Reflections From a Murky Pond

New York’s unelected Governor, David Paterson, is in a bit of hot water, or he will be if this story gets the media attention that it deserves. It seems that he’s cost the New York taxpayers an unexpected $300K because of his racism and explicit and overt racial discrimination.

Because of Paterson’s racism the state of New York has had to spend &300K to “secretly” settle an embarrassing federal racial-discrimination lawsuit stemming from Paterson’s firing of a White photographer in order to hire a Black one.

So far, as of this this posting at least, this is getting only local attention, and that even that is minimal, but the New York Post is running the story. I’m unsure, given the color of the times, if it will be picked up by other outlets or not.

The state has secretly settled an embarrassing federal racial-discrimination lawsuit, The Post has learned. The suit accused Paterson, back when he was Senate minority leader in 2003, of firing a white Senate photographer in order to replace him with an African-American.

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The settlement ends a civil-rights action first filed in 2005 by Joseph Maioriello, 56, of Schenectady, a 26-year Senate employee who originally sought $1.5 million.

He was fired from his $34,000-a-year job as a photographer two years earlier and replaced by a black employee, El-Wise Noisette. The shakeup happened after Paterson ousted then-Sen. Martin Connor (D-Brooklyn) as the minority leader.

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In the lawsuit, Maioriello claimed he was told by John McPadden, then Paterson’s chief of staff, that he was being fired because a number of minority senators wanted to replace him with “a minority photographer, a black photographer.”

He said he was also told, “You got to remember who Sen. Paterson is. Sen. Paterson is black.”

Governor Paterson’s disrespectful and flippant response – with more than a touch of the “Cripple Card” – was to claim that he didn’t see well enough to have fired Maioriello because of his race.

As reported by the Daily News, the firing of Joseph Maioriello was not an isolated incident. It was part of a concerted effort on the part of the Democrats to purge Whites from State Senate offices.

The suit was filed after the federal Equal Opportunity Employment Commission ruled that “there is reason to believe that [civil rights] violations have occurred” in the case.

The agency found a possible pattern of discrimination, noting that the Democrats in the Republican-controlled state Senate also fired a white graphic artist and replaced her with a Hispanic after Paterson took the leadership post.

Paterson served as Senate minority party leader from 2002 until 2006. It seems that, under Paterson the Blacks in the New York Senate added a new and darker meaning to his position as “Minority Leader.”

Fortunately for the rest of us Mr. Maioriello was brave enough and perseverant enough to fight the up-hill struggle that any White man must fight when filing a charge of racial discrimination against a Black. While I wish he’d refused the settlement and had forced Paterson and his “posse” to go to federal court in Syracuse, I can understand his need to take the settlement and get on with his life.

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Michelle Obama, wife of presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama has drawn a lot of flak for various of her comments during the campaign. She’s a hard-hitting woman of no uncertain opinion and this has caused her to be occasionally reviled for her heartfelt but ill-advised rants and declarations. She does speak truth as she sees it though.

If you can’t run your own house, then you can’t run the White House.

– Michelle Obama

I think that is a very wise observation. If a candidate cannot properly manage and nurture that which is close to them, how can anyone expect them to properly manage and nurture the nation?

Sadly, like all truths Michelle’s wisdom is a two-edged sword that twist in the the hands of its wielder.

If Michelle’s husband can not successfully look after his constituents in Chicago how can anyone trust him to be President of the whole nation? If Barack Obama was willing to sacrifice the most vulnerable of his own constituents to the greed and corruption of his campaign supporters and business partners, how can trust him to be President of the whole nation?

Sen. Obama, talk to your wife; she may well be wiser than you.

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Most diversity training efforts at US companies are at best ineffective and often even counterproductive in increasing the number of women and minorities in managerial positions. Decades of conventional wisdom have been shown to be horribly flawed and erroneous by a recent study of the long-term effects of diversity training in the American workplace.

An in-depth recent American Sociological Review study performed by by Alexandra Kalev of UC Berkeley, Frank Dobbin of Harvard, and Erin Kelly of the University of Minnesota reviewed 31 years of data from 830 mid-size to large U.S. and found that the kind of diversity training exercises offered at most firms were followed by:

• A 7.5% drop in the overall number of women in management.
• A 10% drop in the number of Black, female managers
• A 12% drop in the number of Black men in top positions.
• Similar drops in management were seen for Latinos and Asians.

The sociologists’ study shows that organizational responsibility and accountability make a difference; diversity training and evaluation don’t. It begs the question – why didn’t the EEOC examine these issues years ago?

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