Only Multiracial Candidates Need Apply
New Trend in College Faculty Hiring
I’ve been teaching College English and other classes in Humanities in California for many years, and I’m always on the lookout for new opportunities that fit into my schedule within a 20-mile radius of my home. Generally, I meet the requisite qualifications with all the ridiculous higher-level degrees I have accumulated. That is until I noticed a new trend in faculty job postings on the Chronicle of Higher Education — particularly a job posting from the California State Channel Islands.
Take a look at the “requirements” and think about it for a second:
Part-Time Lecturer Faculty in English/Gender Studies California State University- Channel Islands Camarillo, CA
Qualifications 1. Multiracial, and 2% as Black/African American 2. Applicants who can teach in face-to-face modality 3. MA in English or degree closely aligned with either LGBT studies o 4. Applicants should bring sufficient theoretical and/or conceptual knowledge of the field to teach upper-division course(s) 5. An application and current CV that demonstrates your academic background, teaching experience and/or 6. At time of appointment, the successful candidate, if not a U.S citizen, must have authorization from the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services to work in the United States 7. A background check (including a criminal records check) must be completed satisfactorily before any candidate can be offered a background check may affect the application status of applicants
Qualifications two through seven make sense. It’s the first prerequisite that unnerves me. I had to reread it a few times and cross-reference the qualifications. Was it a mistake? Nope. This is copied and pasted — no mistake.
I’m all for inclusion and diversity on a college campus. It is important to have both male, female, LGBTQ, and non-binary, professors of different ethnicities, races, disabilities, and socio-cultural backgrounds. Diversity breeds critical thinking, varied opinion, and inquiry, which is the foundation of education.
But… what is “Multiracial, and 2% as Black/African American”? If a person is 1.9 % Black, does this mean he/she/they are passed over for a multiracial two percenter? Whichever way it is interpreted, I do not fit the bill. I’m a white Italian-American with dual citizenship. I can’t check anything either than multi-white female, pronouns: she/her. (Of course, there is no multi-white to check if there were, I’d be it.)
After I read this, I had to make sure I was still living in the same country with the same rules and regulations — because, as we all know, we have been living on quite shaky ground lately here in the Ol’ U S of A, and laws have been changing rather quickly. Was it possible that the federal agency of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which was established through the Civil Rights Act of 1964, was also stripped away from unsuspecting voters?
Who knows? We are living amidst some extreme changes in circumstances. Was Title VII derailed? Not yet.
Under the laws enforced by EEOC, it is illegal to discriminate against someone (applicant or employee) because of that person’s race, color, religion, sex (including gender identity, sexual orientation, and pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information.
Right now, it is not legal to use racial requirements as criteria for a faculty job. This seems reasonable to some of us in these divided states. It’s equitable to me, not because I am multi-white, but because it just seems logical and fair under the equal protection laws.
The other question arises as to whether Cal State Channel Islands is trying to force a legal discussion on the issue of specific racial qualifications in job hiring. We are, after all, in California, the first state to require Ethnic Studies in order to get a high school diploma.
I wonder what that faculty job posting will look like.