Written by a white female magazine journalist:

Years ago I worked at a nonprofit organization. I was told (by my boss) to hire a black woman to handle PR because our organization wasn’t diverse enough.  So our search committee did outreach and found one. When I called her references, they asked me incredulously, “You’re going to hire Marilyn to be a PR person?”  

We hired her even though she didn’t have great writing skills.  We gave her no additional training, and her supervisor didn’t even give her honest feedback.  And guess what?   Marilyn didn’t really work out. My boss said, “I think we’re going to have to fire Marilyn.”  I said sarcastically, "Why?  She’s still qualified. .... We hired Marilyn because she was black.  She’s still black."  Fortunately, Marilyn extracted herself from a difficult situation by leaving us for a more appropriate job.

Commentary to African American Vignette #10

For affirmative action to be effective, an organization’s commitment needs to go beyond the goal of merely appearing diverse.  In this situation not enough effort was put forth to hire a qualified black public relations person who had the necessary skills for the job or to train the new employee to be successful in her position.

When affirmative action is carried out in a half-hearted way it is likely to fail. Such failures tend to erode support for future attempts at diversifying the work force as well as support for the policy of affirmative action itself.
The comment, “We hired Marilyn because she was Black. She’s still black” can be taken several ways. I surmise that the white woman is saying, with a hint of irony, to her boss: The only reason we hired Marilyn is because she’s black.  She still fits the criterion of being black - so why are we firing her?

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