Affirmative Action Foes Tout a False Parable

Monday, August 24, 1998 - Seattle Times

A KEY anecdote fueling Initiative 200, the measure to roll back affirmative action in Washington, turns out to be false.

State Rep. Scott Smith, the Graham Republican who is a chief promoter of I-200, tells a tale of reverse discrimination he supposedly experienced when he and his wife tried to become King County police officers in 1991.

He scored higher than she did on a written test, but she was offered a position and he wasn't.

Now, seven years later, records from the King County Sheriff's personnel office tell a different story. Records show Smith withdrew his name from consideration. He says he didn't withdraw and was told the department was focused on hiring women and minorities.

Under a selective certification hiring program in place at the time, women and minorities who scored lower than Smith were allowed into a group of prospective employees. Some such as Smith's wife were offered jobs.

But other facts are also quite telling: Twelve of 17 officers who scored the same as Smith on the vocabulary/reading-comprehension test were hired. All but one were white males. Almost all candidates with the same score moved to the next step of the hiring process. Smith, for some reason, did not.

Seven more officers, five of them white males, who scored a point lower than Smith, also were hired. Why would anyone not move Smith to the next level of the hiring process? His score was good. He seemed like a decent candidate.

What more likely happened is that Smith being named Smith was a victim of a clerical mistake, not reverse discrimination. It's easy to jump to conclusions to tell a story to boost a campaign. Such tales are even better when they are true, which this is not.

At one point last week, Smith went on the radio to accuse King County officials of manipulating records to bolster their story. That's a stretch. Nobody knew this young man on his way out of the Army. There is no motive for such behavior.

Later last week, Smith conceded it's unlikely anyone manipulated records. He now recognizes he was probably the victim of a mistake. The other possibility is the only available written account of this incident is accurate: He withdrew or misunderstood something said to him when he telephoned to inquire about his status. Either way, Smith's story no longer holds up as an argument for the need to abandon affirmative action.

Some affirmative-action programs could be improved. But Smith's experience shows mistakes and misunderstandings are also part of what happens in hiring and promotion. And those mistakes can color perceptions about affirmative action.

Initiative-200 remains a solution in search of a problem.

Return to the I-200 page.
Return to the Affirmative Action and Diversity Page

Carl Gutiérrez-Jones
Department of English
University of California, Santa Barbara
e-mail: carlgj@humanitas.ucsb.edu