Affirmative Action

[Free Soviets]

what matters is the outcome, not the thought process. i don't really give a shit if people are racist fucks, as long as they can't actually use their racism to hold people back. and everybody who isn't acting racist in their hiring and admission processes, etc., is quite literally absolutely unaffected by any reasonable affirmative action policies - they will already naturally be following them.

If you only care for results, don't pretend to be for equality for opportunity then, and those who are truly not racist may or may not select people based on racial proportions- they will only care about who are the best for the task.

there is no such thing as a single person being 'best'. not in any way that can be found out ahead of time, for damn sure. decisions are always made on lots of criteria. name one good reason why we shouldn't use "sure are a lotta white dudes around here...maybe we should try to be more diverse?" as one of them.

the way to break the barriers down isn't to hope the barriers will be broken down. the way to break them down is to storm the gates and topple them from the inside. always has been.

The way to break them down is to end centuries of educational inequity. It won't be done overnight, but no amount of artificial racial mixing can solve the problem.

maybe you haven't been catching this. there are qualified candidates out there who are minorities. they literally are disproportionately passed over for positions. this is the way the world is. what you are proposing is we say "sorry man. but its only been centuries already...what's a few more decades between privileged and unprivileged people, eh?"

fuck that.


let's try it like this.
say we have 7 positions to fill. say we have 100 perfectly plausible candidates, 90 of whom are white dudes, and the remaining 10 are black women. and say the already existing other positions are filled by people such that the number of black women occupying them is way under the percentage of black women in society. why shouldn't we tell people to choose the black women for most if not all of those 7 positions? we already know 93 candidates are not getting them, even though they are perfectly qualified for them. why should we not take into consideration the existing racial and gender disparities and try to fix them?

the only reason you could offer is something about how it isn't our place to try to force society to make itself more equitable. but that's obviously dumb - nobody who isn't a sociopath or a republican believes that. making society equitable is precisely the point of justice. and so when we find ourselves in a situation where society isn't equitable, justice demands that we adopt policies to make it so. until such time as we have achieved equality, then we must have policies designed to create it. while there is more work to do, affirmative action has been fantastically successful. if you could show that it hasn't been or that it is no longer, then that would be an argument for adopting new policies. but you cannot show such, because it just ain't so. and so, affirmative action stays and should be celebrated.

[One time johnny]

This inane discussion is based entirely on misconceptions about affirmative action.

This issue has been thoroughly discussed before:

1. Affirmative action is based on the idea that everyone is entitled to equal opportunity and simply formally fobidding discrimination does not do enough to make the playing field even. Affirmative action is not discriminatory or "special preferences." Modern affirmative action refers to equal opportunity employment measures such as outreach campaigns, targeted recruitment, employee and management development, and employee support programs. At its most extreme, affirmative action refers to flexible numerical diversity goals which are established based on the availability of qualified applicants in the job market or qualified candidates in the employer’s work force. Affirmative action does not supercede the concept of merit.

2. There is no federal law requiring any business to engage in affirmative action. There are laws that forbid discrimination, which would include forbidding quotas. There is a law that makes some government contracts conditional on having affirmative action programs with goals for hiring of underrepresented groups, BUT THAT LAW FORBIDS QUOTAS:

The numerical goals are established based on the availability of qualified applicants in the job market or qualified candidates in the employer’s work force. Executive Order numerical goals do not create set-asides for specific groups, nor are they designed to achieve proportional representation or equal results. Rather, the goal-setting process in affirmative action planning is used to target and measure the effectiveness of affirmative action efforts to eradicate and prevent discrimination. The Executive Order and its supporting regulations do not authorize OFCCP to penalize contractors for not meeting goals. The regulations at 41 CFR 60-2.12(e), 60-2.30 and 60-2.15, specifically prohibit quota and preferential hiring and promotions under the guise of affirmative action numerical goals. In other words, discrimination in the selection decision is prohibited.

U.S. Dept. of Labor, Facts on Executive Order 11246 — Affirmative Action (emphasis added).

Additional sources re quotas are illegal:
Affirmative Action For Women: Myth vs. Reality ("Quotas are illegal in affirmative action programs.")
American Bar Association: Affirmative Action in the Workplace ("According to Harvard University Professor of Sociology Barbara Reskin, the popular belief that affirmative action means quotas is unfounded. 'What people object to doesn't exist,' Reskin said; 'quotas are illegal, except under special circumstances as a court-prescribed remedy.''')
Myth: Affirmative action means quotas ("Quotas are illegal in the United States, except on rare occasions when judges order them to correct blatant discrimation. Affirmative action works by setting flexible goals -- which are based on the percentage of qualified minorities and women in the region. A company that searches in good faith but fails to find qualified minorities or women is not penalized for their failure.")

3. Universtity admissions do not (and cannot) use quotas. See American Bar Association: Talking Points re Affirmative Action:

Opponents of affirmative action often complain that it establishes a quota system, in which a certain percentage of jobs, or contracts, or admissions, are reserved for members of certain groups. The Court's majority opinion in [Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003),] addressed this question directly in asserting that the law school affirmative action program upheld there did not establish quotas. In the words of Justice O'Connor for the Court:

As Justice Powell made clear in [Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978)], truly individualized consideration demands that race be used in a flexible, nonmechanical way. It follows from this mandate that universities cannot establish quotas for members of certain racial groups or put members of those groups on separate admissions tracks. Nor can universities insulate applicants who belong to certain racial or ethnic groups from the competition for admission. Universities can, however, consider race or ethnicity more flexibly as a "plus" factor in the context of individualized consideration of each and every applicant.

Compare Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 (2003) (holding a university's affirmative action admission's program was unconstitutional because it was too mechanistic and automatically adding points for race was too similiar to a quota system) with Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003) (upholding a Law School's affirmative action admission's program as constitutional).

4. Quotas are also illegal within public sector hiring. See, e.g., Executive Order 11478--Equal employment opportunity in the Federal Government:

Section 1. It is the policy of the Government of the United States to provide equal opportunity in Federal employment for all persons, to prohibit discrimination in employment because of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, handicap, or age, and to promote the full realization of equal employment opportunity through a continuing affirmative program in each executive department and agency. This policy of equal opportunity applies to and must be an integral part of every aspect of personnel policy and practice in the employment, development, advancement, and treatment of civilian employees of the Federal Government.

Sec. 2. The head of each executive department and agency shall establish and maintain an affirmative program of equal employment opportunity for all civilian employees and applicants for employment within his jurisdiction in accordance with the policy set forth in section 1. It is the responsibility of each department and agency head, to the maximum extent possible, to provide sufficient resources to administer such a program in a positive and effective manner; assure that recruitment activities reach all sources of job candidates; utilize to the fullest extent the present skills of each employee; provide the maximum feasible opportunity to employees to enhance their skills so they may perform at their highest potential and advance in accordance with their abilities; provide training and advice to managers and supervisors to assure their understanding and implementation of the policy expressed in this Order; assure participation at the local level with other employers, schools, and public or private groups in cooperative efforts to improve community conditions which affect employability; and provide for a system within the department or agency for periodically evaluating the effectiveness with which the policy of this Order is being carried out.

See also Affirmative Action Review: Report to the President (1995), Section 8 Federal Civilian Employment Affirmative Action:

In 1969, President Nixon issued an executive order that required the Federal agencies to establish Federal Affirmative Employment Programs to foster equal employment opportunity for minorities and women. These programs have had a statutory basis since 1972. In 1994 alone, there were 68 agency plans filed.

Since 1978, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has had advisory authority for these affirmative employment functions, including the responsibility to review and approve annual equal opportunity plans submitted by each agency. (EEOC collects information and evaluates the work of the agencies, and has a role in adjudication of individual discrimination complaints. It has no broad enforcement authority, and cannot require agencies to change their mode of operation.) EEOC has implemented the various federal affirmative employment program requirements through a series of Management Directives ("MDs"). The first, MD-707, issued in 1981, instructed Federal agencies to submit equal employment plans for a five-year period. It required each agency to determine whether minorities and women were underrepresented in various employment categories and to set annual goals for underrepresented groups in categories where vacancies were expected.

In 1987, EEOC issued MD-714, which eliminated the requirement that agencies set goals. MD-714 placed greater emphasis on the identification and removal of barriers to the advancement of women and minorities. It instructed agencies to devise flexible approaches to improving the representation of women and minorities in their workforces.

In 1993 and 1994, EEOC staff drafted MD-715 to succeed MD-714 and circulated it to agencies for comment. Among other things, the draft Directive proposes: (i) consolidating all Directives into one; (ii) reducing reporting requirements; (iii) requiring agency heads to hold senior and program managers accountable for the accomplishment of agency objectives through their actions and performance appraisals; (iv) eliminating any requirement for the use of goals; and (v) requiring the reporting of discharge or separation rates for minorities, women, and people with disabilities, to allow greater emphasis of retention trends.

EEOC has found no single answer to the challenge of overcoming barriers to minorities, women, and people with disabilities in the Federal government. Agencies have unique workforces, and barriers to equal employment opportunity vary from one organization to another. Successes are gradual in nature and depend considerably on the good will engendered in the Federal executives who manage these programs.

*snip*

For purposes of this review, EEOC selected and reviewed a cross-section of six agencies that had demonstrated creative ways of addressing equal employment opportunity (ranging in size and variety of job categories): Department of the Navy, Smithsonian Institution, Defense Intelligence Agency, NASA, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, and Health and Human Services. The key observations were:

• Each agency described an aggressive affirmative employment program -- including targeting sources, requiring recruiters to consider and report, management awareness/accountability, external and internal communications strategies -- which had achieved modest success rates.
  
  
• Available data are limited to the numbers and percentages of minorities and women employed by grade level by year; no systematic data exist about effects on bystanders, the nature or resolution of complaints, or the actual operation of minority preferences in hiring and promotion.
  
  
• Several agencies expressed the belief that agency educational efforts are effective in ameliorating white-male concerns (which are palpable in each agency), but this belief was purely anecdotal. The officials we interviewed admitted that truly disgruntled employees might not attend such voluntary town-hall meetings or workshops.
  
  
• Agencies subject to downsizing face special pressures which have reduced gains.
  
  
• Those agencies with high percentages of professional or technical jobs attribute their limited progress in minority hiring and promotion in higher grades to competition with the private sector for a limited labor pool.
  
  
• Several agencies measure carefully the number of women and minority participants in their [Senior Executive Service (SES)] Candidate Development Programs.

....

Is it fair?

(1) Not quotas.

Policy and law prohibit quotas and numerical straightjackets, and we found no hint of evidence that these prohibited practices take place. Throughout the government, civil service statutes and regulations ensure adherence to merit principles. During the Reagan Administration, EEOC "deregulated" the agencies to provide discretion in whether to use goals and timetables. This flexibility allows managers great latitude in structuring their hiring and promotion policies. But managers must continue to monitor performance to make sure progress does not slow in building a workforce that draws upon the full range of talents and capacities of all citizens.

(2) Race-neutral options.

Although managers are encouraged to keep diversity and equal opportunity objectives in mind when conducting outreach and recruiting, these efforts are designed to ensure that hiring and promotion decisions are made from an inclusive pool of qualified candidates. Beyond that, actual decisions are made in accordance with the race- and gender-neutral civil service "merit selection" procedures established by law and regulation, so that race and gender are not given formal weight. For those positions in which interviews and subjective factors play an inevitable role, such as policymaking positions in the Senior Executive Service, anecdotal reports are that some managers may give flexible weight to diversity considerations. This is appropriate to redress a manifest imbalance, or when diversity is somehow relevant to the effective performance of the organization -- but with the important caveats regarding avoidance of reverse discrimination as established in the caselaw. (The antidiscrimination enforcement mechanisms of the EEOC and the agencies are designed to prevent and remedy any abuses.)

(3) Flexible.

Since 1987, there has been no requirement that agencies use goals and timetables; instead, they are directed to focus on removing barriers to advancement. Accordingly, the programs vary among agencies and departments.

(4) Transitional.

Because agencies undertake affirmative employment efforts in accordance with their affirmative action plans, and because agencies review and modify those plans every year, the current efforts are appropriately transitional. It is reasonable to make these judgments narrowly, focusing on specific job categories and organizational units within each agency, rather than making an aggregate decision for the entire Federal workforce.

(5) Balanced.

The data suggest that reverse discrimination charges have been a relatively small and constant proportion of all discrimination complaints filed by federal workers with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. ...

[One time johnny]

As before, this has been show in past posts:

Seriously speaking, that is false.

Seriously speaking, it is true (at least for the United States) - - and you are either lying or being deliberately ignorant. I will post below information that I have posted before in response to similar statements you have made (and to which you have never replied).

You've posted several repetitive posts in mulitple threads making it clear that you don't really care for minorities, may well dislike or are hostile to minorities, have no clue about how anti-discrimination laws and affirmative action programs (what you call "special privileges") work, etc.

Let's be fucking clear: for example, African-Americans WERE and ARE oppressed and/or disadvantaged in America.
1. Minorities and women have a steep hill to climb just to catch up with centuries of general¹ white male advantage. For example, as historian Roger Wilkins pointed out in 1995, African-Americans had (at that time) a 375-year history on this continent: 245 involving slavery, 100 involving legalized discrimination, and only 30 involving anything else. Add 15 more years of progress to that now. Thus, as President Lyndon Johnson explained:

In far too many ways American Negroes have been another nation: deprived of freedom, crippled by hatred, the doors of opportunity closed to hope...

[T]his victory--as Winston Churchill said of another triumph for freedom--"is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

That beginning is freedom; and the barriers to that freedom are tumbling down. Freedom is the right to share, share fully and equally, in American society--to vote, to hold a job, to enter a public place, to go to school. It is the right to be treated in every part of our national life as a person equal in dignity and promise to all others.

But freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please.

You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.

Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.

This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.

For the task is to give 20 million Negroes the same chance as every other American to learn and grow, to work and share in society, to develop their abilities--physical, mental and spiritual, and to pursue their individual happiness.

2. Even if the legacy of past racism and sexism were erased, discrimination against minorities remains a major, ubiquituous problem in the U.S. For example, African-Americans are hugely disadvantaged due to racism in the United States. See, e.g., The State of Black America 2010: Executive Summary (6p, pdf); Race at Work (8p pdf) (a study showing that othewise identical black job applicants were less than half as likely to be successful as white applicants AND otherwise identical black job seekers fair no better than white felons just released from prison).

Additionally, I not so long ago read the following in a law review article and it will probably piss people off (largely because it is true):

Excerpts from Girardeau A. Spann, "Disparate Impact," [url]The Georgetown Law Journal[/url] Vol. 98:1133-1163 (2010):

Even though we know better, we cannot seem to control our behavior. That is what it means to be addicted.

Likewise, the United States is addicted to racial discrimination. Even though we know that treating racial minorities as inferior to whites is inconsistent with the moral, ethical, and legal theories of equality to which we have long subscribed, the benefits to the white majority of continued discrimination against racial minorities are apparently too compelling for the culture to resist. From the seizure of Indian lands, to slavery, to official segregation, to wartime hysteria, to de facto segregation, to the invalidation of affirmative action,⁹¹ and most recently to the resegregation of public schools,⁹² white majoritarian United States culture has been committed to the subordination of racial minority interests in pervasive and persistent ways. That is a form of white supremacy. And our addiction to it is an addiction from which we appear no more able to wean ourselves than we have been able to wean ourselves from our addiction to foreign oil.

The belief that white interests are more important than racial minority interests is simply a constitutive element of United States culture. One of the things that it means to be an American is to have internalized, at some very fundamental level, the realization that it is permissible to sacrifice minority interests for the benefit of whites. And that realization is often both deep and unconscious in nature.⁹³ That is why we tolerate the dramatic discrepancies in the allocation of societal resources that continue to exist between whites and racial minorities. Justice Ginsburg has emphasized that conscious and unconscious biases have caused large racial disparities to continue to exist in unemployment, poverty, access to health care, and access to education.⁹⁴ Moreover, minorities continue to suffer discrimination in employment, real estate markets, and consumer transactions.⁹⁵ Minorities are also statistically discriminated against in matters as diverse as retail car negotiations, kidney transplants, and bail setting.⁹⁶ Recent social cognition research using the Implicit Association Test to measure unconscious racial prejudice has demonstrated that most of us remain influenced by vast amounts of unconscious prejudice.⁹⁷ And other recent research has indicated that our culture transmits subtle racial stratification messages so successfully that even young children quickly learn to internalize the culture’s commitment to minority inferiority, despite the efforts of their parents to instill in them values of colorblind race neutrality.⁹⁸

Subtle forms of voting discrimination against racial minorities remain serious enough that Congress recently, and overwhelmingly, authorized the Voting Rights Act of 1965—even though the Roberts Court has now threatened to hold the Act unconstitutional.⁹⁹ And, of course, residential housing segregation continues to exist in the United States at such an alarming rate that it has been referred to as “American Apartheid.”¹⁰⁰ The advantages and sense of natural entitlement entailed in being white in the United States remain so strong that Cheryl Harris has characterized whiteness as a property right.¹⁰¹ Commentators have even suggested that the surprising vitriol that has accompanied conservative assaults on President Obama’s undeniably moderate health care and other economic programs—as well as the personal attacks on President Obama himself—are motivated at least in part by lingering racial animosity emanating from the intolerable idea of having a black person serve as President of the United States.¹⁰² Even racial minorities themselves have at times kept a low profile in the health care debate for fear that popular recognition of the degree to which health care reform would benefit minorities might increase the chance that reform proposals would be defeated.¹⁰³

If you are white, and you have any lingering doubts about the existence of embedded racial inequalities in the culture, simply ask yourself whether you would mind waking up tomorrow morning as a member of a racial minority group. If the culture has truly freed itself from the influence of embedded racial inequalities, you should be largely indifferent about the race that you will become overnight. But I suspect that most whites are not indifferent. Indeed, one informal survey showed that white college students thought that they would be entitled to $1 million in damages per year if they were suddenly transformed from white into black.¹⁰⁴

...Race is so deeply embedded in the fabric of the United States that racial discrimination is simply a constitutive aspect of the culture. Nevertheless, the United States did recently elect Barack Obama as its first black President. Despite contrary suggestions, however, that does not mean that the United States has now evolved to a post-racial stage of development in which the problems of racial discrimination have largely been relegated to the past. Rather, it means that the United States has now evolved to a new stage of development in the sophistication of its techniques for practicing racial discrimination.

Racial discrimination used to be both blatant and explicitly rooted in the doctrine of white supremacy. But post-racial discrimination is now more subtly rooted in the very doctrine of racial equality itself. The discriminatory allocation of benefits and burdens, to which United States culture has always been committed, has now simply been folded into the baseline allocation of resources that we treat as the neutral starting point for assessing the racial legitimacy of any reallocation regime. And redistributive efforts to upset that baseline by diverting resources from whites to racial minorities can now be viewed as entailing reverse discrimination against whites. This form of post-racial discrimination has been developing over the last few decades, but the election of President Obama seems to have given the technique more widespread appeal than it has previously been able to command. That makes post-racial discrimination particularly dangerous because both the perpetrators and victims may come to view the practice as morally and legally legitimate.

Post-racial discrimination permits the ways in which the culture generates and perpetuates racial differences among its members to be subsumed by the core concept of racial legitimacy. Historically, the things that we have done to each other in the name of race always seemed legitimate to the white majority at the time that they were being done. Seizing Indian lands was legitimate because conquerors are permitted to keep the spoils of their successful conquests. Slavery was legitimate because white supremacy made slaves subhuman. De jure segregation was legitimate because God and nature established intrinsic differences between the races. Persistent de facto segregation was legitimate, even after the invalidation of de jure desegregation, because the value we place on liberal autonomy precluded compelled association. More recently, the invalidation of affirmative action and antidiscrimination laws has been deemed legitimate because our efforts to prevent discrimination against racial minorities has ended up producing the more serious problem of discrimination against members of the white majority.

As the culture matures, prior justifications for racial discrimination inevitably lose their luster and eventually fall out of favor. New justifications must then be found to take their place. The claim that redistributive efforts to aid racial minorities actually constitute reverse discrimination against whites appears to have considerable present appeal. But the plausibility of that claim does depend upon the belief that there is no longer any significant discrimination against racial minorities to be remedied. It is this belief that has given rise to the claim that we now live in a post-racial culture. And it is this pursuit of racial “equality” for whites that has elevated post- racialism into our presently preferred form of discrimination against racial minorities.

Our collective predisposition to sacrifice the interests of racial minorities for the interests of whites seems to be firmly embedded in our cultural attitudes and values. Accordingly, it is difficult to imagine how our inclination to engage in racial discrimination can ever be overcome without adopting some sort of precommitment strategy that forces us to engage in the behavior that would be produced by racial equality even if we do not yet have the capacity to assimilate the values of racial equality. Recognizing the moral and legal legitimacy of disparate impact discrimination might well serve as such a precommitment strategy. By forcing ourselves to allocate societal resources in a way that approximates the resource allocation that would exist in a race-neutral culture, we might be able to escape the gravitational pull of our embedded racial attitudes.

Footnotes:

92. See Parents Involved in Cmty. Sch. v. Seattle Sch. Dist. No. 1, 551 U.S. 701, 746–48 (2007)(plurality opinion) (citing Brown II as authorizing resegregation of public schools).
93. See Charles R. Lawrence III, The Id, the Ego, and Equal Protection: Reckoning with Unconscious Racism, 39 STAN. L. REV. 317, 322–23 (1987) (arguing that much contemporary racial discrimination is unconscious).
94. See Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244, 299 (2003) (Ginsburg, J., dissenting).
95. See id. at 299–302 (discussing striking racial disparities that continue to exist in distribution of societal resources).
96. See Ian Ayres, [url]PERVASIVE PREJUDICE?: UNCONVENTIONAL EVIDENCE OF RACE AND GENDER DISCRIMINATION[/url] 19–44, 165–232, 233–311 (2001) (documenting statistical discrimination).
97. See Jerry Kang, Trojan Horses of Race, 118 HARV. L. REV. 1489, 1509–14 (2005) (discussing unconscious racial bias revealed by Implicit Association Test).
98. See Po Bronson & Amy Merryman, See Baby Discriminate: Kids as Young as 6 Months Judge Others Based on Skin Color. What’s a Parent To Do?, NEWSWEEK, Sept. 14, 2009, at 53 (describing racial attitudes in young children).
99. See Nw. Austin Mun. Util. Dist. No. One v. Holder, 129 S. Ct. 2504, 2508–11, 2513–17 (2009) (discussing facts and holding); id. at 2511–13 (suggesting that section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 would now be unconstitutional). Justice Thomas expressed similar sentiments, stating that “[t]he Court quite properly alerts Congress that § 5 tests the outer boundaries of its Fifteenth Amendment enforcement authority and may not be constitutional.” See id. at 2519 (Thomas, J., concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part).
100. See generally LOEWEN, supra note 26, passim (documenting history of intentional residential segregation in United States); MASSEY & DENTON, supra note 26, passim (discussing concept of urban residential “hypersegregation” in United States).
101. See Cheryl I. Harris, Whiteness as Property, 106 HARV. L. REV. 1707, 1714–15 (1993) (discussing sense of white entitlement).
102. See, e.g., Yamiche Alcindor, Seeking Healing, Seeing Hostility: Some at Black Family Reunion Criticize Protests Against Obama, WASH. POST, Sept. 14, 2009, at B1 (discussing racially motivated opposition to Obama); Maureen Dowd, Boy, Oh, Boy, N.Y. TIMES, Sept. 13, 2009, at WK.17 (same); Colbert I. King, A Dangerous Kind of Hate, WASH. POST, Sept. 12, 2009, at A17 (same); Anne E. Kornblut & Krissah Thompson, Race Issue Deflected, Now as in Campaign: Obama Maintains Criticism Is About Policy Differences, WASH. POST, Sept. 17, 2009, at A1 (discussing comments of former President Carter that some opposition to President Obama is racially motivated); cf. Hendrik Hertzberg, Comment: Lies, NEW YORKER, Sept. 21, 2009, at 33 (including race among factors motivating paranoia generated by Obama and his programs).
103. See Krissah Thompson, Minority Groups Raise Voices on Reform: Advocates Still Wary of Making Race a Central Issue in Health Care Debate, WASH. POST, Oct. 8, 2009, at A9 (discussing participation of minorities in health care debate).
104. See ANDREW HACKER, TWO NATIONS: BLACK AND WHITE SEPARATE, HOSTILE, UNEQUAL 43–44 (2003) (describing survey). See generally id. passim (describing many ways in which blacks and whites continue to live in two different worlds, where blacks are treated as inferior to whites).

Similarly, gender inequity remains a substantial problem in the United States:

General inequality:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/articl ... tml?cat=47
http://www.buffalo.edu/news/9175

Political underrepresentation:
http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/fast_facts/ ... ective.pdf
http://www.iwpr.org/pdf/i910.pdf
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/ ... 0s0402.pdf

Domestic violence statistics:
viewtopic.php?p=2017692#p2017692

Economic underrepresentation (e.g., the glass ceiling):
http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/statistics/rep ... ssceiling/
http://www.house.gov/dingell/documents/ ... report.pdf
http://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/histo ... iling1.pdf

Economic disadvantage (e.g., pay inequity)
http://www.iwpr.org/pdf/C350a.pdf
http://www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/censr-15.pdf
http://www.aauw.org/learn/research/behindPayGap.cfm
http://www.aauw.org/learn/research/statedata/index.cfm
http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/RL31867_20050511.pdf

¹ I use the term "in general" with purpose. This is a gross generalization. Obviously, although being white in America is an advantage, not every white male is going to be better off than every minority member.

BOTTOM LINE: This is reality. Minorities ARE generally disadvantaged -- despite a few anomalies like rich atheletes or entertainers. Get a grip on it and deal with it already.

[One time johnny]

Those that complain about AA intefering with merit seem to forget that one of the U.S.'s most merit-based institutions has long believed in the neccesity of AA to promote meritocracy: the U.S. military.

Further, the U.S. military has documented that AA not only is good for society, but is necessary to protect national security.

American business (the "free market") has voluntarily adopted affirmative action for similary reasons. It fights discrimination. It protects merit. It achieves other important goals.

The Supreme Court noted this in Grutter:

In addition to the expert studies and reports entered into evidence at trial, numerous studies show that student body diversity promotes learning outcomes, and "better prepares students for an increasingly diverse workforce and society, and better prepares them as professionals." Brief for American Educational Research Association et al. as Amici Curiae 3; see, e.g., W. Bowen & D. Bok, The Shape of the River (1998); Diversity Challenged: Evidence on the Impact of Affirmative Action (G. Orfield & M. Kurlaender eds. 2001); Compelling Interest: Examining the Evidence on Racial Dynamics in Colleges and Universities (M. Chang, D. Witt, J. Jones, & K. Hakuta eds. 2003).

These benefits are not theoretical but real, as major American businesses have made clear that the skills needed in today's increasingly global marketplace can only be developed through exposure to widely diverse people, cultures, ideas, and viewpoints. Brief for 3M et al. as Amici Curiae 5; Brief for General Motors Corp. as Amicus Curiae 3-4. What is more, high-ranking retired officers and civilian leaders of the United States military assert that, "[b]ased on [their] decades of experience," a "highly qualified, racially diverse officer corps ... is essential to the military's ability to fulfill its principle mission to provide national security." Brief for Julius W. Becton, Jr. et al. as Amici Curiae 27. The primary sources for the Nation's officer corps are the service academies and the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC), the latter comprising students already admitted to participating colleges and universities. Id., at 5. At present, "the military cannot achieve an officer corps that is both highly qualified and racially diverse unless the service academies and the ROTC used limited race-conscious recruiting and admissions policies." Ibid. (emphasis in original). To fulfill its mission, the military "must be selective in admissions for training and education for the officer corps, and it must train and educate a highly qualified, racially diverse officer corps in a racially diverse setting." Id., at 29 (emphasis in original). We agree that "[i]t requires only a small step from this analysis to conclude that our country's other most selective institutions must remain both diverse and selective." Ibid.

One can learn more from this document, which is a U.S. Military Head's explanation of the history of AA in the military, a explanation of its necessity, etc..

[Saiwania]

I view being against affirmative action as fighting for my own self interest. I do not benefit from such policies but am rather harmed by it, so I am against it. I will vote for and give money to politicians who will weaken or do away with affirmative action as I see fit.

[The Reasonable]

Saiwania wrote:

I view being against affirmative action as fighting for my own self interest. I do not benefit from such policies but am rather harmed by it, so I am against it. I will vote for and give money to politicians who will weaken or do away with affirmative action as I see fit.

...You selfish bastard...you disgrace those who actually have a good reason for opposing affirmative action. Now people for it will quite rightly have an excuse to call us all selfish racists and bigots. People like you are the reason they thought it was alright to do affirmative action in the first place.

If you only care for results, don't pretend to be for equality for opportunity then, and those who are truly not racist may or may not select people based on racial proportions- they will only care about who are the best for the task.

there is no such thing as a single person being 'best'. not in any way that can be found out ahead of time, for damn sure. decisions are always made on lots of criteria. name one good reason why we shouldn't use "sure are a lotta white dudes around here...maybe we should try to be more diverse?" as one of them.

The way to break them down is to end centuries of educational inequity. It won't be done overnight, but no amount of artificial racial mixing can solve the problem.

maybe you haven't been catching this. there are qualified candidates out there who are minorities. they literally are disproportionately passed over for positions. this is the way the world is. what you are proposing is we say "sorry man. but its only been centuries already...what's a few more decades between privileged and unprivileged people, eh?"

fuck that.


let's try it like this.
say we have 7 positions to fill. say we have 100 perfectly plausible candidates, 90 of whom are white dudes, and the remaining 10 are black women. and say the already existing other positions are filled by people such that the number of black women occupying them is way under the percentage of black women in society. why shouldn't we tell people to choose the black women for most if not all of those 7 positions? we already know 93 candidates are not getting them, even though they are perfectly qualified for them. why should we not take into consideration the existing racial and gender disparities and try to fix them?

the only reason you could offer is something about how it isn't our place to try to force society to make itself more equitable. but that's obviously dumb - nobody who isn't a sociopath or a republican believes that. making society equitable is precisely the point of justice. and so when we find ourselves in a situation where society isn't equitable, justice demands that we adopt policies to make it so. until such time as we have achieved equality, then we must have policies designed to create it. while there is more work to do, affirmative action has been fantastically successful. if you could show that it hasn't been or that it is no longer, then that would be an argument for adopting new policies. but you cannot show such, because it just ain't so. and so, affirmative action stays and should be celebrated.

"Nobody who isn't a sociopath or a Republican believes that."

Here you are, attacking at straw men. I'm neither sociopath nor Republican- in fact, you can ask people like Zaras, Liriena, Ligerplace, or Individuality-ness (none of whom are anywhere near the right)- I'm a moderate liberal. Some people may oppose affirmative action based on their own prejudices and racism (Saiwania, talking to you), but others simply do want a fair society. You want to know how to tell the difference? Ask those people if they want more educational funds going to disadvantaged groups funded by their own property taxes. I would gladly do that- but a bigot who wants to keep minorities down wouldn't.

Your very own study about how blacks are less likely to get called back for interviews could actually be an example against affirmative action. The study, done by economist Roland Fryer in 2004, was showcased in the book Freakonomics, after affirmative action laws were in place. Why do those employers refuse to call back? There's the assumption that they are unqualified. But those employers clearly know that the resumes are identical. How, then, do they justify it? There's the assumption, that because they were black, they got those qualifications not based on merit but by special treatment- namely affirmative action. If that were to be removed, all else being equal, there could no longer be an excuse for those employers to assume that the identical qualifications could come from any special treatment. Your argument about equally qualified minority candidates also is only ideal- save for the Fryer experiment, usually no two candidates are completely identical (so merit should come first), and using racial status as a tiebreaker does not take into account the personal background, personality, etc that each person brings to the table that are much more important than race.

Also, any forced equality is incompatible with fairness- I would much prefer a society where people are treated based on their merits and not based on the color of their skin or any former injustices perpetrated against their race or ethnicity. A fair society makes sure to help those previously disadvantaged receive opportunities and uplift themselves, but never at the cost of sacrificing the demand for the most meritorious candidates. If a minority is more qualified than a non-minority, he is more qualified and more deserving- no questions. If a non-minority is more qualified than a minority, he is more qualified and more deserving- no questions. One cannot eliminate the problem of racism by simply introducing an artificial boost- that only increases resentment and racism among the non-minorities. Eliminating the problem of racism requires addressing the socioeconomic and educational factors behind the race disparity and making sure that the disadvantaged are receiving the same educational benefits commensurate to their merit that others are. That being said, equal opportunity to employment laws are perfectly fine, but forcing people to hire or not hire anyone based on race is still discriminatory.

[Norsklow]

Solution Unacceptable.That is not an Aptitude Test.

Meritocracy or Bust!

Why are you opposed to a movement towards meritocracy?

What movement? You quoted LTPF, not GMAT.

[Saiwania]

...You selfish bastard...you disgrace those who actually have a good reason for opposing affirmative action. Now people for it will quite rightly have an excuse to call us all selfish racists and bigots. People like you are the reason they thought it was alright to do affirmative action in the first place.

People who support affirmative action are going to oppose me being against it, regardless of whether I oppose it out of rational self interest or not. I do not have to argue from within their criteria when my other objections are often ignored out of hand. I do not believe that being a minority should somehow make you special. It is inherently reverse discrimination in my view. It follows the socialist ideal of equal outcomes instead of equal opportunity.

Every single group within society competes or fights for their own benefit or self interest, with me being no different. It is a fact of life that there are winners and losers, and it is just as likely that I will be among those who lose out.

[Gravlen]

Why are you opposed to a movement towards meritocracy?

What movement? You quoted LTPF, not GMAT.

The movement where you go from selecting members of a board based on gender to selecting them based on merit AND gender.

[FleetOfFoot]

This is mainly a US issue, as far as I know. The original intent is to counteract former racial discrimination in schools and the workplace, therefore enforcing equal opportunity.

To my knowledge, that is still the intent of affirmative action.

However, controversy arises when specific racial quotas and conditions are brought in, as it then punishes members of non-underrepresented groups despite perhaps higher qualifications.

Weren't racial quotas struck down some time in the 70's?

NSG, what is your view on this issue? As an Asian-American, I stand to be harmed by race-based affirmative action and therefore am personally against it, as I will be applying to colleges in the next few months,

...They don't set aside seats for Asians anymore? They're a racial minority, are they not?

and think that a better form of enforcing equal opportunity is equal access to high-quality schooling and education as well as financial support for that purpose, but I am willing to hear well-reasoned arguments from either side.

I think people who complain about affirmative action are misinformed.

[Norsklow]

What movement? You quoted LTPF, not GMAT.

The movement where you go from selecting members of a board based on gender to selecting them based on merit AND gender.

I was always under the impression that the selection quo ante was based on merit.
They did not just pick bums from a bench because of their urinating equipment.

Unlike, say, the Labour Party, whose Blair Babes turned out to be less than excellent - which is to be expected when you start accepting vegans, pacifists, and similar undesirables who are best confined to Goodwin Sands qua constituency.

[The Reasonable]

...You selfish bastard...you disgrace those who actually have a good reason for opposing affirmative action. Now people for it will quite rightly have an excuse to call us all selfish racists and bigots. People like you are the reason they thought it was alright to do affirmative action in the first place.

People who support affirmative action are going to oppose me being against it, regardless of whether I oppose it out of rational self interest or not. I do not have to argue from within their criteria when my other objections are often ignored out of hand. I do not believe that being a minority should somehow make you special. It is inherently reverse discrimination in my view. It follows the socialist ideal of equal outcomes instead of equal opportunity.

Every single group within society competes or fights for their own benefit or self interest, with me being no different. It is a fact of life that there are winners and losers, and it is just as likely that I will be among those who lose out.

Glad we could come to an understanding, and I apologize. Guess I'm also a selfish bastard at heart...and I'm sorry for ever saying this. I still don't see it as an effective method in the long run though.

[Gravlen]

The movement where you go from selecting members of a board based on gender to selecting them based on merit AND gender.

I was always under the impression that the selection quo ante was based on merit.

For board members? No. I think "cronyism" would be closer to reality.

The numbers themselves attest to that. A mere 7% of board members were women before the law was passed. At the same time, 31% of high-level management positions were held by women, illustrating that it was not a lack of merit that kept them out of the board room.

[The Reasonable]

This inane discussion is based entirely on misconceptions about affirmative action.

This issue has been thoroughly discussed before:

1. Affirmative action is based on the idea that everyone is entitled to equal opportunity and simply formally fobidding discrimination does not do enough to make the playing field even. Affirmative action is not discriminatory or "special preferences." Modern affirmative action refers to equal opportunity employment measures such as outreach campaigns, targeted recruitment, employee and management development, and employee support programs. At its most extreme, affirmative action refers to flexible numerical diversity goals which are established based on the availability of qualified applicants in the job market or qualified candidates in the employer’s work force. Affirmative action does not supercede the concept of merit.

2. There is no federal law requiring any business to engage in affirmative action. There are laws that forbid discrimination, which would include forbidding quotas. There is a law that makes some government contracts conditional on having affirmative action programs with goals for hiring of underrepresented groups, BUT THAT LAW FORBIDS QUOTAS:

The numerical goals are established based on the availability of qualified applicants in the job market or qualified candidates in the employer’s work force. Executive Order numerical goals do not create set-asides for specific groups, nor are they designed to achieve proportional representation or equal results. Rather, the goal-setting process in affirmative action planning is used to target and measure the effectiveness of affirmative action efforts to eradicate and prevent discrimination. The Executive Order and its supporting regulations do not authorize OFCCP to penalize contractors for not meeting goals. The regulations at 41 CFR 60-2.12(e), 60-2.30 and 60-2.15, specifically prohibit quota and preferential hiring and promotions under the guise of affirmative action numerical goals. In other words, discrimination in the selection decision is prohibited.

U.S. Dept. of Labor, Facts on Executive Order 11246 — Affirmative Action (emphasis added).

Additional sources re quotas are illegal:
Affirmative Action For Women: Myth vs. Reality ("Quotas are illegal in affirmative action programs.")
American Bar Association: Affirmative Action in the Workplace ("According to Harvard University Professor of Sociology Barbara Reskin, the popular belief that affirmative action means quotas is unfounded. 'What people object to doesn't exist,' Reskin said; 'quotas are illegal, except under special circumstances as a court-prescribed remedy.''')
Myth: Affirmative action means quotas ("Quotas are illegal in the United States, except on rare occasions when judges order them to correct blatant discrimation. Affirmative action works by setting flexible goals -- which are based on the percentage of qualified minorities and women in the region. A company that searches in good faith but fails to find qualified minorities or women is not penalized for their failure.")

3. Universtity admissions do not (and cannot) use quotas. See American Bar Association: Talking Points re Affirmative Action:

Opponents of affirmative action often complain that it establishes a quota system, in which a certain percentage of jobs, or contracts, or admissions, are reserved for members of certain groups. The Court's majority opinion in [Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003),] addressed this question directly in asserting that the law school affirmative action program upheld there did not establish quotas. In the words of Justice O'Connor for the Court:

As Justice Powell made clear in [Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978)], truly individualized consideration demands that race be used in a flexible, nonmechanical way. It follows from this mandate that universities cannot establish quotas for members of certain racial groups or put members of those groups on separate admissions tracks. Nor can universities insulate applicants who belong to certain racial or ethnic groups from the competition for admission. Universities can, however, consider race or ethnicity more flexibly as a "plus" factor in the context of individualized consideration of each and every applicant.

Compare Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 (2003) (holding a university's affirmative action admission's program was unconstitutional because it was too mechanistic and automatically adding points for race was too similiar to a quota system) with Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003) (upholding a Law School's affirmative action admission's program as constitutional).

4. Quotas are also illegal within public sector hiring. See, e.g., Executive Order 11478--Equal employment opportunity in the Federal Government:

Section 1. It is the policy of the Government of the United States to provide equal opportunity in Federal employment for all persons, to prohibit discrimination in employment because of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, handicap, or age, and to promote the full realization of equal employment opportunity through a continuing affirmative program in each executive department and agency. This policy of equal opportunity applies to and must be an integral part of every aspect of personnel policy and practice in the employment, development, advancement, and treatment of civilian employees of the Federal Government.

Sec. 2. The head of each executive department and agency shall establish and maintain an affirmative program of equal employment opportunity for all civilian employees and applicants for employment within his jurisdiction in accordance with the policy set forth in section 1. It is the responsibility of each department and agency head, to the maximum extent possible, to provide sufficient resources to administer such a program in a positive and effective manner; assure that recruitment activities reach all sources of job candidates; utilize to the fullest extent the present skills of each employee; provide the maximum feasible opportunity to employees to enhance their skills so they may perform at their highest potential and advance in accordance with their abilities; provide training and advice to managers and supervisors to assure their understanding and implementation of the policy expressed in this Order; assure participation at the local level with other employers, schools, and public or private groups in cooperative efforts to improve community conditions which affect employability; and provide for a system within the department or agency for periodically evaluating the effectiveness with which the policy of this Order is being carried out.

See also Affirmative Action Review: Report to the President (1995), Section 8 Federal Civilian Employment Affirmative Action:

In 1969, President Nixon issued an executive order that required the Federal agencies to establish Federal Affirmative Employment Programs to foster equal employment opportunity for minorities and women. These programs have had a statutory basis since 1972. In 1994 alone, there were 68 agency plans filed.

Since 1978, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has had advisory authority for these affirmative employment functions, including the responsibility to review and approve annual equal opportunity plans submitted by each agency. (EEOC collects information and evaluates the work of the agencies, and has a role in adjudication of individual discrimination complaints. It has no broad enforcement authority, and cannot require agencies to change their mode of operation.) EEOC has implemented the various federal affirmative employment program requirements through a series of Management Directives ("MDs"). The first, MD-707, issued in 1981, instructed Federal agencies to submit equal employment plans for a five-year period. It required each agency to determine whether minorities and women were underrepresented in various employment categories and to set annual goals for underrepresented groups in categories where vacancies were expected.

In 1987, EEOC issued MD-714, which eliminated the requirement that agencies set goals. MD-714 placed greater emphasis on the identification and removal of barriers to the advancement of women and minorities. It instructed agencies to devise flexible approaches to improving the representation of women and minorities in their workforces.

In 1993 and 1994, EEOC staff drafted MD-715 to succeed MD-714 and circulated it to agencies for comment. Among other things, the draft Directive proposes: (i) consolidating all Directives into one; (ii) reducing reporting requirements; (iii) requiring agency heads to hold senior and program managers accountable for the accomplishment of agency objectives through their actions and performance appraisals; (iv) eliminating any requirement for the use of goals; and (v) requiring the reporting of discharge or separation rates for minorities, women, and people with disabilities, to allow greater emphasis of retention trends.

EEOC has found no single answer to the challenge of overcoming barriers to minorities, women, and people with disabilities in the Federal government. Agencies have unique workforces, and barriers to equal employment opportunity vary from one organization to another. Successes are gradual in nature and depend considerably on the good will engendered in the Federal executives who manage these programs.

*snip*

For purposes of this review, EEOC selected and reviewed a cross-section of six agencies that had demonstrated creative ways of addressing equal employment opportunity (ranging in size and variety of job categories): Department of the Navy, Smithsonian Institution, Defense Intelligence Agency, NASA, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, and Health and Human Services. The key observations were:

• Each agency described an aggressive affirmative employment program -- including targeting sources, requiring recruiters to consider and report, management awareness/accountability, external and internal communications strategies -- which had achieved modest success rates.
  
  
• Available data are limited to the numbers and percentages of minorities and women employed by grade level by year; no systematic data exist about effects on bystanders, the nature or resolution of complaints, or the actual operation of minority preferences in hiring and promotion.
  
  
• Several agencies expressed the belief that agency educational efforts are effective in ameliorating white-male concerns (which are palpable in each agency), but this belief was purely anecdotal. The officials we interviewed admitted that truly disgruntled employees might not attend such voluntary town-hall meetings or workshops.
  
  
• Agencies subject to downsizing face special pressures which have reduced gains.
  
  
• Those agencies with high percentages of professional or technical jobs attribute their limited progress in minority hiring and promotion in higher grades to competition with the private sector for a limited labor pool.
  
  
• Several agencies measure carefully the number of women and minority participants in their [Senior Executive Service (SES)] Candidate Development Programs.

....

Is it fair?

(1) Not quotas.

Policy and law prohibit quotas and numerical straightjackets, and we found no hint of evidence that these prohibited practices take place. Throughout the government, civil service statutes and regulations ensure adherence to merit principles. During the Reagan Administration, EEOC "deregulated" the agencies to provide discretion in whether to use goals and timetables. This flexibility allows managers great latitude in structuring their hiring and promotion policies. But managers must continue to monitor performance to make sure progress does not slow in building a workforce that draws upon the full range of talents and capacities of all citizens.

(2) Race-neutral options.

Although managers are encouraged to keep diversity and equal opportunity objectives in mind when conducting outreach and recruiting, these efforts are designed to ensure that hiring and promotion decisions are made from an inclusive pool of qualified candidates. Beyond that, actual decisions are made in accordance with the race- and gender-neutral civil service "merit selection" procedures established by law and regulation, so that race and gender are not given formal weight. For those positions in which interviews and subjective factors play an inevitable role, such as policymaking positions in the Senior Executive Service, anecdotal reports are that some managers may give flexible weight to diversity considerations. This is appropriate to redress a manifest imbalance, or when diversity is somehow relevant to the effective performance of the organization -- but with the important caveats regarding avoidance of reverse discrimination as established in the caselaw. (The antidiscrimination enforcement mechanisms of the EEOC and the agencies are designed to prevent and remedy any abuses.)

(3) Flexible.

Since 1987, there has been no requirement that agencies use goals and timetables; instead, they are directed to focus on removing barriers to advancement. Accordingly, the programs vary among agencies and departments.

(4) Transitional.

Because agencies undertake affirmative employment efforts in accordance with their affirmative action plans, and because agencies review and modify those plans every year, the current efforts are appropriately transitional. It is reasonable to make these judgments narrowly, focusing on specific job categories and organizational units within each agency, rather than making an aggregate decision for the entire Federal workforce.

(5) Balanced.

The data suggest that reverse discrimination charges have been a relatively small and constant proportion of all discrimination complaints filed by federal workers with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. ...

Should I ask the mods to close down this thread then? Just because I stand corrected and held misconceptions doesn't mean that the discussion itself was wrong...in fact, it's good that I learned something from this.

[Norsklow]

I was always under the impression that the selection quo ante was based on merit.

For board members? No. I think "cronyism" would be closer to reality.

The numbers themselves attest to that. A mere 7% of board members were women before the law was passed. At the same time, 31% of high-level management positions were held by women, illustrating that it was not a lack of merit that kept them out of the board room.

That attests zip-all. You might as well argue that because most gold medal winners on the 10.000 meters are from Africa, that means that it's just cronyism. And likewise, you might argue that our own local near-monopoly of Asians in small and medium enterprise is the result of cronyism. Those 2 examples IMHO are the result of a much narrower niche-focus on being the Best of the Best.

[Mexiclando]

[quote="Ifreann";p="10930510"]Affirmative action is a great idea. Sitting back and doing nothing about sexism, racism, and other forms of prejudice and discrimination is only going to benefit the prejudiced and the discriminators.
But how is it not racist to give certain race's advantages over others just because they are a minority?

[Free Soviets]

there is no such thing as a single person being 'best'. not in any way that can be found out ahead of time, for damn sure. decisions are always made on lots of criteria. name one good reason why we shouldn't use "sure are a lotta white dudes around here...maybe we should try to be more diverse?" as one of them.

maybe you haven't been catching this. there are qualified candidates out there who are minorities. they literally are disproportionately passed over for positions. this is the way the world is. what you are proposing is we say "sorry man. but its only been centuries already...what's a few more decades between privileged and unprivileged people, eh?"

fuck that.


let's try it like this.
say we have 7 positions to fill. say we have 100 perfectly plausible candidates, 90 of whom are white dudes, and the remaining 10 are black women. and say the already existing other positions are filled by people such that the number of black women occupying them is way under the percentage of black women in society. why shouldn't we tell people to choose the black women for most if not all of those 7 positions? we already know 93 candidates are not getting them, even though they are perfectly qualified for them. why should we not take into consideration the existing racial and gender disparities and try to fix them?

the only reason you could offer is something about how it isn't our place to try to force society to make itself more equitable. but that's obviously dumb - nobody who isn't a sociopath or a republican believes that. making society equitable is precisely the point of justice. and so when we find ourselves in a situation where society isn't equitable, justice demands that we adopt policies to make it so. until such time as we have achieved equality, then we must have policies designed to create it. while there is more work to do, affirmative action has been fantastically successful. if you could show that it hasn't been or that it is no longer, then that would be an argument for adopting new policies. but you cannot show such, because it just ain't so. and so, affirmative action stays and should be celebrated.

"Nobody who isn't a sociopath or a Republican believes that."

Here you are, attacking at straw men. I'm neither sociopath nor Republican- in fact, you can ask people like Zaras, Liriena, Ligerplace, or Individuality-ness (none of whom are anywhere near the right)- I'm a moderate liberal. Some people may oppose affirmative action based on their own prejudices and racism (Saiwania, talking to you), but others simply do want a fair society. You want to know how to tell the difference? Ask those people if they want more educational funds going to disadvantaged groups funded by their own property taxes. I would gladly do that- but a bigot who wants to keep minorities down wouldn't.

i wasn't calling you a bigot, a sociopath, or a republican. i was saying that you almost certainly reject the premise you would need to in order to reject affirmative action's goal of making social outcomes equitable. without the idea that out of principle we cannot adopt policies to forcibly create equitable outcomes, you can't argue that affirmative action itself is bad. well, not without instead adopting the racism you rightly reject.

in which case, you need to argue that affirmative action as implemented has been either counterproductive or clearly inferior to other readily available options. but the problem is, that simply isn't true. social progress, while not nearly fast enough, has been going along pretty well since we started such programs. and your preferred option might maybe solve the problem decades from now, but does nothing about the present (and given the sorts of struggles we know super well-qualified people have breaking through the barriers ahead of obviously less qualified white dudes, well, let's just say that i am not entirely convinced your plan will work at all). mine, on the other hand, solves both the present and the future. this makes your position clearly inferior when it comes to achieving equitable social outcomes.

Your very own study about how blacks are less likely to get called back for interviews could actually be an example against affirmative action. The study, done by economist Roland Fryer in 2004, was showcased in the book Freakonomics, after affirmative action laws were in place. Why do those employers refuse to call back? There's the assumption that they are unqualified. But those employers clearly know that the resumes are identical. How, then, do they justify it? There's the assumption, that because they were black, they got those qualifications not based on merit but by special treatment- namely affirmative action. If that were to be removed, all else being equal, there could no longer be an excuse for those employers to assume that the identical qualifications could come from any special treatment. Your argument about equally qualified minority candidates also is only ideal- save for the Fryer experiment, usually no two candidates are completely identical (so merit should come first), and using racial status as a tiebreaker does not take into account the personal background, personality, etc that each person brings to the table that are much more important than race.

actually, they almost certainly don't read past the name. and that is exactly why explicit diversity policies are good - because otherwise even well-meaning people tend to fall back on lazy stereotypes and 'personality' judgements that are self-serving.

Also, any forced equality is incompatible with fairness

only under a ridiculous definition of 'fairness'.

A fair society makes sure to help those previously disadvantaged receive opportunities and uplift themselves, but never at the cost of sacrificing the demand for the most meritorious candidates. If a minority is more qualified than a non-minority, he is more qualified and more deserving- no questions. If a non-minority is more qualified than a minority, he is more qualified and more deserving- no questions.

in other words, we should implement strong affirmative action policies. because this is exactly what they do, with the added aspect that since in most instances people aren't clearly better or worse qualified, when we find multiple people that are qualified, we should also consider diversity when choosing.

[Big Jim P]

The only way to achieve "fairness" or "equality" would be to remove any pre-conceived notions concerning a person. Perhaps a blind system that doesn't recognize a persons race or gender. Kinda like What Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. advocated?

[Gravlen]

For board members? No. I think "cronyism" would be closer to reality.

The numbers themselves attest to that. A mere 7% of board members were women before the law was passed. At the same time, 31% of high-level management positions were held by women, illustrating that it was not a lack of merit that kept them out of the board room.

That attests zip-all. You might as well argue that because most gold medal winners on the 10.000 meters are from Africa, that means that it's just cronyism. And likewise, you might argue that our own local near-monopoly of Asians in small and medium enterprise is the result of cronyism. Those 2 examples IMHO are the result of a much narrower niche-focus on being the Best of the Best.

It attests quite a bit. It shows that while being around 50% of the population and holding almost 1/3rd of high-level management positions, women were almost unheard of in the board room. There's nothing to suggest this was due to a lack of merit, and everything to suggest that this was due to gender and cronyism.

Your example fails. Running is measured in seconds, and there's nothing to suggest cronyism. I don't see a large number of runners being faster or equally fast but not being allowed to compete.

How are board room merits measured vs. the merits of high-level management positions, by the way?

[Norsklow]

That attests zip-all. You might as well argue that because most gold medal winners on the 10.000 meters are from Africa, that means that it's just cronyism. And likewise, you might argue that our own local near-monopoly of Asians in small and medium enterprise is the result of cronyism. Those 2 examples IMHO are the result of a much narrower niche-focus on being the Best of the Best.

It attests quite a bit. It shows that while being around 50% of the population and holding almost 1/3rd of high-level management positions, women were almost unheard of in the board room. There's nothing to suggest this was due to a lack of merit, and everything to suggest that this was due to gender and cronyism.

Your example fails. Running is measured in seconds, and there's nothing to suggest cronyism. I don't see a large number of runners being faster or equally fast but not being allowed to compete.

How are board room merits measured vs. the merits of high-level management positions, by the way?

Well, if I''d had to pick a measure I'd say GMAT.

I notice that you do not take into consideration local Asian dominance either.

[Gravlen]

It attests quite a bit. It shows that while being around 50% of the population and holding almost 1/3rd of high-level management positions, women were almost unheard of in the board room. There's nothing to suggest this was due to a lack of merit, and everything to suggest that this was due to gender and cronyism.

Your example fails. Running is measured in seconds, and there's nothing to suggest cronyism. I don't see a large number of runners being faster or equally fast but not being allowed to compete.

How are board room merits measured vs. the merits of high-level management positions, by the way?

Well, if I''d had to pick a measure I'd say GMAT.

I notice that you do not take into consideration local Asian dominance either.

There isn't one here, so I don't see the need to comment on it.

[Norsklow]

Well, if I''d had to pick a measure I'd say GMAT.

I notice that you do not take into consideration local Asian dominance either.

There isn't one here, so I don't see the need to comment on it.

There is one here - and that is a HUGE reason for me to follow the Booker T. Washington Road.
We'll be better and more ruthless Free Marketeers than the Bigots ever managed to be.

[The Reasonable]

in which case, you need to argue that affirmative action as implemented has been either counterproductive or clearly inferior to other readily available options. but the problem is, that simply isn't true. social progress, while not nearly fast enough, has been going along pretty well since we started such programs. and your preferred option might maybe solve the problem decades from now, but does nothing about the present (and given the sorts of struggles we know super well-qualified people have breaking through the barriers ahead of obviously less qualified white dudes, well, let's just say that i am not entirely convinced your plan will work at all). mine, on the other hand, solves both the present and the future. this makes your position clearly inferior when it comes to achieving equitable social outcomes.

...Then that is a problem of equal employment opportunity, not really "affirmative action" as most people would know it. I have no problems with legislation mandating investigations and such against such discrimination. And don't assume that minorities are always much better qualified than whites. If they are better qualified, then it becomes simply a problem of blatant discrimination- and there are laws outside of what are generally seen as affirmative action laws to investigate those cases. If they are not...then they are not, and then promoting them becomes counterproductive because you're promoting less qualified people over better qualified people regardless of race. You can't place employers and colleges at a position of guilt needing to be proven innocent- if they discriminate, it needs to be proven as per equal employment opportunity law, which is technically a part of affirmative action but not the part that I am against.

actually, they almost certainly don't read past the name. and that is exactly why explicit diversity policies are good - because otherwise even well-meaning people tend to fall back on lazy stereotypes and 'personality' judgements that are self-serving.

And getting rid of those stereotypes and personality judgments is predicated upon those minorities not proving to be any less worthy for the task. Promoting minorities simply for the sake of promoting minorities isn't the answer. Merit still has to come first, and in the case of those racist employers...governments can't force a change in some people's backward attitudes. This could go under the umbrella of "equal employment opportunity" as well, and the blacks in question could claim that under equal opportunity, with equal resumes, they should at least get the chance to interview.

in other words, we should implement strong affirmative action policies. because this is exactly what they do, with the added aspect that since in most instances people aren't clearly better or worse qualified, when we find multiple people that are qualified, we should also consider diversity when choosing.

After reading about the specifics of US affirmative action, you may be right, but I still don't agree with quotas or mandating employers/colleges consider race as a factor for employment/admission- employers should have the benefit of the doubt, unless there's clear evidence that superior candidates OF ANY RACE were passed over. We can't assume that all employers are racists, and of course, some employers are even minorities themselves.

I'm sorry for not making what I support and don't support clearer before- discrimination- basically, promoting someone less qualified above someone more qualified based on race should be a crime punished by law and the US system of affirmative action does that and only that, or so I've heard, but automatically passing over any equal candidate regardless of race is wrong.

[Glascadia]

This is one issue on which I agree with conservatives. I don't think we ought to be giving anybody special treatment because of their ethnicity.