Apik0r0s 2008-07-08 10:15:16 PM
This is NOT Affirmative Action as we know it. Hiring "a few qualified Negroes for good jobs in our own company." is a far cry from forcing everbody's company to hire people of certain races and genders, qualification notwithstanding.

And of course, by "Affirmative Action as we know it," what you mean is "Affirmative Action as the white people would like to vilify it."

Quotas were already ruled unconstitutional in the 1970s and are no longer being practice, and yet you will find no shortage of young conservatives who weren't even alive in the 1970s who still insist on whining about it in the present tense.

Now and days, affirmative action works like this: If you have a black guy and a white guy of equal qualifications but you can only hire one of them, then you give the black guy a slight edge. In other words, you can't claim that the black guy was unqualified for the job, unless you concede that the white guy who got turned down was likewise unqualified. Basically you're making the assumption that all black people are unqualified to begin with.

If affirmative action really worked in the way that you describe it, then why don't studies support it? For instance, someone with a white name gives you a 50% better chance of receiving a call back than someone with a black name, despite identical resumes (e.g., randomly mail out identical resumes to different employers, and see who gets a better response.). White people can receive a 30% boost with various honors and awards, where as black people receive no such boost with the same honors and the same awards. A white guy who's served 18 months in prison for selling drugs has an easier time finding work than a black guy with no criminal record with otherwise identical resumes and backgrounds, meaning that merely being black represents the a greater penalty in finding work than being a convicted drug dealer.

In your world, affirmative action results in black people being hired despite being less qualified. Unfortunately, real world data says otherwise.

globalwarmingpraiser 2008-07-09 12:01:08 AM
Yes, quotas exist. They are there in fact if not in name.

Dodos haven't gone extinct. They still exist, only now we call them pigeons.

The fact of the matter is that the only way you can tell if an employer is not racist is if he hire a proportionate number of people based on population.

That's a lot like saying that the only way to tell if someone has AIDS is whether or not he's called in a lot of sick days. No, it's not the only way, nor a particularly way, nor a way that people generally rely on in the real world. But hey, it would be a great strawman if they did, right?

Imagine an employer who had 10 black people come in and apply for a job. The applicants come in and 5 of them are well qualified for the job. They are also "keeping it real" dressing and acting like they are on the street. They use slang, wear clothes that hang off them and are in loud colors. The employer tells them each that while they appear qualified they do not present a professional appearance.

Hmm.... let's rephrase this a bit...

Imagine an employer who had 10 blackwhite people come in and apply for a job. The applicants come in and 5 of them are well qualified for the job. They are also "keeping it real" dressing and acting like they are on the streetin the Klan. They use slangquote Hitler, wear clothes that hang off themhooded robes and are in loud colors. The employer tells them each that while they appear qualified they do not present a professional appearance. He cannot hire them based on this he is sorry.

I don't really know the point of young hypothetical scenario, but it sure was fun, wasn't it?

Now, I admit this is a rather extreme example but the fact is that only by counting the number of people of different ethnicities can there be any tangible way of proving discrimitation. You cannot tell what is going on in a persons mind when they choose to hire, not hire or fire someone. But unfortunately some people seem to think that you can by counting.

Which people?

You're right about one thing, discrimination is really hard to prove. But you're assuming that the courts will therefore respond by bending over backwards and providing a conviction on the flimsiest of evidence, where as in real life, they'll probably just shrug their shoulders and say, "Well, even he's a complete racist, there's no way we can prove that in a court of law, so there's nothing we can do unless you can provide some sort of hard evidence."

Again, if businesses were so terrified of getting sued for discrimination, then why are they so quick to turn down qualified minorities who have identical qualifications to the white people who get hired instead? You would think that they would respond by snatching up the few qualified minorities they could find before anyone else did. Especially considering the correlation between race and socioeconomic factors.

Let me put it this way: If 4.0 white kids were a dime a dozen while 4.0 black kids were pretty rare, and if you were scared of being sued for discrimination based on perceptions of quota-based lawsuits, then wouldn't you want to hire the 4.0 black kid when you had the chance? Rather than turning him down in favor of another white kid? If you aren't going to hire the qualified black kid, then which black kid would you hire?