Women's Rights Employment Law Blog

East Lansing teachers’ union President Edwina Marshall has raised objection to possible discriminatory stance by the school district in hiring of the principal of MacDonald Middle School. The finalist principal in question who was dropped was a black internal candidate.

In face of obvious defense from the district officials, what substantiates the claim by Marshall is the discrimination she was subjected to herself during the interview process. During the event, Marshall, who is black, was incidentally seated next to the only minority candidate, Andy Wells. At that point, the human resource director of the district passed a comment to her that she should move so as to “balance the color in the room”.

Although Wells has since accepted an offer of becoming principal in another high school, Marshall has rightly brought this matter to light. Firstly, out of a total of 240 teacher body, the school has only 14 who are black (6%), whereas 17% of the student body is black. In other words, proportionately speaking, minority teachers are three times less than the minority students. Secondly, in an effort to “work together”, the school might end up overlooking the serious nature of allegation.

In defense of the human resource director, an attorney has said, “It has been Ms. Peatross' practice to strategically place members of an interview team throughout the interview room to 'balance' the room by position, gender and race, thus creating a welcoming environment for interviewees.”

But the reality is maintaining ‘balance’ often times germinates from deliberate assumptions too. Considering that Wells was the only minority candidate, there was no way a balance could have been anyway established. But what was established in the process was a suspicion that two people of color sitting by each other can influence fairness. Now that is ridiculous.