a minority in about 2043.

usnews.nbcnews.com...

This means that white Americans will be hired solely by referring to the principles in this case that OP is sharing with us here. Thus everything the white Americans needs to do is to wait it out for another 29 years.
However. I doubt that it will happen though.

The same thing is( by the way) happening at an even greater scale in Europe these days. I read that one politician over there, in a such an occasion wrote that :

“ We need to threat the minorities in our country the best way we possibly can, because otherwise we can’t expect that these minorities will return the favors when we ourselves will become a minority in our own country”

I guess the white folks perhaps have started something they don’t know the full consequences of.

With all of this affirmative action and such, us black folk are riding high on the hog! Yeah, right. The stats don't reflect the hype, and last time I checked, my ''black'' ass has no special privvies. Black privelege? LMFAO.

originally posted by: JohnnySasaki
Oh man, I hope he get's all $150,000 and then some. I've seen this kinda sh!t more times than not. It would be hilarious that minorities have to resort to getting jobs this way if I wasn't so pissed off.

Yep. Us stinking ''minorities'' are stealing ALL the jobs! NOT. This site has really changed over the years. Sfront lite...indeed.

At what point in that meeting did the question "What is his ethnicity?" come into question?

Clealy if this type of racism is still happening, not enough healing has been done.

What, white guys feeling underprivileged?

..

Analogy with Mario Kart in it - Won't post it directly, as NSFW language is used, sorry for that.

So I guess in this case affirmative action strikes again.

originally posted by: poloblack

originally posted by: JohnnySasaki
Oh man, I hope he get's all $150,000 and then some. I've seen this kinda sh!t more times than not. It would be hilarious that minorities have to resort to getting jobs this way if I wasn't so pissed off.

Yep. Us stinking ''minorities'' are stealing ALL the jobs! NOT. This site has really changed over the years. Sfront lite...indeed.

So you agree that this person should have been denied a job solely because he was white?

This happens quite a bit.
I think the best qualified should get the job, no matter what race or religion they are. But now, we live in this liberalized world, -where even the losers get trophies and the dumb make it to the next grade along with the people who earned it. Get used to it because we are in the target hairs.