On the Supreme Court, Quotas and Reverse Discrimination

[hkellick]

Let me start by stating where I stand.

Yes, I am White, Male and Middle Class. This means, on average, I am more likely to find a job and more likely to get a raise and a promotion than a Woman or Colored Person. I acknowledge this as the fact that it is.

That said... I believe very strongly in fairness. Denying anyone a promotion simply because of their race or sex is wrong.

That's why I stand against Quotas.

Don't get me wrong. I DO believe that when deciding whether or not a person should be hired or promoted, your race, sex, age, sexuality or religion should simply not enter the picture. They are besides the point. What SHOULD be the point is whether or not you are the right person to get the job/move up in the company. Whether you have the qualifications, the experience, whether you would be the right cog to put into that particular place in the machine.

I also realize as I stated in the second paragraph above that that isn't necessarily true, that people do still account for race, sex, etc. when making these decisions. That's not right either.

But neither is Quotas. The predetermination that a certain percentage of the managers of a company or the employees of a company NEED to be a minority class, whether they're the best person for the job or no.

Looking at the argument the Supremes heard today, the issues as I understood it was that a group of firefighters were offered a chance for a promotion but because none of those who'd been noted as promotion-worthy were colored, the test was thrown out.

This is simply unfair. These were chosen as the best among their company, the people who deserved a promotion but because none of them was colored, they weren't even offered the CHANCE for a promotion? How is this fair? How is this right?

So, I agree with the Supreme Court. This was the right decision. It should not be legal to bar someone from a job or promotion simply because they're 'different', but it also shouldn't be legal to bar someone from a job or promotion simply because they're not. That's just plain nuts!

So.. yeah.
I'm done.

Comments

[adalger]

Yep. You've jump-started my comment for me. :)

Similarly, don't give the job to less qualified people to meet a quota, fix the part of the system that limits production of the most qualified people to those of some specific ethnic / social / gender makeup.

Particularly with firefighters, I absolutely don't want any question that the person in charge of putting out the fire at my house is there because they needed a latino lesbian who grew up poor and not because she was the best person for the job.

[hkellick]

Especially true with a manager.

I think that most people have the capacity to be a fireperson. It takes training, but it's a skill most people could learn.

However, anyone who works will be able to start telling you the difference between a good manager and a bad manager and I don't think someone should become a manager simply because they fit into a minority class.

I'm not saying minorities shouldn't become managers, but that being a minority class is not reason enough, if they're just going to be a bad manager.

[invisionary]

Actually, I don't think so. There is a baseline of physical strength, conditioning, and endurance required to safely and effectively do the job. These are bonafide occupational qualifications, as the legal terminology goes. Not everyone is tough enough to be a firefighter. However, among those that are, I don't care what they look like or who they fuck in their spare time. I care that they'll bail my ass out of a fire if I need it.

Simply being able to say whether or not someone is a good manager (in the speaker's opinion, no less) does not mean they themselves would be a good manager. The big problem with trying to fairly hire managers is that privilege is at work bigtime. People listen to those they perceive are like them, and well, race and gender are obvious.

Nobody in this thread is saying a quota system is perfect, or that it means the absolute best person will be hired 100% of the time. It's a flawed system, but arguably less flawed than the good ol' boy system it's replacing.

[cesy]

Exactly. If a minority group are not getting into certain universities, first check whether it's because those universities are bigots or because that minority tend to have lower academic grades. If the latter, fix that problem, don't just impose a quota so they go to a university where they can't cope with the work. There are several minorities who do tend to have lower grades in public exams, and the problem runs right through the school system, not just at the top level. The root cause needs fixing; don't just paper over the symptoms.

If minorities are missing out on promotions, check if it's because their managers are prejudiced, or if they're missing out on the work experience or training that would help them do their job better so they got higher performance ratings and could get the promotions. Obviously, sometimes it is the former, and that needs challenging and fixing, but sometimes it's the latter. And sometimes, people don't want to admit it's the latter because it's a lot harder to deal with long-term, complex, endemic problems than just blaming the manager for being a bigot.

(As a girl, I was the only person at my school doing the STEP maths exam. At the equivalent boys' school, there were several. I was the first pupil in several years to try for it. They had people most years. They had more formal classes to prepare for it, teachers with more experience of training people for it, and classmates to work with. They all got higher grades than me. Were the exam markers prejudiced against girls? I don't think so. Should they have had a quota of girls to get a certain grade? Definitely not.)

[damned_colonial]

Exactly. If a minority group are not getting into certain universities, first check whether it's because those universities are bigots or because that minority tend to have lower academic grades. If the latter, fix that problem, don't just impose a quota so they go to a university where they can't cope with the work.

And what if the lower grades are because of endemic racism in schools, which is in part because most of the teachers are white, which is because only white people applied for the jobs, because only white people had teaching degrees?

Or what if the lower grades are because the kids don't have as much homework support, because the father's in prison on account of a racist law enforcement and judicial system, and the mother is working a low-wage job as many hours as she can, because she doesn't have a degree...

"Root cause" is over-simplifying, I think. It's all cyclical and intertwined, and you have to break that somehow. Like when I'm untangling a ball of yarn... sometimes you just have to break out the scissors and say "I'd really rather not break the yarn, but sometimes you just have to do it to get it untangled."

[cesy]

Hmm. I see what you mean. So quotas are generally a bad thing, but sometimes useful as a way to break the cycle, even if it means you don't get the best person for the job in the short term. You know, I don't think I'd ever heard it argued that clearly that way before. Thank you. I shall have to go away and think about this.