Corporations support Affirmative Action

[Spexxvet]

“Fulfillment of the national security interest in officer corps diversity must not be imperiled by a sweeping ruling against race-conscious admissions,” argued the brief filed on behalf of General Anthony C. Zinni, Admiral Dennis C. Blair, General Wesley K. Clark, and dozens of other high-ranking former officials from all branches of the armed forces.

Likewise, dozens of the nation’s largest companies – including Pfizer, Starbucks, and Wal-Mart to name a few – also echoed the arguments put forth nine years earlier by a similar list of corporations.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelb...mative-action/

This should be interesting. Republicans/conservatives typically support big business and the military, and want Affirmative Action gone. The military and big business want Affirmative Action intact. I wonder how it'll shake out.

[Adak]

Originally Posted by Spexxvet

http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelb...mative-action/

This should be interesting. Republicans/conservatives typically support big business and the military, and want Affirmative Action gone. The military and big business want Affirmative Action intact. I wonder how it'll shake out.

What IS "affirmative action"?

It's painted with a brush of "fairness", but affirmative action is also discrimination, and I so much wish we'd move away from all that CRAP.

If someone is the best applicant for the job, and is a good employee (on time, doesn't yell at the customers, doesn't stink, etc.), then hire him or her. If they don't meet the above requirements, then don't hire them.

Putting up barriers to some races/ethnicities, and not doing it for others, is just wrong. In some professions, it has really wrought havoc (police and fire, for two examples). These were jobs that were both hotbeds of discrimination before the ruling for affirmative action, so no really easy answer presents itself. I just don't believe you will ever eliminate discrimination, by enacting reverse discrimination.

[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by Adak

I just don't believe you will ever eliminate discrimination, by enacting reverse discrimination.

I think this is apparent at this point. Yet, someone correct me if I'm wrong, I thought affirmative action was just suppose to be a transition phase between outright discrimination and equality?

Outright discrimination and racism in the pre-60's led to institutionalized inequalitiy and, in general, blacks did not stand an chance against whites in gaining jobs for this reason once the civil rights act was passed. Therefore, affirmative action was suppose to help the current generation, at that time, while "equality" was supposed to help the next generation and affirmative action could be phased out.

It just so happened that inequality, which has roots in power, doesn't just disappear if we pass a law and we never got to the "point" where affirmative action could be phased not. Now it seems we are just in a racial limbo phase where we can't just stop affirmative action due to social inequalities but we know it is not an overall temporary solution.

This is also an issue that where personal stories are all over the place (very good and very bad) but it is hard to generalize the overall effect.

[Happy Monkey]

The mantra against affirmative action is "equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome".

But if you don't get equality in outcome, then there are two choices:
1) There was not equality in opportunity
2) One group is inherently inferior

I don't believe 2), so I'll support affirmative action until we've had a few generations of equality in outcome.

[Ibby]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

The mantra against affirmative action is "equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome".

But if you don't get equality in outcome, then there are two choices:
1) There was not equality in opportunity
2) One group is inherently inferior

I don't believe 2), so I'll support affirmative action until we've had a few generations of equality in outcome.

a
fucking
MEN.

sing it.

[DanaC]

Well said that cheerful simian.

I heard an interesting snippet on the radio today. Came into it halfway through, so don;t know what the study they were referring to was, but whatever it was it showed that both men and women instinctively trust men more than women in positions of authority, or somesuch.

There was a woman on there who was saying that she'd always been anti-positive discrimination, but having heard the details of the study and looking at how that plays out in whatever field they were talking about, she was reconsidering her position.

One of the problems with inequality in hiring, is that until there is a strong and viable picture in mind of the unfairly treated group, be that along race or gender lines, in position, they will always be up against a barrier. It doesn't have to be a thought out conspiracy. And it isn't always a case of one group being prejudiced against another. Sometimes it is just that certain constructed expectations of that group are so deeply embedded in our culture and national psyche that they blind people to other possibilities. And so deeply embedded that we don't notice them guiding our decision making.

[footfootfoot]

Malcolm Gladwell discusses this issue at length in his book, Blink
There is one part where he discusses "Blind Auditions."

This from another forum:

This article by Georgie Binks in CBC news describes that phenomenon. A couple of quoted paragraphs from the article:

"If you look at a 1997 study conducted by two American university professors, Claudia Goldin of Harvard and Cecilia E. Rouse of Princeton, you can see why the blind auditions are vital. In 1970, before blind auditions were held, fewer than 5 per cent of players in the top five orchestras in the United States were women. Once blind auditions were used that number jumped to 25 per cent and now stands at about 50 per cent.

Trombonist Abby Conant is well known in the battle for equality in the treatment of female musicians. In his latest book, Blink, Malcolm Gladwell writes about how Conant auditioned for the Munich Philharmonic in 1980. It was a blind audition pitting Conant, who the orchestra believed was a male, (her audition letter was addressed to Herr Abbie Conant) and 32 men. When the finalists’ numbers were called, there was amazement that she had been chosen. Initially Conant was hired, but then was demoted to second trombone, beginning years of battles."

another fascinating reply in the same thread: (bold mine)

Mitchell, that's an interesting point, in that women and minority issues are often treated the same, even when they're not. And it's true while women's participation in orchestras has climbed significantly (outside of Vienna anyway), ethnic diversity has not kept pace.
But at least in some cases, screened auditions also benefit ethnic minorities. For example, see this article by William Osborne,"Why Did the Vienna Philharmonic Fire Yasuto Sugiyama?"

Here is a relevant paragraph from that article:

The memoirs published in 1970 by Otto Strasser, a former chairman of the Vienna Philharmonic, illustrate the attitudes Asian musicians have confronted:

“I hold it for incorrect that today the applicants play behind a screen; an arrangement that was brought in after the Second World War in order to assure objective judgments. I continuously fought against it, especially after I became Chairman of the Philharmonic, because I am convinced that to the artist also belongs the person, that one must not only hear, but also see, in order to judge him in his entire personality. [...] Even a grotesque situation that played itself out after my retirement was not able to change the situation. An applicant qualified himself as the best, and as the screen was raised, there stood a Japanese before the stunned jury. He was, however, not engaged, because his face did not fit with the ‘Pizzicato-Polka’ of the New Year’s Concert.”

It's actually not completely clear to me where Strasser stood on this, whether he thought it was grotesque that a Japanese man won the screened audition or whether he thought that it was grotesque because the Japanese man was not hired because of his race.

Either way, these kinds of arguments have been around a very long time.

[BigV]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

The mantra against affirmative action is "equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome".

But if you don't get equality in outcome, then there are two choices:
1) There was not equality in opportunity
2) One group is inherently inferior

I don't believe 2), so I'll support affirmative action until we've had a few generations of equality in outcome.

I agree with your conclusion and your logic. Well stated.

A question, please. How would you be able to judge "equality of outcome"? By comparable representation in a given sector, comparable to the general population? How broad or narrow do you think these measurements should be made? What about areas where the representation was already comparable? Would you consider eliminating such requirements? Perhaps after some generations, eh?

I don't know what all my prejudices are. I know some of them, but I don't know what subconscious factors affect my decisions. I think making strict quotas a means of enforcing acceptable ratios is wrong-headed, just as I've railed against other zero-tolerance, zero-judgement, zero-intelligence policies.

I think we as a society are moving in the right direction toward more tolerance and less prejudice, but it is a lesson that is learned gradually, and must be learned anew by each passing generation. The progress is s-l-o-w.

[Perry Winkle]

We are hiring at work. We would love more diversity. Regardless of the law we feel there's a great deal to gain from having diverse perspective.

My department is fully remote, so we will hire the right person no matter where they live in a range of timezones. But we don't get any applicants other than white males.

Either we are doing something to make ourselves unappealing to women and non-whites or there just aren't enough candidates demographically that we end up seeing them.

I don't know what my point is. Just something that was bugging me today and along the lines of Affirmative Action.

[infinite monkey]

Where, what?

I'll bring diversity! What do I need to know? Please make it something I know.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by BigV

A question, please. How would you be able to judge "equality of outcome"? By comparable representation in a given sector, comparable to the general population?

Pretty much.

How broad or narrow do you think these measurements should be made?

I'm not sure how to indicate the breadth of the measurements.

What about areas where the representation was already comparable? Would you consider eliminating such requirements? Perhaps after some generations, eh?

Disregarding the complications of tracking this and making particular rules field by field, I would support that in theory. It would depend on how it was managed in practice.

[tw]

Playing on people's emotions was easier than I realized. We were in a tournament in the home town of its perennial champion. I played on my teammate’s emotions by saying they were a racist town. Well, on the mat is either fear or confident aggression. That contest is the most powerful mind game I have experienced.

They won the tournament. But nobody would know until the very end. It was that close. In the finals, we won six out of the seven matches against their people. Emotions ran that deep.

One might have questioned my myth when one of their 12 was black. Did not matter. Once I had planted that emotion, facts no longer mattered.

Well the myth even worked on me. I could not keep their guy down. So I ran him out of bounds. Then turned and told him to stop running out of bounds. The ref stepped in before he could hit me. Then I pinned him rather aggressively.

At the end, I apologized for being so unnecessarily aggressive. Two years later, he told a friend how angry he still was.

I know exactly where that confidence and aggression came from. I played the reverse race card. Played on emotions. And strangely enough, my myth even inspired me. I had no idea that emotions based in a lie were so powerful.

At the time, I had no idea what I had done even to myself. I knew it was a myth. Only later realized how powerful and easy an emotion can overwhelm.

Nobody defeated that team. That year, we almost did by using emotions. Emotion is powerful tool. That emotion can also be a dangerous one. Affirmative action is about confronting that bias that we all have; and do not realize.

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by tw

Affirmative action is about confronting that bias that we all have; and do not realize.

Well said.

[Perry Winkle]

Originally Posted by infinite monkey

Where, what?

I'll bring diversity! What do I need to know? Please make it something I know.

Location: Telecommute. Framework: Ruby on Rails.

Learn it. There are always jobs.

[infinite monkey]

Originally Posted by Perry Winkle

Location: Telecommute. Framework: Ruby on Rails.

Learn it. There are always jobs.

Way out of my realm of knowledge. Rats.