All White Men Forever, As Jury Reverses Cop Clock

• Originally published in The Capital Times (Madison, Wisconsin) April 9, 2005 Copyright 2005 Madison Newspapers, Inc.

BY Joel McNally

I worked at a newspaper once when it hired its first woman editor. Being part of the liberal media conspiracy, naturally we all thought that was a good thing.

Some had private concerns, though. I remember a conversation involving the political reporter, the movie critic and me, a big-time columnist. Someone, it doesn't matter who, was worried the historic hiring might mean women would begin getting preferential treatment.

My response was that it was a good thing we three white males already had the best jobs on the newspaper.

That was more than a decade ago. Since then, we've had all that social progress and affirmative action we hear so much about. But one thing hasn't changed.

The best jobs on the newspaper including the political reporter, the movie critic and most of the columnists are still held by white males.

For any white males who seriously worry that it is no longer 100 percent -- that a few African Americans break through to be promoted above the rank of "Hey, boy" and a few women have invaded their locker room -- their dream just came true.

A jury's verdict in a federal race discrimination lawsuit in Milwaukee just turned back the clock to those bygone days of all-white-men, all-the-time.

The jury found that former Police Chief Arthur Jones, the city's first African American chief, discriminated against 17 white males by promoting non-whites and women to captain jobs instead of them.

It was a bizarre finding since during his tenure Jones promoted 41 officers to captain and 21 of them were white males. Declaring that 17 more white males should have been added, the jury essentially endorsed a virtually all-white-male police supervisory staff with a couple of token minorities just like the good, old days.

Well, "Yahoo!" for the yahoos. The civil rights movement never happened, God didn't make little green apples and it don't rain in Indianapolis in the summertime.

Diversity now means promoting both blond white guys and red-headed white guys.

Voting that Jones' promotions should have been overwhelmingly white was, you guessed it, a jury that was overwhelmingly white. It had one African American woman.

That, too, was nostalgic. It recalled long-ago days when all-white juries in the South routinely protected the rights of whites to blow up African American children attending Sunday School.

There are rich layers of irony in any lawsuit in which white males complain they are being disadvantaged because they only control almost everything instead of absolutely everything.

Jones was a controversial police chief. Did we already mention that he was the city's first African American police chief? He was accused of being an autocratic, my-way-or-the-highway kind of guy.

That, of course, perfectly describes every one of Jones' predecessors who were not African American. Most of all, it describes the police chief who was Milwaukee's own Bull Connor during the period of greatest white resistance to racial change in both the Police Department and the community.

That was the late Police Chief Harold Breier, whose 20-year reign began in 1964. It was a quaint time when white male supremacy was accepted as the natural order of things.

Racism was so blatant that police promotions were as overwhelmingly white as a federal jury just declared they should be in 2005. Jones first showed leadership as an African American officer by challenging Breier and a system steeped in racism. A lawsuit filed by Jones and other minority officers resulted in a federal consent decree requiring 40 percent of all new officers to be minorities and 20 percent to be women from 1984 to 1997.

One of the legacies of Breier's power ended up being used against Jones in the recent discrimination lawsuit. No examination is required for promotion to captain within the Milwaukee Police Department. The promotions are at the discretion of the chief, with approval by the Fire and Police Commission.

Breier used that discretion to promote almost all white males. Jones used it to promote a slight majority of white males, but also to diversify the department by promoting minorities and women.

Another result of that social progress was that the city's first African American police chief was succeeded by the city's first female police chief.

What was Jones thinking? Didn't he realize promoting minorities and women officers to captain would mean passing over white males for those jobs?

The attorney for the white officers even called a college professor to testify that statistically the odds were only five in 10,000 that the racial make-up of the officers promoted by Jones could have been random.

Imagine that. Jones actually intended to promote minorities and women to responsible positions in his department. When will this madness end?

* Well, it just ended. A jury in Milwaukee has declared that it's 1964 again. All-white is the way things should be. The past 40 years never happened.