> Especially considering the NYT article poses problems with the agency's standards and not its composition.

The NYT attempts to attribute a specific label to the problems with the agency's standards and outcomes: racism.

Who is perpetuating this racism? The article gives us two possible candidates: mandated reporters and ACS employees themselves. Of course, the article doesn't actually label them as racist. It abstractly blames "the system" and "the agency" instead. Occasionally it'll mention poverty as a confounding factor before going back to talking about racism as the issue without really identifying any racist policies the agency operates under.

Are we to believe that it is the 19% non-black, non-Latino ACS employees are responsible for perpetuating all the racism of the agency? Would the racism be solved if ACS employees were 100% black? Something tells me the writer of the article and the advocates mentioned within it would agree that it wouldn't, as they talk about racism as a mysterious, self-perpetuating phenomenon.

The racism in question is the racial disparities in the outcomes of ACS procedures. In some cases, progressives will eagerly attribute racial disparities in the outcomes of a city agency to the demographics of the employees at that agency, so it's not hard to see why someone would believe that they're doing this in the case of ACS. It seems that more and more frequently though, the racism at such an agency will be the mysterious type. We can see this in the educational disparities in the city's public school system. Who is responsible for the fact that nearly 80% of black and Hispanic students in grades 3-8 fail to meet grade-level math standards, compared to 32% of Asian students? The system, the DOE, the standards themselves, and "the school". Belief in the last one routinely manifests itself in city politics as a demand to get rid of admission standards at schools where students are high-performing, in order to give other students access to these "good schools". What makes a school good? I have yet to see this articulated in a satisfactory manner, other than some people putting the blame on funding, in spite of the fact that NYC schools with poorer performance generally get more funding.

The most convenient part about this mysterious form of racism is that whenever a new policy fails to eliminate a racial disparity in outcome, it can be said that it simply wasn't enough to solve the issue. Racism arising from the actions of a racist employee can be addressed by their removal. Racism that exists in the results is much harder to address, so we throw one bright idea after another at it. With regards to disparities in the school system, we may even be able to remedy it by simply removing the results; after all, standardized testing is flawed. I expect this will become a more common demand in the near-future.