107-year-old survivor of 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Testifies in front of Congress 😳

[Tom Rinaldo]

23. I agree completely

What you wrote makes perfect sense, and we will all live in a better nation if more justice prevailed here. I know with absolute certainty that I "lost out" to two excellent jobs during my career as a result of affirmative action. I'm not guessing, I know. And the places doing the hiring made the right decision and I had no problem with it. I was working in the general field of human services/ mental health and the agencies doing the hiring needed to have diversity on their staffs. Not "needed" because the government required it, they needed diversity in order to effectively deliver services to some parts of the community. The people who got the jobs were well qualified, I just know that all other things being equal I would have been hired because they already knew my work and thought very highly of it. They trusted me enough to be honest with me about that, because they knew that I agreed with them about their needs. Had no other well qualified candidates emerged from a demographic that they were under represented in, they gladly would have hired me.

I'm a straight white male and they had enough straight white males. They were right, but as a straight white male other job possibilities did open up for me elsewhere later. Because in most instances my identity has been a privilege I enjoy by birth, and I try never to lose sight of that.