The Kansas City Star Supports Discrimination

Never mind that Steve Penn and Louis Diuguid normally leave no stone unturned when looking for examples of racism against Black people but obviously don't care when that same discrimination exists against other minorities.

Never mind that KCMO School Board President has been FOUND GUILTY of unfairly firing an employee because she complained of discriminatory hiring practices.

Forget that the dropout rate among Local Latinos in the KCMO School District is more than 50% and there are few Latino employees or contractors in a district that has a growing population of Hispanics. . . forget all of this because The Star has also disregarded all notions of fairness and equality in order to align themselves with a President of the KCMO School Board who has openly discriminated against whites and Latinos.

Today, The Star defends David Smith and his discriminatory hiring practices. In the unsigned editorial The Star attempts to retry the case of Smith's confirmed bigotry even though he was ALREADY FOUND GUILTY of improperly terminating someone who dared question him. They offer this passage that would make Bill Clinton smile and light up a big stinky cigar:

A reasonable conclusion is that Smith, while heeding the racial dynamics of the clientele and communities served by his organization, showed poor judgment by raising the issue of race when he and Bryant discussed hiring decisions.

But it is not reasonable to conclude that the verdict establishes a pattern of discriminatory or vindictive behavior by Smith. No employee other than Bryant alleged such a thing, and Smith's long record of service belies it.

And then you just have to laugh because the "long record of service" includes presiding over a miserably failing school district that has neither served Latinos nor whites (or even Blacks for that matter) with any level of competence. This is evidenced by whites wanting to run away from the district in mass and Latinos dropping out or scraping in order to go to Catholic Schools in similar numbers. So who is it that Smith has served?

And because I don't expect anybody to care about Latino issues that much, you have to ask yourself this question when it comes to the Star's biased, hypocritical and political support of Smith. What if Smith was a white guy? Can you imagine the fallout if the Star defended some white guy who WAS FOUND GUILTY of firing a Black woman for simply doing her job and then went on to make sure that a Hispanic and a female were not employed in positions for which they were qualified?

This is a perfect example of the corporate, political and limp coverage provided by KC's largest producer of bird cage liner. If this kind of one-sided opinion makes up their editorial pages it's reasonable to believe that The Star's reporting is no doubt informed by the same misguided thinking. It's no wonder then that so many people have searched out different forms of media in order to formulate their own opinions instead of simply buying The Star's company line.