Tuesday Sober Thread: All In The Name Of Diversity

75 years ago Nom's grandmother had to ride in the back of the bus. Because of that minorities are not expected to perform at the same level. Can't you understand what he is typing? By giving the guy that job and not firing him/her when they are a lazy sack of shit, they are effectively paying reparations. Thus the law suits exists for a reason.

 

I was never trained to see people of a different color as better or worse than myself.

Minorities have had a shitty history in this country.

These are two realities that have trouble reconciling with each other.

I think if we want the first statement to be true, we have to act like it's true, which would make affirmative action a racist act in itself.

Bring the flames.

 

My grandmother isn't even 75 years old, FWIW.

And once again, with feeling! Underqualified people shouldn't be hired. Fuckups should be fired. However, we should take context into account when making decisions about people, and one thing that affects context in this country is race!

YAYYYY!

 

... And because of this, in companies small enough not to have quotas, being a white male kicks ass. Because we are so easy to fire, we are easy to hire. Shocking that most of our really small (2-10 people) clients only hire white males or white females that are past child rearing age.

 

Let's assume/pretend an unjustly earned white privilege does exist. If so, why are Asians dragged into this? How do new European and African immigrants factor in?

Love Louis CK. However, while it indeed does not seem like a long time, we should also keep in mind that culture can change very fast. England was able breakaway from the Malthusian trap and to go from disgusting urban slums to something resembling a livable society (to our standards) in that time.

And Neolithic shifts to agriculture seemed to occur in the blink of an eye. Archaeologically, it looked like tribes just dropped what they were doing and started cultivating plants. These wholesale overhauls in lifestyle often occurred separately in just a few hundred years; maybe less than a hundred and almost certainly less than a millennium. So yes I agree that a century or two does not "feel" very long, but I don't think it's necessarily insufficient time for substantial changes in culture to occur. And yes, I probably could had came up with better examples to illustrate my point, but I think I got it across.

I say "in perpetuity" because from it appears that African Americans seem content to blame whites and society for their woes, instead of looking to see what African Americans can do. For example, Bill Cosby has been excoriated for being an "Uncle Tom." And mainstream society and white people have been enabling and even encouraging this attitude (e.g., white guilt).

And yeah, I'm not white. And have graduated college and have what most people would say is a "great" job coming out of school. So it's not like I'm bitter or defensive about my shortcomings or something like that. Although people's motivations should be tertiary to their analysis on the issue.

 

There isn't really any legal or regulatory authority enforcing AA to begin with. Government agencies have their quotas, but for everyone else they can do whatever they want. Seriously. I can decide that in my business every employee has to be a 21 year old blonde with big tits and as long as no one reports me to the EEOC and the EEOC can prove I'm engaging in discriminatory hiring practices I'm in the clear. Obviously this is an exaggeration but it seems like people are thinking that the government has some sort of AA hiring guidelines businesses have to abide by or else they'll get into trouble. For private businesses AA is just like any other potential liability, in the same category as having an unsafe workplace or selling potentially dangerous products: You're only in trouble if someone decides to sue you.

 

Fair.

I'll only speak to being black right now, though of course similar arguments can be made for other sorts of groups.

Some of it is the legacy of slavery. It's not exactly easy for a culture to simply flip the "on" switch as soon as the law changes, especially when the hearts and minds of a lot of people don't follow suit. And while lots of white people didn't own slaves, the vast majority of blacks in this country are the direct descendants thereof. It's not nearly as long ago as you'd like to think, and people don't just change that fast.

Some of it is racism. Even good people have unconscious biases that slip into their decisions all the time, and not everybody is a good person. This includes, obviously, black people. However, the people in power have the most leverage to let their biases affect others. White people aren't more racist than anybody else -- they can just be better at it.

Some of it isn't really anybody's "fault" right now, but it's still a very real effect. Being in a country where you're constantly reminded how different you are -- and before anybody has their own little AHA! moment, AA is not the same thing -- has an effect. The media suggesting that you have to be a certain way based on your skin color -- has an effect. Not even being able to point out where your ancestors are from on a map -- has an effect.

Look, everybody has issues. But imagine, for a second, that you're me. You're in your mostly-white 3rd grade class, and you have to do a project about your country of origin. Pretty much everybody else in the class can do it, but you have nothing more than a vague swath of land and absolutely no connection to the language or culture. It might start affecting you a little bit, don't you think?

 

Re: the bolded part. I'm curious, did you take a poll of the African-American community? I ask because at the last Black people meeting, I thought we agreed that the real problem wasn't white people, it was crackheads, homosexuals and Tyler Perry. I'll have to look at my minutes.

We haven't had centuries though. I keep saying stuff like this, but people:

Strom Thurmond died less than 10 year ago.

An elected official, who supported segregation, was in power, like, after the whole Y2K thing. He was a senator...after Justin Timberlake left N'sync. You were probably already thinking about college.

It's not that long ago people.

 

I gotta call bullshit on this one. My family has no idea where it came from, because my grandpa refuses to tell us. Does the fact that I only know "Europe" as my vague swath of land, and no connection to any language other than the dominant language of my culture mean that I can make the same arguments as you?

Yeah, and I didn't fucking vote for him.

Nor did I abduct your ancestors, or take part in slavery in any way.

Sins of forefathers past are not part of this discussion.

Explain to me why the racism of affirmative action is fair, TODAY.

 

Sure. Not knowing your heritage is a huge thing. I didn't say that Black people had a monopoly on it, simply that it's something that is part of the Black experience that most other people couldn't ever really understand. Something that underlines the fact that you're different.

Of course, your case is a bit different, because your grandpa has the option of telling you, he just doesn't.

Well, I was using Strom as a high profile example of an elected official DURING MY LIFETIME who had espoused segregationism. It was a direct response to anybody that thinks racism was so long ago. I wasn't blaming you for voting for him, or saying that anybody in this thread was racist.

But if you think the world has changed massively from 2003 until now (when, btw, he wasn't voted out, but simply died off), I have to disagree with you. Racism still alive, they just be concealin' it.

Sins of the forefathers are a huge part of the affirmative action discussion. You didn't choose to be born with privilege, but you were. So was I in a lot of ways, and part of being in a society is recognizing it.




Global question: Do you guys think racism is over? And if so, do you think that we should just ignore the consequences until people stop being so gosh-darned prejudiced?

 

Of course it's not over, there are still people that were raised to believe that any skin color than there own is the devil (black as well as white, as well as asian, as well as mexican/south american, the list is endless).

What I'd like to believe is that if we can all ignore color, then it will cease to be an issue. As a realist, I know this isn't an instant solution. What I'd like to do is raise my kids like I was raised, not thinking there is a difference in level of humanity between colors. Do you think Affirmative action promotes the future equality of all mankind?

Never noticed before, but you're a fucking idiot. You never watched Cops? White people are plenty fucked up.

 

People, it's pretty disingenuous of you to take something I said replying to somebody else out of context and then complain that it doesn't address another part of the issue. I was directly responding to what Bryan said. That's why I quoted him. It was part of a larger attempt to make one very simple point that is obviously not going to cover every facet of the AA debate. It is somewhat difficult for me to have every single post I make entirely explain the entire issue of AA in detail.

Yes, I think that there needs to be educational reform. Yes, I have given my own time and money to a program that I think does it in a very constructive way. No I don't think AA is a panacea, but I do think it can help treat some of the symptoms while we attack the disease. Yes I think that the family structure needs to be revised, but no I don't think that Black people are inherently stupider or less capable of forming families than other races, so yes I think we should examine what the factors are that lead to the discrepancy.

Yes I think that black people should share part of the blame and look at what they've done wrong but no I don't think that simply admonishing them to grab their bootstraps is enough. Yes I think that AA has some negative side effects especially when administered without though but no I don't think it's a fundamentally broken idea to take race/gender/etc. into consideration when hiring employees or admitting students.

I think I got most of it there.

 

No. But I do think that it helps level the playing field currently, and I think that's worth doing.

 

And this is where I want to bang my head against a wall. Promoting racism is never going to be the way to end racism. Pure and fucking simple.

 

Don't we have any friggin dykes on this board who can comment on this?

Seriously though, and I appreciated Nom's commentary here - this is as much of a discussion of what it is, not what it should be. I've hired several African Americans over the past 10 years. Even when hiring, I stop to think to myself, does this guy think I'm hiring him because he's black, and will it be an issue going forward with him...and/or his co-workers? And when I choose not to hire, I worry about the perception from the other end.

One issue that hasn't been as thoroughly addressed is the sexuality side. I can tell you with absolute certainty that if you are a lesbian, you can do whatever the fuck you want in the corporate world. Human resource people eat that shit up. Woman? Check. Gay? Check. A manager can pretty much never fuck with you. I work in healthcare, and there is no shortage of homosexuals in this industry. What's odd is that even though it could possibly be to your advantage to openly share your sexuality prior to hiring, most people choose not to. In the issue of race, however, it's automatically out there.

 

This attitude just flummoxes me. "If you ignore problems, they disappear." As Nom has pointed out, you (and I) have the luxury of ignoring our race. But for millions of Americans, it is a background effect of their everyday interactions. They can't ignore color, because reality doesn't let them.

When minorities and women (technically, not a minority) choose to 'ignore' color and the like, they suddenly look around one day and notice that they're the only black guy in the office. That if they look at the CEOs of companies in their industry, there's exceedingly few people who look like them. They pick up a copy of The New Yorker or The Atlantic, and notice that 11 of the 12 names writing articles are male. And once they notice these things, ignoring them doesn't seem like such a good idea anymore.

Look, if we could all start from scratch, this would be great. But we have to deal with the world that actually exists, and that is one where racism exists.

It's one thing to say the equivalent of "OK, let's all begin the race at the starting line without advantages, and see how we do!" But what you're suggesting is the equivalent of giving one group a 50 yard head start and saying, "Why must we always talk about how far ahead we started? Why can't you just run the best race you can!? If we give you an advantage to let you catch up, it would be reverse race-ism*!"

Because homosexuality is not a legally protected class. Federally and in most states, you can hire and fire as many or as few gays as you want, and be as blatant about your discrimination as you want. The reason that some may not wish to come out is that if they did, they might be fired because of their sexuality with no legal recourse.


*I apologize. That pun was bad. I couldn't resist.

 

Are you suggesting that I should NOT raise my kids to believe all people are equal?

I see it as a starting point, not a cure-all.

 

Yes, but only if it applies to women fucking us. We need women fucking less every other race out there and more Asians.