Affirmative Action Unnecessary?
 

I work in an office with 7 people. The owner is a Christian Caucasions. All of the employees are "Christian" Caucasions. This county is about 70% white

RACE AND ETHNICITY
White 70.9
Black or African American 18.1
American Indian and Alaska native 0.3
Asian 3.7
Native Hawaiian and other Pacific islander 0.0
Some other race 5.1
Two or more races 1.9
Hispanic or Latino 9.7

and we are about 2 miles from the city of Camden, NJ., which is about 17% white.

Demographics
As of the census of 2000
16.84% White,
53.35% Black or African American,
0.54% Native American,
2.45% Asian,
0.07% Pacific Islander,
22.83% from other races,
3.92% from two or more races.
38.82% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

If hiring practices were truly color blind, shouldn't this office have at least one minority working here?
Since no minority works here, is there something going on (consciously or unconsciously)?
Is it right that no minority works here, given the makeup of the local population?

What are the actual racial demographics in Optometry schools ... not just entry, but graduation numbers? This would say more about your hiring pool than your community demographics.

Hiring should be based solely on ability. Not race, gender, religion, or any other granfalloon.

Admittedly, I am surprised that you don't have any Jews in your office.

If you're that uptight about it, tell your boss to fire his wife who's working as the receptionist/bookkeeper, and tell him he has to hire a black man.

Not all are professionals. We're talking receptionist, tech, office manager, billing clerk.

Each one of those non-professional jobs you list has its own set of required qualifications. Was the most qualified candidate hired in each instance?

Not in my opinion. There have been 5 other hires in the time I've been here - all white Christians.

BTW wolf, I'm not "uptight" about it. I'm just trying to show why affirmative action is necessary.

She doesn't work here.

Leicester statistics in the same format:
63.8 - White
3.07% - Black
29.9% - Asian
0.5% - Chinese
0.32% - Other race
2.32% - Mixed race

Now when I look around my office I would say that approx 25% of the staff are non-white, which roughly matches the population.

I would say this has been the case in every office I've worked in (the percentage roughly reflects the diversity of the location I mean, not the precise percentage shown above).

On the one hand I find the idea of affirmative action quite sinister - choosing a candidate because of the colour of their skin rather than because of their ability. However I find the idea of an all-white office in such an ethnically diverse area rather sinister as well - for exactly the same reason.

Unusual in a small business setting.

I am sorry that you didn't get into Yale. But not too sorry, when weighed against a minority's chance of getting in, were it not for affirmative action. In the not-so-distant-past, black people were not allowed to go to most colleges. When measured against that, your loss is, well, not even close. I hope you got an education from Brown or Penn or Duke....

Was she a racist? Quotas in colleges are often because the administration feels that the college experience is better when you share it some people who are not just like you. Then there are the athletes and musicians who got in when you didn't, and it wasn't for their ethnicity, and they didn't have the academic qualification that you had. They had other things to offer than SAT scores. Did the woman show disdain for those folks, too?

The black people in your college club were not kept out of college because they were black, were they? I wonder if their perspective would have been different if they had better scholastic credentials than you, but you got in and they didn't, just because they were black.

Post the whole quote, because when AA was used in my office that person got NO respect. People walked past their office to go to someone's office who got their job based on their criteria alone.
How would you feel if you got a job instead of someone with more education, more experience, more training and a higher license? I would feel like a schmuck and decline the job.
The fact is that no one is kept out of college because they are black or female now, so the point is moot.
AA is harmful, only harmful, for all involved.
No, she was not racist, she just wants the best students to get the positions in the school. The kid that got the position had not even been involved in their school's theatre group and did not even have the GPA Yale required to get into their Theatre school (just the best minority applicant that year).
Again, since you did not read it the first time, it was GPA, clubs, student government and community service that I had been involved with. She begged me to wait a year (not something I was willing to do).
The other student had no extra-curricular activities.
White male students recently sued a major Texas school for doing this, they won, I am glad they did. Lowering standards should be illegal in all cases.

I didn't post that part because it didn't seems germane. I am a white male. When a male idiot douche bag was promoted instead of several other better qualified white male people, the others were pissed. AA has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Maybe they aren't kept out because of Affirmative Action and similar laws and policies.

That's your opinion.

We need to force the NY diamond market, Curves and the NAACP to fully and equally integrate at all levels then.

AA is a farce. Plain and simple. To hire someone based purely on color is the same as having token negros to empty the trash just so you can say you hired one. Same for any other color. There is an idea in America that you cannot be discriminated against unless you are a non-white. That crap has got to stop. For every racist white person you find I can show you a black who is equally racist. Hiring practices should be based solely on merit. Nothing more, nothing less. Let the chips fall where they will after that. Screw afirmative blacksion.

In Australia we have programs which are kind of similar to affirmative action. Actually, they are very much based on the same principal, cept they're only for Aboriginal people. If you're an indigenous australian you get low rate loans, special education packages, and greater options for employment although not in the same way that AA is implimented in the US. Basically, if you hire an indigenous person, the government will subsidise their wages under some government training schemes.

I believe that in some ways these programs are great because many indigenous people are marginalized and therefor society is responsible for their poorer options however, I also recognise that there are a lot of people from other ethnic or caucasion backgrounds who are equally marginalized. It comes down to governments trying to make up for the sins of the past. You can see why it happens, and it's difficult to change things now they've been in place for so long, but the system can be better for everyone if everyone supports the system.

No. Even if hiring practices were 100% color-blind it makes perfect sense mathematically speaking that there are no minorities working there.

In your unrestrained zeal to cite your place of employment for racial discrimination you have not only overlooked a few things but have made a few questionable assumptions.

I usually recommend starting with a hypothesis and an open mind as opposed to a conclusion in search of cherry-picked evidence.

AA could be replaced by a more fair system based on an economic formula. As it stands now, low income whites who go to awful high schools are being descriminated against. Admission doesn't equal graduation though. It might be better to go to a school that understands how to meet the needs of the poorly educated, than to wash out of Yale.

Okay, someone has to clear this up for me. Here is the text from Executive Order 11246, emphasis mine.

Someone please explain to me how affirmative action went from "contractors with over 50 employees doing government work using taxpayer dollars should document that they're doing their best to not discriminate based upon race" to "affirmative action is requiring corporations to choose less qualified people based on their race".

A racist white person can keep a minority out of a good job while a racist minority can't do much.

AA should only be a temporary solution to a bigger problem but all it is a cover up to make it seem that we care about minorities just like black hisotry month. If we wanted to help the minorities we would make it easier for them to get the qualifications most white people have but that is too much work and the racist agenda wouldn't approve of it.

Being against AA isn't racist but denying the fact that minorities are at a disavantage is.

I don't know if we can actually ever be on a level playing field, given our size and our individualism as a country. People can talk about level playing fields until Jesus comes back from the dead, but IMO, there will always be a sizable part of American society that looks at difference from the "norm" as bad. Those who don't fit the norm don't get the cool shit.

I'm not pessimistic...just pragmatic.

Isn't that exactly what AA does...?

It gives jobs to people without the qualifications. If we made it easier for minorities to gain qualifications then we wouldn't have to worry about AA.

We need to start paying more attention to the inner city and not just ignore it.

You are probably right but we aren't doing anything to make it any better.

That's from wikepedia. It suggests African Americans do not have equal access to the better paying jobs, or that they do not have equal access to the route into such jobs (e.g. educational opportunities). To suggest that in some way AA disadvantages white males in America, is to dismiss the actual advantage that comes from being white and male in America. Granted there are those for whom that innate advantage does not translate into a better job or lifestyle, and there are those for whom that innate disadvantage does not translate into a lesser job and lifestyle....but the reality is, that without some kind of enforced balance there would be little progress.

When an employer is recruiting for a high level post, they tend to take into account, amongst other factors, how like themselves the prospective employee is.....hence, since historically the people most likely to be employers have been both white and male, they have historically been more inclined to take on white male employees into the higher category posts within their companies. Though some progress has been made on that, females and non-whites are still under represented in the higher level roles in corporate life. As long as they are under represented they will be less likely tobe hired and will therefore stay under represented.

i work a few miles from spexvet. our employee base is loosely representative of the stats posted in his first post. as for the .3% native american....i have some small bit of Sioux in the soup that is me.....so....

i think 7 people is too small a sample. we have about 120 here, i think

7 people is too small a sample, I would agree. The fact that they haven't just hired all white, but also all Christian, suggests to me that they are simply hiring people they personally relate most closely to. This is part of the problem really: it doesn't just require out and out racism to perpetuate racial inequality. Ending racial inequality is not something that can be achieved by the less advantaged race alone:it does require a real effort on the part of the most powerful group in the country to hire against natural prejudices (i.e., the human instinct to relate most closely to those who are most like ourselves). This same instinct keeps the balance between male and females unequal. In the UK the diffierence in wages between men and women is approx. 17.5%. Women are under represented in the higher paying jobs and over represented in the lower paying jobs. Women are also under represnted in parliament, as are ethnic minorities.

I still don't see that. Please explain how AA accomplishes this.

Affirmative Action doesn't do that--the people doing the hiring might do that, if they don't want to bother to find a minority/female/disabled person who is qualified. It's really not that difficult, either.

Plus, the NON-minorities/etc. that are hired are not necessarily all qualified, either.

Agreed. Though overall, it sure wouldn't hurt if, say, all public schools had all the resources they needed.

Tough crap. I say pull your self up and stop looking for hand outs and entitlements to get ahead in life. We have created generations of scumbags getting ahead based on the color of their skin expecting that society owes them something because of it. When very smart people who are not black are denied advancement just to promote a person of color for that fact alone the system is broken and we have created a system of reverse discrimination. Minorities need to figure out how to get the qualifications by working harder to compete regardless of color. I will celebrate Black history month the day we have white history month. There are thousands of places in the US where white people are a minority. Do they get handouts and preferential treatment? No. Sorry folks, AA has seen its time come and gone, I have lived it, and it is time to bury it with the idea that every negro in the US is somehow entitled to compensation because they are black. Our society is so integrated that there is absolutely a tiny minority of people who can actually prove that they are related to someone who is a slave. I really think that Al Sharpton and Jessie "PUSH" Jackson do not need help to get ahead in life. :eek:

You're not paying very much attention, are you, Mr. Mercenary? :rolleyes: Ah well, too bad for you.

I was told in college, after I got to FSU (the next best acting school in the US that year) that had Yale known how much Native American I had in me I would have been able to get in.
FSU would have offered me a scholarship based on it. It was restricted to specific majors, not in fine arts and had I been able to take it I would not have.
I am not affiliated with any tribe and do not identify myself as a Native American.
The idea that I could have had a hand-out based solely on a quarter of my ethnicity was, frankly, insulting.
Also, I only had to have a C average.
Ironically, by the time I graduated, Yale's national standings for my major dropped and FSU was a better school in the undergrad department.

Interesting...from my experience, you need to be affiliated with a tribe to take advantage of such things. It's not a hand-out, just an opportunity--you would have had to work your ass off at Yale just like everyone else.

But good thing you didn't take advantage of it, if you considered it insulting. Leaves the opportunity open for someone else.

I hope you are not implying anything. As I stated, Yale was not as good a school as the one I ended-up in.
Secondly, I stayed on the president's list the entire time I was in college and graduated with national honors and Gold Key, after working my way through. No one lowering standards or handing me anything.
All I had to do was show where my tribal lines came from, I have that paperwork. You don't have to be up to date or living on a res.

It would have been an insult to have something handed to me just because of my family, as if I needed it because I was part Native American. Meaning that I needed something extra because I was somehow less.

I wasn't implying anything against you, rk.

A scholarship like that isn't meant to be demeaning at all. It's just available, whether you need/want it or not.

One thing that many universities strive for (on their own, doesn't necessarily have to do with Affirmative Action laws), for the benefit of all of their students' education and experience, is cultural diversity, be it through race, religion, sex, or financial background. A scholarship like that helps schools to reach their goals.

Fact is, Native Americans are pretty much the most minority of the minorities, so some schools like to offer extra incentives to encourage enrollment.

You know, there ARE people who get some things handed them because of their families, though it would never get mistaken for having to do with need. ;)

This proves absolutely nothing. How many minorities have applied? Were they as qualified as non-minorities? It could be that those who apply happen to be white, or those in a particular community or even a neighborhood within a community tend to be of a particular religion.

It turns out as a white man, it's tough for me to get a job in Harlem even with more qualifications than a black guy. The same is true for virtually every college in America.

Scumbag recipe:

Take two job candidates with equivalent qualifications.
One's name should sound "white", the other "black".
Call 50% more candidates with "white" sounding names for an interview than the ones with "black" sounding names.
Bang your head against the wall, if you're black.

from here.

Most scholarships are regulated by the donors themselves. If I wanted to create a scholarship for white women with native american and Swiss heritage who like cats, doritos, and independent film I could...and the persons who administer that scholarship would be bound to abide by those criteria.


You mean like our president?:p

"So Kristen and Tamika, and Brad and Tyrone, applied for jobs from the same pool of want ads and had equivalent resumes."

I smell something funny here. What is an "equivalent" resume? They obviously didn't use identical resumes, or the HR person screening them would see that they had two applicants from the same school with the same major and the same jobs in their past.

I'd like to see these "equivalent resumes."

Read just a bit further... ;)

I still don't see how that proves that any one decision maker in a business was guilty of discriminating. If you are talking about "sets of jobs" then you aren't comparing two different people with identical qualifications for one position.

All you end up being able to say is that black sounding names tended to be overlooked among multiple employers more than white sounding names. There's no smoking gun in any one place. It's a sort of semi-blame spread out over a large number of entities.

Yes. That's the point. This was a study, not a sting operation.

So how do you assign blame to individual members of the group of companies? If there is no proof at all that any one member of the group was discriminating, then how can you condemn the entire group as a whole? Even if there are trends that emerge. Just being a member of that group makes a company guilty of discrimination through association?

Showing that the behavior is pervasive is the first step. If a company is not discriminating, they shouldn't have a problem meeting AA guidelines, right?

If a company that was involved wants to investigate further and find individuals responsible, that would be great. In the meantime, there is afirmative action.

Chances are, it is often subconscious on the part of the perpetrators. AA might help these people take a second look at someone they subconsciously discarded.

In our area, our insurance company had a very hard time meeting diversity standards. We just could not find certain minority groups that could pass our reading and math comprehension tests.
Finding those with high school education was not the issue, just getting them to pass the tests was the issue.
We got out of it because we could show that we tested them and their scores. It was a shame, but there was nothing we could do.
We would NOT lower standards.
We had a hard enough time getting the people that passed to pass the state licensing exams later.
It is not a race thing, it is a cultural thing. Hispanics in our area have no issue with the testing (we hired masses of Hispanics from all over the world), some of the other minorities are the ones with the problems. Nothing we could do, not racism, just a fact of the local culture. But, you can guess what people say about that business to this day.
Then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, after a while those groups will not apply in as large numbers as before.

Imagine that.
Good reason to reconsider what you name your kids, don't you think? But for some reason the need or desire to name your newborn child an ethnic name which the average person cannot pronouce or spell.

What's so hard about spelling or pronouncing 'ethnic' names? You seem to have a very low opinion of 'the average person'.....and black people of course. You seem to have a very low opinion of them too. Do forgive me if I have misunderstood your posts.

The point I was making was that by using ethnic names parents are setting their children up for future discrimination by those who File 13 anyone that they don't wish to hire based on skin color. I am just "an average person" myself, so I don't really understand that comment. Still putting my pants on one leg at a time. I don't have a low opinion of "black people", but I do have a low opinion of anyone who thinks they deserve a handout because of the color of their skin. I think you have misunderstood some of my comments.

"Sibohan" is a rather difficult name for your average American to get right on the first try.

Hell, down here in GA the majority of the teachers try to call my son Lie-um, his name is Liam. I guess you could call that ethnic. I doubt anyone is going to trash his job app because of it.

I was responding to the difficulty of pronunciation aspect. Some names are difficult to pronounce. No controversy there, eh?

Agreed. But let me ask you a question. If you were an employer who did not want to hire anyone of color, how quickly would it take you to comb through 100 apps and trash anyone who you suspected was not lilly white? No doubt that a good percent not trashed on name alone would be non-white, but nearly 100% of those trashed would be non-white. I am saying why start out giving your kids such a disadvantage.

I agree with you.

I find it interesting that first generation American children of Asian descent tend to have traditionally "American" first names: David, Ashley, Eric, Amy, etc. It's almost as if they're TRYING to assimilate! How dare they?! ;)

Not only that, a lot of Asian immigrants take on a second American name for themselves.

"Lisa, I can't find you in the company files."
"Oh, that's because my name is actually Pyoungyang."

On the other hand, I've also found that this is not out of a desire to assimilate, but because they consider Americans too stupid to deal with their real names.

I would consider that to be a true statement.:lol:

It wouldn't be a disadvantage at all--it would be a time-saver. If the employer doesn't want to hire anyone of color, and a non-white person with a supposedly 'white' name gets called for an interview, he'd just be wasting his time if he showed up.

That assumes the person doing the initial culling of the resumes is the person doing the interviews, which is almost never the case.

Yes, I guess I am assuming that...it has usually been that way in my experience. :)

Whatever. It's still a really good idea. If I moved to China, felt my home was now China, wanted to start a business in China (probably selling french fries :) and give birth to children in China, I would give my child a Chinese name. It just makes sense.

If a name represents actual ethnicity, that's one thing. My own first name is ethnic. It's the faux African names that are completely absurd. I know quite a few Africans. They have strange and exotic first names, like Jacob, Thomas, and John. All of them, by the way, think that Kwanzaa is the dumbest thing they ever heard of.

I've never seen it spelt that way. I have only seen it spelt 'Siobhan'.

Mercenary, I see your point and I suppose it's a fair one. But....that suggests that the onus of responsibility is on the ethnic population to change who they are, rather than on society (and employers) to stop being racist.