Denys Blell applied to be the new assistant vice president for academic affairs and diversity at Loyola College. Mr Blell was born in West Africa to an African mother and Lebanese father.
Mr Blell describes himself as “light skinned”. And that seems to be his problem. In his interview, he was informed (according to his lawsuit) that the African American faculty needed to hire “an African American that was visibly black”. (my underlining)
Is the college using a pantone color chart to choose their candidate? Will they be holding light meters up to the faces of people that they interview?
Is race strictly a matter of melatonin content?
I hope Mr. Blell wins this case. Based on what I’ve read about him, he seemed perfect for the job. He could have brought some interesting perspectives to the table, too.
I dunno. Sounds a little fishy to me. He says they didn’t hire him because he wasn’t dark enough, which is of course only his version of events. But wait!, he says, there’s also an “independent witness” who will corroborate that. Who is the “independent witness?” He won’t say.
It is standard procedures for a school to decline to comment on pending litigation. There is no reason to think that indicates the school does not have a valid defense. The fact is that at this point we don’t know.
If he wasn’t hired for the reasons he says he wasn’t hired, then that would be an appalling thing. But we don’t have enough information to know the truth of the situation at this point.
That school deserves to get sued if the interviewer was stupid enough to actually say something to the effect of “Sorry, we are not going to hire you because you are not black enough.” Doesn’t he know you always give vague reasons for not hiring, “not a good fit” or something like that. DMFs.
Of course, discrimination based on skin color is appalling. Frankly, I even object to having a position of assistant vice president for academic affairs and diversity at Loyola College. Having a VP for “diversity” more-or-less means having a VP who is interested only in Black and Hispanic students. Students are students, regardless of skin color. Administrators ought to be supporting all students. It’s unhealthy and divisive to assign group loyalties to administrators IMHO.
I’m glad to see the school getting problems over this inappropriate and unnecessary administrative position.
Unless the interviewer was entirely inexperienced and untrained, I find it unlikely that he would make such statements. Moral issues aside, to do such would be just plain stupid.
Many institutions have a policy of having a second party attend job interviews, just to help prevent such allegations. That may be Mr. Blell’s “independent witness”. Or maybe not. We don’t know at this point.
As pointed out above, it’s not unusual for legal counsel to advise the accused to have “no comment” in cases of pending litigation.
The jury is still out on this one, in more ways than one. I’ll withhold judgement until more facts are known.
IMHO, the journalist did not do a good job of unbiased reporting. Mayhap he’d like to stir up a good scandal, and the facts be dammed.
It sure does sound stupid. I doubt a ‘hiring official’ would ever say such a thing. So either Haddock is an incredible moron, and then one would wonder how he came to be in such a position, or Blell is lying.
I always thought it was orange soda. When did the stereotype change? Where the hell is my memo? Heads will roll over this, I tells ya, roll.
But anyhoo, I don’t see a problem with having diversity VP. Why on earth would one assume diversity VP’s only concern is black and Hispanic students? What about the Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Indian and other under-represented nationalities in the student body of Loyola?
Besides, the title is described as “assistant vice president for academic affairs and diversity”. I’d say the underlined part doesn’t appear all that inappropriate or unneccesary to me, given the fact that it concerns a friggin’ university.
I think we’re going to need more info before we can make any proper judgements. It seems odd to me because in this day and age only a total moron would mention racial criteria in the job interview process, and morons don’t generally get to be university officials (although it’s certainly not impossible).
