By Randi McGinn
The last short story Mark Twain ever wrote provides some wisdom for the times we are now living through. Captain Stormfield Goes to Heaven is about an ex-military man who dies and goes to heaven, where he is taken on a tour of paradise by an angel. The story goes something like this:
As they are wandering around among the clouds, the pair come to a long line of people, standing and patiently waiting to speak to someone. Waiting in line, the captain recognizes many of the great thinkers of history like Plato, Aristotle and Thomas Jefferson.
“What’s going on here?” the captain asks the angel.
“Oh, everyone is waiting to talk and seek advice from the smartest person who ever lived on earth,” says the angel.
“Really,” says the captain. “Who is that person?”
The angel says a name he doesn’t recognize, something common like “John Smith.”
“I’ve never heard of him,” says the captain.
“Well, of course not,” says the angel. “That’s because he had to spend his life working as a blacksmith to support his family, but even though he never had an education or learned to read or write, everyone here knows he was the smartest person ever born on earth.”
In my version of that story, the person at the end of that line, the “smartest person on earth” is not just a poor working man, but others who were never given a chance to show what they were made of: A woman, who because of the era or culture into which she was born, was bound in a burqa or a corset, limited in her educational opportunities and never allowed to add her voice or creative solutions to the world. A person whose skin color, religion or the place of their birth condemned them to a lifetime of slavery or prejudice that silenced their ideas and opinions. A person who was born with an attraction to someone of their own sex and so, was marginalized by society.
For the first part of my life, those smartest people on earth were not allowed to even apply for careers and government positions where they could change the world and make a difference. Then, on the heels of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the United States Senate passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (the vote was 73-27), which opened the work world to the best and brightest by prohibiting discrimination in hiring, recruitment and salaries.
Of course, change is not instantaneous when you pass a law. As President Lyndon Johnson noted in a commencement address at Howard University in June, 1965, “… it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates. This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights… We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.”(emphasis added)
In September of 1965, President Johnson issued Executive Order 11246 which required those who contracted with the federal government to put management programs in place to eliminate discrimination in their companies so that, over time, by hiring the best applicants no matter the color of their skin or their gender, their workforce would eventually reflect the gender, racial and ethnic make up of the population at large.
This 1965 executive order is the one that Trump reversed on his first day in office. What that means is that companies that contract with the government are no longer required to even consider the best and brightest applicants. Their job postings can include the kind of signs you used to only see in the Deep South before 1960 – “Women, Blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, Native Americans and Gays need not apply.” Never mind that the perfect person, the smartest person for the job may be among those people.
Is there hope for those of us more than 50% of the population who may be the best person for a job with a government contractor?
Well, yes. So far, presidents do not have the power to eliminate acts of Congress with an executive order. That means that the Civil Rights/Equal Employment Opportunity Act is still the law of the land. The law in America still prohibits racial, sex and religious discrimination in hiring and pay.
Certainly, the new administration can try to gut the Equal Employment Opportunity Commissions, the investigative and enforcement mechanism for anti-discrimination laws around the country. The federal workers running those EEOC offices can choose to be run off or can stay and fight for the civil rights of all Americans.
Which makes me wonder what it is about opening the hiring process up to everyone is so scary to this administration?
In my experience, workplaces, government offices and political bodies work best when they are staffed by a diverse group of citizens. Many different voices and perspectives make for better decision-making.
And, if you are lucky, among the diverse people you hire may be the smartest person on earth.
Randi McGinn is a lifelong New Mexican, journalist and attorney in Albuquerque.
