I don't know what to call this

The Washington Post just ran an article about the rise of the new DC police chief, Cathy Lanier. Chief Lanier is 38, white, and female. Does this matter? According to Ronald Hampton of the National Black Police Association it does. Says Hampton, "The chief of police ought to be a person of color. We've got a lot of white people in these positions and it becomes problematic for recruitment. You wonder why young kids in the black community don't want to be police officers." The article had mentioned in the previous paragraph that the DC police force is 63 percent black. I take issue with the normative statement of Mr. Hampton, that because the police force is predominantly black and DC is predominantly black then executive officials appointed by the mayor should be black. This is exactly the line of thinking that any minority advocacy group condemns. It's what Affirmative Action has tried to overcome. I'm surprised that this can even be considered an argument. Notice that Mr. Hampton says nothing about the qualifications of Chief Lanier, but opposes her nomination based strictly on race. If a member of Congress opposed the nomination of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General because he's Hispanic and doesn't represent the majority of the constituency, they would certainly be villified in the media and would probably lose their seat in the next election. As a minority in Prince George's County, I don't have an issue with the majority of my local elected officials being black because, well, numerically, there are more blacks in the county so it shouldn't be a surprise that, numerically, they make up a greater number of candidates and thus elected officials. But I do not think that the county executive "ought" to be black because the county is majority black as much as I do not think that the President of the United States "ought" to be white. There might be some people out there that think so. I think that's racist. Race should not determine one's suitability for office. Sorry, it shouldn't.
I'm sure people would try to make a cultural argument, that it makes sense to promote majority candidates to represent the majority culture. This was the justification used in racist hiring practices during post-war Detroit. Managers would refuse to hire qualfied black workers, saying that they needed to hire white workers to keep up worker morale and comraderie on the factory floor. It can't work one way and be considered "representative" and work the other way and be considered "racist." It's racist either way.
To sum up (which I hate doing), I guess I'm trying to say I'm disturbed when any race makes race the sole reason why someone should or should not given a job or elected and I'm somewhat surprised that a black official would use this tactic as his own race has been the subject of similar discrimination for decades.