Expectations
Re: “We the Undercounted” (3/12/2020): Peng Her of the Hmong Institute says that “you cannot send Caucasians with clipboards…into neighborhoods that are majority Latinx, Hmong or African American and expect the doors to open.”
This sounds pretty racist to me. He is implying that the Latinx or Hmong person in the house (where the census worker appears) has a perfect right to not admit that worker, based solely on the basis of his or her skin color. If that is not racist, I don’t know what is.
According to that line of thinking, then I, as a white person living in my house, would have a perfect right to refuse admittance to a Hmong or African American person with a clipboard standing at my door, based solely on the skin color of that person. Is that okay? No, it is not.
— M. DeRocher, via email
How to handle a search
Re: “Give the guy a chance” (3/5/2020): In a Madison 365 interview, Michael Johnson [of the Boys & Girls Club of Dane County] said he wouldn’t have hired any of the three finalists [for schools superintendent]. During the public input process I suggested to MMSD that they limit the search to the four states (Mississippi, Alabama, New Jersey, Massachusetts) where African American fourth-graders read more than a year ahead of their Wisconsin counterparts. That’s how we would handle a search if it were sports.
— Robert Meyer, via isthmus.com
It was bad enough that they started trashing the guy before he even put boots on the ground, but then they had to go and moan about the guy they didn’t hire. It turns out he was leaving under a cloud of suspicion over some funky finances where he refused to release the results of an audit! Talk about a red flag!
— Patrick M. O’Loughlin. via isthmus.com
