Fairness requires that we grapple with our uncomfortable history

Last week, the Las Vegas Reviewjournal published an editorial, about a contract with the Minneapolis teachers union. The editorial focused on a specific clause of the contract that allowed for exceptions to a general policy of seniority. One of the exceptions is based upon the underrepresentation of minority teachers and administrators. According to the district’s own admissions, the disproportionate representation is due to a past system of racism that led to a court-ordered desegregation plan for more than a decade and lawsuits filed as recently as 2015.

Put in layman’s terms, Minneapolis Public Schools has acknowledged that the district has, on multiple occasions, engaged in discriminatory practices resulting in white teachers being hired, retained and promoted more often than their nonwhite counterparts.

These actions in the past have meant the district’s white teachers earned significant seniority denied to minority educators. Today, this means that a disproportionate number of white teachers enjoy the protections, benefits and salary advantages conferred by seniority acquired in an unfair system. Meanwhile, very few Black teachers are offered these same privileges or protections.

These facts aren’t up for debate. The school district has admitted as much — a fact the Review-journal’s editorial conveniently forgot to mention.

In real terms, the legacy of this unfair system continues to disadvantage today’s teachers of color today. So, it’s only natural that the union would seek measures in the contract to level the playing field. Note that nobody is arguing that it should be tilted to one side or another, it should simply be leveled.

The teacher’s desire for justice is even more understandable given the long history of people of color in this country who have spent decades trying to explain how blatantly racist systems of the past, such as redlining and refusal to hire Black workers, can have repercussions today.

Black families who were denied the right to purchase a suburban home in the 1960s never had the chance to build equity in that home or the choice to sell it when the market was high or to pass it to their children. Even if they were allowed to buy that same home in the 1980s, they likely paid a significantly higher price and missed out on 20 years of financial gain. The law may have been changed, but the harm of the past can still be felt.

The same is true for Black teachers who were passed over for hiring or promotions. Even if we assume that those discriminatory hiring and promotion systems have since been fixed — which is a big if — those teachers missed out on years of increased wages, benefits, and status within the system of seniority. The nature of how seniority works is that if you were unfairly forced to start behind others, you can’t catch up without some kind of reset.

Despite the attempts of the R-J to paint this issue as an “immoral” act of reverse racism, nothing could be further from the truth. The contract’s clause does nothing more than assure that today’s educators won’t be penalized tomorrow due to historic abuses of seniority and historic systems of racism and oppression.

Because the uncomfortable truth is that unless Minneapolis Public Schools officials are hiding a time machine in their back pocket, they can’t give back the years that were stolen from these teachers. So instead, they have agreed to give back the status of seniority that was unfairly taken.

This is not injustice, or immorality, or even “woke” politics. This is basic human decency and common sense, applied to a situation that cannot be remedied through the simple exchange of money alone. Money does not grant job security. Seniority does.

Fairness is common sense and something we all know from the earliest days of childhood. But we also all remember or have seen children who rejected fairness and chose instead to snatch toys from the hands of others while shouting “mine.”

The rhetoric of far-right extremists and even of the R-J’S editorial echo these child terrors. Rather than grappling with uncomfortable periods in our nation’s history, they stay willfully ignorant, refusing to acknowledge that unfairness ever existed in the first place. They feel entitled to reap rewards gained, in part, through the exclusion and oppression of others; crying foul whenever there is any effort to create a system that is fair to all Americans. Black or white, rich or poor alike.

In contrast, Minneapolis Public Schools has acknowledged its shameful history on racial bias in education — something that is not unique in America — and should be applauded for doing something to remedy the situation moving forward.

Rather than ignoring history, ignoring economics and ignoring the simple truth that the past can have an impact on the present, the district has instead chosen to do what they can to try and make the situation right.

Conservative media loves to tout its love of history and economics when talking about confederate monuments and the Constitution. Yet they seem awfully willing to ignore basic lessons of history and economics when it comes to leveling the playing field for hard-working Black Americans.

As we celebrate this Labor Day weekend, let’s celebrate and promote the hiring and promotion of all of the most qualified and hard-working laborers, not just the white ones. And let’s celebrate businesses, organizations and entities, like Minneapolis Public Schools, that are doing what they can to realize the United States’ promise of being the land of opportunity.

... [W]hite teachers enjoy the protections, benefits and salary advantages ... acquired in an unfair system. Meanwhile, very few Black teachers are offered these same privileges or protections.