Affirmative Action: Starkville Style
The last week has seen an interesting story develop out of Starkville with a Board of Aldermen appointed school board candidate vetoed by the mayor there based on race. Susan Tomlinson, who is white, was appointed last week to fill one of the 5 seats on the Starkville School District’s board of trustees by the Board of Aldermen in Starkville. The appointment lasted a day as Mayor Parker Wiseman, who is also white, vetoed the appointment based on the race of the candidate.
You can read the full veto here and decide for yourself what Wiseman’s true intentions were, but it reeks of affirmative action in my view. I have no problem with appointing qualified minority candidates in situations such as this, but the mayor set the precedent that whites need not apply from now on for jobs like this. Whether you are qualified for the job or not does not seem to matter these days and how you look seems to be the deciding factor for this mayor.
This whole ordeal is interesting because Wiseman is a young Democrat who has the potential to be an “up and coming” player in state politics and decisions like this could haunt his political future down the road. It is one thing to paint yourself as a moderate, but it is something completely different to govern from the far left by supporting hiring practices such as this.
Liberal family. Read his dad’s comments in NEMS360 under Childer’s article.
Yea I read what his dad said in the DJ about healthcare and didn’t think much of it. He’s obviously of the mindset that healthcare reform will soon become popular, which it may or may not be. By and large,I’d say he’s usually pretty fair though.
Parker is doing this for the headlines and do earn some street-cred among the state/national democratic party (i.e. statewide black population). this guy is as liberal as they come and intends on running against cong. harper or statewide soon. interesting that liberals tout their belief in a color blind society THEN make an appointment based entirely on race. typical liberal-leftwing mindset.
I’m guessing lawyers are lining up at her door to take her case.