A few thoughts on rascism / affirmative action

[ShakeZula06]

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Did it ever occur to you that maybe 5 white people might be easier working with a white guy then a black guy because of people like you running around saying it'll be uncomfortable? More comfortable working with people that share the same ancestory? Why is that not something that comes to my head when Im talking to someone? "hm, he doesn't have Irish and German grandmother, only italian and puertica rican, now it'll just be to awkward."


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My observations are that the shorter and less significant the interaction, the less it matters what someone's ancestry is.

Of course I could do a business transaction or even have a business partnership with anyone of any background, and the differences wouldn't matter. But if you identify closely with your job and view your colleagues as an extended family of sorts, then it could make a difference.

Some people insist on having family businesses and excluding everyone who is non-family. I suppose you don't see a problem in that, right? Others accept all comers. This is the modern norm so that can't be bad either. What's wrong philosophically with drawing the line somewhere in between? What if race is not specifically mentioned but I only hire people I like and they happen to be mostly white? Would I be doing something wrong? If so, then why can't I choose people I like to work with for whatever reason I want?

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been a while since I've been a the politics forum, so even though you said this a while a go here's a my reply-

As others including you have already advocated, I think you should have the right to hire whoever you choose to hire, sa I have posted in other threads, most recently one concerning hiring illegals.

You have took my arguement that it may only be uncomfortable having biracial working conditions b/c people like you are running around saying that common heritage and dialect is best, and changed it. You say in return that I should be allowed to hire who I want (basically) and I agree, however it doesn't address my arguement.

I see nothing uncomfortable about working with opposing races, and I don't see why it would be (assuming you can speak the same language of course) and I don't see why anyone couldn't work just as effiecient as with his one color/culture etc. Can you fill me in as why?

As I said this is just addressing why it would be uncomfortable working with the opposite race, not whether you should be allowed to hire who you want based on whatever standards you want to.

[hmkpoker]

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1) It's an attempt to get employers and people in general to stop believing the stereotype that white people are smarter because they're white. There is no way to logically equate the color of someone's skin to intelligence. To pretend that there is a link is ridiculous -- it's looking for patterns where none exist.

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There is a well-known correlation between IQ scores and race, and last I checked I think whites were nearly one SD above on average. Correctly establishing the casual basis, however, is tricky to do, and the AA advocates as well as the stat racists don't understand how to do it.

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Creating more diversified workplaces and schools will help people to realize this when they have a wider range of experiences with the other races in question.

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My girlfriend, who was struggling to maintain her 3.6 GPA requirement to keep her scholarship, was not too happy about the black kid who got a free ride and had to maintain a whopping 2.5.

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These past inequities, in which the completely under-qualified white was given the job over a well-qualified black, led to the current situation in which African Americans are made to start at a disadvantage due to economic hardship almost across the board.

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Common sense tells us that a business that hires underqualified individuals is doomed to failure. The incentive to hire good workers is inherent in capitalism.

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1) The poor white schmo is more likely, based simply on the distribution of white SES, to be a poor schmo because of his personal choices or as a direct result of the choices of his parents.

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What the hell is this based on? White people have to take responsibility for their poor SES, but black people don't? Couldn't we just as easily say that blacks are more predisposed to making poor personal choices?

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2) Here in the Detroit area, it is extremely segregated, so my experience may be far from typical, but my family members don't really come into contact with very many minorities (and they're friends with none). This allows them to believe stereotypes with impugnity because their faulty beliefs are never challenged. This is the other reason I believe that AA is fair in this situation -- if it helps the other people in the majority-white work place (if it weren't majority white, they wouldn't be concerned with AA, after all) come into contact with more minorities, it should, in the long-run (we're talking EV-style long-run here) lead to a more equitable, non-stereotyping society.

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So using distribution/placement methods for some and not others will make us all love each other? Do you think ignorant white people are going to take kindly to the darkie who just got an office position because of AA?

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EDIT to add: I'm not terribly familiar with employment AA, my response was based more on the college admissions-style AA where applicants are shown more favor due to minority status. I'm not sure if any employment AA works like that or not...

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Me too, actually. I'm just arguing from principle [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[BillUCF]

In the controversial book, "The Bell Curve" by Herrnstein and Murray the evidence of racially grouped IQ scores is demonstrated. The vast amount of data in the text is rigorously supported by fundamental statistics.

What most people don't know about the book is the conclusion states that their data is unable to explian why there is a difference in IQ among races. Is it genetic, socio-economic, or something else? Like most answers in science it is probably a combination of multiple factors.

By the way the Asians scored the highest.
To bad I can't move my white self to Japan and get free college?

[pvn]

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So do hotdog vendors.

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Thanks to the Civil Rights Act.

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So what's the difference between buying labor and buying hotdogs?

[Darryl_P]

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You have took my arguement that it may only be uncomfortable having biracial working conditions b/c people like you are running around saying that common heritage and dialect is best, and changed it. You say in return that I should be allowed to hire who I want (basically) and I agree, however it doesn't address my arguement.


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Sorry about that. I wasn't trying to pull a fast one. Rather, I thought you were coming from this angle. My apologies.

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I see nothing uncomfortable about working with opposing races, and I don't see why it would be (assuming you can speak the same language of course) and I don't see why anyone couldn't work just as effiecient as with his one color/culture etc. Can you fill me in as why?


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I suppose the answer lies in what's important to you in life and how your job fits into that. If you work mainly for the money and are always looking forward to the weekend, then I can see it not mattering who you work with. Your time at work isn't that important and so the stuff that happens at work, including who you work with, isn't that important either, unless there's something extreme which there almost never is.

Some people, like me, refuse to accept that 2 days a week are mine and 5 belong to someone else (my employer). I want 7 out of 7 for me, so as a human with a much bigger brain than other animals, I can be at least as free as other animals with more advantages to boot.

It took me a while, roughly 11 years after entering the workforce, to achieve this level of independence and freedom, but once I got here, I started thinking about such luxury items as who I want to associate with on a daily basis and why. Before that it didn't matter to me who I worked with because I was a slave anyway, so what chores my slavemasters gave me and who I had to do them with were pretty much irrelevant.

Being free gave me time to find some higher goals in life than just making money, bulding a career and being a better cog in the socio-technological machine.

One of those higher goals involves looking at how the world works and what threats there might be down the road to my family's survival, not just while I'm alive, but in generations to come.

It turns out that, in my analysis, the biggest threat comes from other humans and not from the animal kingdom, outer space, or random forces that can't be controlled.

It made me realize that the world is heavily overpopulated and, whether we admit it or not, we are constantly encroaching on each other's habitats, usually grinning and bearing it, hoping it doesn't get worse, without realizing that it WILL get worse until something drastic happens like a major war for example.

WHEN (not if) this happens, people will band together in groups as they have done at each similar stage in history, and the group to which one belongs usually goes along the lines of ancestry. This is because we are products of several thousands of years of evolution/development and we share most of that with people of similar ancestry. These people are like brothers in a way, because they are more similar to us than everyone else. When it comes time to band together with a larger group of people in a major conflict, these are the ones we will automatically choose.

So basically I'm at the stage in my life now that money is not so important because I've got enough of it, and making more is not all that taxing, so I'm preparing for the next major conflict, trying to predict where and when it will be and forging alliances to make sure my family comes out in as advantageous a way as possible.

To a typical onlooker it may seem like I have a hell of a lot of free time (which I do), and that explains my nutty beliefs and ideas. But if you ask yourself the really hard questions like what's really important, what are your goals in life, what happens after you achieve those goals, what happens next, ie. why are you alive, etc. you will very likely end up with either a similar philosophy to mine, or one that is diametrically opposite. There really isn't a lot of middle ground except if you introduce unlikely externalities like extra-terrestrial life wreaking havoc with humans, computers taking over the world, technology leading to immortality etc., all of which are just ways some people's psychologies cope with issues which are otherwise uncomfortable to deal with.

Note: this is my personal view which I mention here because you asked. I am not suggesting anyone adopt it as their own, nor am I trying to present it as cold, hard fact, even if it plays out as such in my world.

[Darryl_P]

I should also add that the concept of similar ancestry is not 100% clear cut since many people don't even know their ancestry. In these cases, it won't be the ancestry itself which determines what side a person is on in a conflict, but rather just a common set of values. There will be a high, but not 100%, correlation between people sharing the common set of values and ancestry, so care must be taken not to assume it's 100% when it really isn't.

But if you have a single variable that can get you an instant high correlation, why not use it, especially when you can do it responsibly taking the correlation for what it is (ie. high but not 100%)!? Just because the media and the PC movement are trying to get you not to!? Yeah right.

[FlFishOn]

Permited written exams must be narrowly tailored to test specific job skills. General intelligence can not be tested and used as a hiring criteria.

The reasoning is obvious. If a group tended to perform poorly and were less likely to be hired then that would be de facto discrimination.

[TomCollins]

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Permited written exams must be narrowly tailored to test specific job skills. General intelligence can not be tested and used as a hiring criteria.

The reasoning is obvious. If a group tended to perform poorly and were less likely to be hired then that would be de facto discrimination.

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You really have no clue what you are talking about. Three years ago, I took a "general intelligence" test when interviewing for a job. It had absolutely nothing to do with specific job skills.

[Riverman]

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Permited written exams must be narrowly tailored to test specific job skills. General intelligence can not be tested and used as a hiring criteria.

The reasoning is obvious. If a group tended to perform poorly and were less likely to be hired then that would be de facto discrimination.

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You really have no clue what you are talking about. Three years ago, I took a "general intelligence" test when interviewing for a job. It had absolutely nothing to do with specific job skills.

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This is very strange as such a test is against the law according to the supreme court. What job was it?

[RedBean]

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EDIT to add: I'm not terribly familiar with employment AA, my response was based more on the college admissions-style AA where applicants are shown more favor due to minority status. I'm not sure if any employment AA works like that or not...

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Me too, actually. I'm just arguing from principle [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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Guys, AA in employment is nothing like what it sounds like you guys are describing in the college admissions aspect.

Put simply, there are no quotas, there is no favoritism to any minority race or gender, and discrimination is discrimination. The law explicitly outlines that you can't discriminate against anyone, white or black.

In fact, hiring an underqualified black person to fill self-imposed quotas instead of more qualified whites is just as much cause for discrimination suits as the opposite.

I'm not familiar with the AA aspect you guys describe in college, and it sounds like it relies alot on reverse discrimination, which is not right.

In fact, it almost sounds like AA is two totally different animals between employment and university.