Bob Warring: The oppression of white men

Poor, poor Mr. Parker. It's not easy being white and male in a black woman's world.

A few weeks ago, The Daily Pennsylvanian reported that Gordon Roy Parker has filed a lawsuit against the University claiming that, while a Penn Medical Center employee, he was denied promotions because of -- among other things -- his race (white) and gender (male).

For one, Parker contends that, because he is not an attractive female, he essentially suffers a genetic deformity resulting in a physical disability that saps his "interpersonal appeal" and makes him less desirable to promote. Judging from the complaint, the notion that Parker lacks interpersonal appeal seems a distinct possibility; attributing this to his not-an-attractive-female status seems specious and falsely ipso facto.

But that's just one of many questionable claims in the suit. The whole thing smacks of rancor and hypersensitivity -- like when Parker asserts that Penn's affirmative action policies have led to "wholesale, centralized, mass discrimination against him."

Is the University really out to get Whitey? If so, why are African Americans and Hispanics underrepresented by nearly half within the undergraduate student body?

At other points in the complaint, Parker seems to be more interested in furthering a political agenda than righting the wrongs allegedly perpetrated by the University. In claiming that Penn has practiced irrelevant criteria discrimination against him, Parker states that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is unconstitutional because it protects some irrelevant criteria without protecting others. The legislation guards against discrimination based on race or gender, he notes, but not against discrimination based on political affiliation.

On one point here, Parker and I are agreed. There should be legislation that ensures that employees and applicants are not discriminated against because of their political beliefs. The fact that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not probably only reflects the Cold War-era, anti-communist environment in which it was forged.

But the law's shortcomings don't make it, as Parker says, unconstitutional. They merely make it incomplete. The Civil Rights Act that Parker attacks as unconstitutional is the same one that protects against discrimination based on race and sex and thereby forms the legal basis for his complaint against the University.

Without it, Parker would not have a shadowy, dubious claim against the University. He would have no claim at all.

Parker and I doubtless have some irreconcilable political views. He strikes me as the kind of guy that, if we ever met and debated, I would be tempted to punch in the face -- in all fairness, he might feel the same way about me.

That I can handle. Debates often end in the loggerheads of incompatible "truths," if not blows, and, at any rate, it's likely (and desirable to me) that Parker and I will never meet.

But what really galls me most about Parker's complaint is his faux socially-conscientious assertion that "extending affirmative action protection to minorities in job classifications where they are already overrepresented... locks them into lower-paying jobs with minimal economic security."

Please, Mr. Parker, spare us your "concern," and don't insult our intelligence. (We are, after all, Ivy Leaguers.)

This statement is both untrue and extremely paternalistic (and transparently insincere in light of your claims regarding the Civil Rights Act.) It suggests that your former black, female co-workers could not advance from their entry-level positions and that other black women did not have the skills or education to be hired for more advanced, lucrative positions (since, according to Parker, Penn's affirmative action policy "locks them into" jobs that don't pay well).

It is precisely reasoning such as this that continues to make the affirmative action policies Parker argues against -- including the Civil Rights Act -- so necessary.

So, Mr. Parker, do us all a big favor. Drop your lawsuit against the University, and don't waste the courts' time and the taxpayers' (and students') money.

And stop giving the rest of us white males a bad name. Bob Warring is a senior History and English major from Hanover, PA.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.