The Myth of the Underqualified Minority Candidate

Back in 2003 the NFL adopted a practice known as the Rooney Rule that required any team seeking a head coach to interview at least two minority candidates for the job. The rule had some positive short term gains, but two decades later, there is only one Black head coach and one Latino head coach in a league that is predominately made up of Black players. As this article explores, the reasons for this come down to everything BUT a lack of qualifications from the coaches.

It's a particularly timely story alongside President Biden's pledge to nominate a Black female candidate to fill an upcoming vacancy in the U.S. Supreme Court. Critics immediately began talking about how this intent to nominate a minority candidate would lead to an unqualified candidate being considered. This idea of the underqualified minority candidate who is only getting an opportunity due to an affirmative action policy is a recurring myth in business. The truth is quite different. Consider this analysis of Black judges appointed by President Biden from data science website FiveThirtyEight:

"We looked at data from the Federal Judicial Center and found that ... it's simply not true that [Biden] is weighing diversity more highly than the qualifications usually used to evaluate judges. In fact, his lower-court appointees are arguably more highly qualified on those metrics than the judges selected by previous presidents, and that's particularly true of the Black women he named."

In the NFL, the courts or in business, the truth is the opposite is often the case. A minority candidate is often expected to have more qualifications for the same role as their non-minority counterparts. As one academic study noted: "the exponential growth in PhD's from underrepresented groups in the last 30 years has not been matched by comparable growth in hiring them." So there isn't a lack of qualified minority candidates. The problem is a lack of opportunities for them to be hired for highly selective positions like NFL Head Coaches or Supreme Court Justices.