Jumping To Conclusions

Or, at least it isn't dead on some campuses. The Washington Post reports that black colleges are facing racial discrimination lawsuits.

DOVER, Del. –– Kathleen Carter says that when she became chairman of the education department at historically black Delaware State University in 1995, she found herself facing more than the usual administrative hassles.

Carter, who is white, says she was told that she was usurping blacks' right to govern themselves and that whites in the department were trying to make blacks look bad.

One colleague called her "a white bitch," Carter said in a discrimination lawsuit she filed against the school, alleging she was denied tenure because of her race.

That's only one of several such cases.

But Jane Buck, a former Delaware State psychology professor and national president of the AAUP, said a search committee at the school received about 100 applications for an opening a few years ago, and no black candidate turned up. The search was reopened, and the lone black applicant was hired.

"I perceived a great deal of pressure to see to it that we hired a black departmental member," Buck said.

This sounds like a blockbuster -- a college so racist that they rejected 100 job applications and reopened the job search, just to get someone with the right skin color. So why wasn't this story front page headlines, the way the story about blacks supposedly getting inferior healthcare was?