Affirmative Action Unnecessary?

[bluecuracao]

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.

[bluecuracao]

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.

[Radar]

Originally Posted by Spexxvet

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?

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.

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

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 ...

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.

To test whether employers discriminate against black job applicants, Marianne Bertrand of the University of Chicago and Sendhil Mullainathan of M.I.T. conducted an unusual experiment. They selected 1,300 help-wanted ads from newspapers in Boston and Chicago and submitted multiple resumes from� phantom job seekers. The researchers randomly assigned the first names on the resumes, choosing from one set that is particularly common among blacks and from another that is common among whites.

So Kristen and Tamika, and Brad and Tyrone, applied for jobs from the same pool of want ads and had� equivalent resumes. Nine names were selected to represent each category: black women, white women, black men and white men. Last names common to the racial group were also assigned. Four resumes were typically submitted for each job opening, drawn from a reservoir of 160. Nearly 5,000 applications were submitted from mid-2001 to mid-2002. Professors Bertrand and Mullainathan kept track of which candidates were invited for job interviews.

No single employer was sent two identical resumes, and the names on the resumes were randomly assigned, so applicants with black- and white-sounding names applied for the same set of jobs with the same set of resumes.

Apart from their names, applicants had the same experience, education and skills, so employers had no reason to distinguish among them.

The results are disturbing. Applicants with white-sounding names were 50 percent more likely to be called for interviews than were those with black-sounding names. Interviews were requested for 10.1 percent of applicants with white-sounding names and only 6.7 percent of those with black-sounding names.

from here.

[Shawnee123]

Originally Posted by bluecuracao

A scholarship like that helps schools to reach their goals.

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.

Originally Posted by bluecuracao

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.

You mean like our president?:p

[glatt]

"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."

[Happy Monkey]

No single employer was sent two identical resumes, and the names on the resumes were randomly assigned, so applicants with black- and white-sounding names applied for the same set of jobs with the same set of resumes.

Read just a bit further...

[glatt]

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.

[Happy Monkey]

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

[glatt]

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?

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by glatt

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?

[Happy Monkey]

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.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Spexxvet

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.

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.