Affirmative Action

Castor Troy · Post by **Castor Troy** » 2005-04-22 01:08pm

What is your stance on Affirmative Action?

Here's mine...

I believe that positions of jobs and education should be based on performance and the student's determination to work hard, NOT on the color of their skin. Now, it's letting the more qualified white students get turned down over less qualified minorities. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a rascist or anything, I just believe in equal opportunity.

And, this is designed to combat rascism, when in fact...it is rascist itself...

Enforcer Talen · Post by **Enforcer Talen** » 2005-04-22 01:09pm

depends on the definition. which one you using?

Castor Troy · Post by **Castor Troy** » 2005-04-22 01:12pm

Wikipedia has it nice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_Action

"Affirmative action (US English), or positive discrimination (British English), is a policy or a program providing advantages for people of a minority group who are seen to have traditionally been discriminated against, with the aim of creating a more egalitarian society. This consists of preferential access to education, employment, health care, or social welfare.

In employment, affirmative action may also be known as employment equity. In this context affirmative action requires that institutions increase hiring and promotion of candidates of mandated groups."
-wikipedia.com

Post by **Alyrium Denryle** » 2005-04-22 01:12pm

I hate it with an all consuming passion. There is no reason why a less qualified black person should be able to get a job or an education over a more qualified white person based upon the color of their skin. Personally I dont think race should be a question that is ever asked on college applications job applications or anything else, it should be left off the damn form.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2005-04-22 01:27pm

Proponents of affirmative action assume that whites have an unfair advantage in getting jobs because of institutional racism, hence the only way to achieve "equal opportunity" is to provide a counter-balancing bias in the legal system.

Foes of affirmative action assume that there is no racial bias in hiring practices at all, so any bias in the legal system would unfairly tilt the playing field toward minorities and away from whites.

Frankly, anyone who thinks that racism has already been eliminated in the workplace is just plain ignorant. However, at the same time, a second and perhaps more compelling argument against affirmative action is that it creates a culture of resentment and doubt about minority hires where one always suspects that he got the job on quotas (in much the same way that a pretty young female employee is often assumed to have gotten the job because of her looks). So in that sense, affirmative action actually harms the perception of minorities on the job.

I speak as one who has no particular stake either way. I don't personally need or want affirmative action to get a job, but at the same time, I don't buy the naive notion that racism is already a thing of the past.

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2005-04-22 01:35pm

I like Chris Rock's comment on the subject.

"I don't think that I should get a job over a white guy who's more qualified than me just because I'm black ... but if it's a tie? Fuck 'em."

Castor Troy · Post by **Castor Troy** » 2005-04-22 01:36pm

Plus, it hurts the credibility of the minorities that used affirmative action to get to their positions, too.

Another being which would a boss hire, a hard working man who busted his ass, didn't use his race as a means to gain opportunity, and went to the same college as the minority; or a minority who used affirmative action to get into college?

Kuroneko · Post by **Kuroneko** » 2005-04-22 02:00pm

Darth Wong wrote:Foes of affirmative action assume that there is no racial bias in hiring practices at all, so any bias in the legal system would unfairly tilt the playing field toward minorities and away from whites. ... I speak as one who has no particular stake either way. I don't personally need or want affirmative action to get a job, but at the same time, I don't buy the naive notion that racism is already a thing of the past.

I don't think this characterization is entirely fair. It is certaintly possible for a "foe" to simply doubt that the problem can be solved by adding more hypocrisy. Positive discrimination is a meaningless distinction, as positive toward one group is necessarily negative toward another; many would object to labelling Jim Crow laws as 'positive discrimination', even though technically it was positive toward whites. The only relevant difference here is in degree. That would be the principled answer.

That said, although I would be quick to judge affirmative action as immoral in principle, I am supicious of simple answers to any situation (the world is seldom simple). Saying something is a priori immoral is not the same thing as saying it should never be done--there are sometimes necessary evils, as much as I wish there wouldn't be. A total lack of racism is not necessary to object to affirmative action; even in purely utilitarian terms, the real question it affects actual levels of both racism and equality of opportunity, and that is society-dependent. In societies like that of South Africa, the issue can even be rather clear-cut. In 'Western' countries... not so much, since affirmative action can also exasperate rather than help, by creating this perception of non-desert which you acknowledged.

Pick · Post by **Pick** » 2005-04-22 02:32pm

I would like to get a job based on my skills and experience as opposed to quotas and PR nonsense, however I have encountered even in my limited life experience that there is a serious difference of level of respect and opportunity granted to women in many workplace environments I am familiar with (hence of the most concern to me AA wise). I do think something should be done to even the odds, but I do not think that the system currently in place is ideal. It does breed animosity at times, and I think it gives the wrong impression of people's capability.

Still, I prefer the current way of dealing with it over a system without any affermative action, because I feel without it things would be much worse. Racism and sexism still run very deeply in people, even if they don't think about it or believe it does. It's better to try to have some sort of fetter on how far that it goes...

Just my 2c.

The Third Man · Post by **The Third Man** » 2005-04-22 02:54pm

I take a pragmatic view. AA can be a powerful tool for encouraging members of segregated or isolated communities into the wider population. It's an economic tool and therefore inherently measurable and manageable by numbers. I'm not saying AA should be the tool of first resort or a blanket policy, but neither would I want to totally discard such a useful tool on principle.

As I've said before: The worst case effects on me (as a white man) are a fairly trivial few percent reduction in my chance of success in the job market; the potential best-case benefit is keeping my community from resembling a warzone.

Chmee · Post by **Chmee** » 2005-04-22 02:57pm

*looks at topic*

*considers 10-foot pole*

Nope .... this is right up there with the Middle East for being a topic people just can't discuss without careening into emotional overload .....

Castor Troy · Post by **Castor Troy** » 2005-04-22 02:59pm

Actually, this discussion has been relatively calm.

Damn.

Wicked Pilot · Post by **Wicked Pilot** » 2005-04-22 03:09pm

There of course is the arguement that it's not fair that because you're black living in a black neighborhood you are more likely to receive a substandard education and not be competitive against your white counterparts. Therefore it follows that AA simply evens the score.

Castor Troy · Post by **Castor Troy** » 2005-04-22 03:15pm

Wicked Pilot wrote:There of course is the arguement that it's not fair that because you're black living in a black neighborhood you are more likely to receive a substandard education and not be competitive against your white counterparts. Therefore it follows that AA simply evens the score.

Actually, AA also goes for other minorities that typically don't live in poverty, such as Asians and those from around the region of India.

The_Nice_Guy · Post by **The_Nice_Guy** » 2005-04-22 03:32pm

IIRC, aren't asians actually exempted from AA when applications for colleges are considered?

TWG

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2005-04-22 04:10pm

People seem to think its quotas or return to Jim Crow.

There IS a third option. Have some kind of checkup system where if one guy was hired over another simply because of race issues, its grounds for a discrimination lawsuit. The primary problem is thats an idealized solution and I can't think of how to implement it.

Petrosjko · Post by **Petrosjko** » 2005-04-22 04:21pm

At the root, the educational system has to be fixed so that the inner cities aren't cranking out a disproportionate number of unqualified graduates. There is merit to what WP said, that minorities from bad neighborhoods are screwed in the modern job pool. But the answer to the problem isn't foisting underqualified people into the system. It's not fair to them or the institutions (higher education, private and public sector employment) that have to deal with them. No house rests well on a shaky foundation.

Once you remove the most rational reason for discrimination, you can move on to flattening the irrational ones.

irishmick79 · Post by **irishmick79** » 2005-04-22 04:51pm

the problem with AA is that it's an unsatisfactory solution to an extraordinarily difficult social problem. I guess it's an admirable effort to change the culture regarding issues of race and employment, but ultimately it fails in its effort to erase serious social divisions.

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2005-04-22 04:53pm

Affirmative action is the single stupidest idea I have ever seen implemented. Its stated goal is to eliminate racism by perpetuating the idea that race should be used as a hiring practice, and cheapens the accomplishment of minorities who would succeed with or without it.

Lancer · Post by **Lancer** » 2005-04-22 05:05pm

The_Nice_Guy wrote:IIRC, aren't asians actually exempted from AA when applications for colleges are considered?

yup. the catchphrase is "underrepresented minorities"

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2005-04-22 05:15pm

Matt Huang wrote:
The_Nice_Guy wrote:IIRC, aren't asians actually exempted from AA when applications for colleges are considered?
yup. the catchphrase is "underrepresented minorities"

In most CA and West Coast schools, East Asians are actually DOCKED points on their SAT's for reporting their ethnicity, since they're so over-represented at the college/university level.

Boyish-Tigerlilly · Post by **Boyish-Tigerlilly** » 2005-04-22 05:37pm

There of course is the arguement that it's not fair that because you're black living in a black neighborhood you are more likely to receive a substandard education and not be competitive against your white counterparts. Therefore it follows that AA simply evens the score.

I agree inner city schools suck and need to be fixed, but don't whites and other types of people also come from shitty schools? What about them?

Wicked Pilot · Post by **Wicked Pilot** » 2005-04-22 05:38pm

Petrosjko wrote:At the root, the educational system has to be fixed so that the inner cities aren't cranking out a disproportionate number of unqualified graduates.

As said here before enacting AA was like putting a bandaid on a large festering wound so the bleeding would stop. Once the wound heals the bandaid comes off. Unfortunately in this case once the bandaid got put on the effort to heal the wound practically grounded to a halt, posssibly due to over reliance on the bandaid. So decades later the wound ain't much better and we're left with the inevitable question of what the fuck do we do now?

Petrosjko · Post by **Petrosjko** » 2005-04-22 05:46pm

Wicked Pilot wrote:As said here before enacting AA was like putting a bandaid on a large festering wound so the bleeding would stop. Once the wound heals the bandaid comes off. Unfortunately in this case once the bandaid got put on the effort to heal the wound practically grounded to a halt, posssibly due to over reliance on the bandaid. So decades later the wound ain't much better and we're left with the inevitable question of what the fuck do we do now?

This is a bandaid that has not only not stopped the bleeding, it has infected the wound.

Jaepheth · Post by **Jaepheth** » 2005-04-22 06:49pm

My opinion on this is that there should be no laws regarding racial prejudice. I think people should have the right to be racist. If someone doesn't want to hire me because I'm chinese, fine, I don't want to work for them. I'd rather know where I stand with someone rather than have someone pretend to be civil toward me all the while having hate boiling beneath the surface.