this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2024
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Reminds me of the idea of positive discrimination. Personally, if I knew someone hired me above an equally qualified candidate just because I belong to a minority group I would feel insecure about my abilities.
What if they hired you only because you are part of a majority group? Or does this only matter if it’s someone in a minority being hired?
Either of course. It just seems the former goes without saying and a large number of people support the latter.
I assure you far more people are hired because they’re not part of a minority group than because they are.
I don't know statistics on either, but anecdotally I know far more people critical of 'normal' discrimination than 'positive' discrimination
But I think the point is, equally qualified people both have equal claim to the job. Adding in centuries of lost opportunities for being part of a minority group means that righting the balance makes sense.
Think about it economically. Reparations are paid because of the massive imbalance in opportunity. Where do you stand on that?
You're not helping the individuals who were discriminated on in the past, you're favouring an individual who has no specific connection to other members or the discriminated group besides their shared characteristic, and did not choose to be a part of that group.
Say you never heard about generational poverty without saying it 🙄
In some instances you're right, and that's a different matter. In many others though the current individual is not disadvantaged because of their status as belonging to a minority group.
…exactly. They did not choose to be a part of a minority group, but that fact means they have almost certainly been discriminated against in the past—their ancestors most definitely have, meaning less generational wealth and a diminished starter point due to centuries of racial oppression. If you’re born middle class, or upper class, there is a greater likelihood for opportunity and upward mobility. That drastically decreases the poorer you are, and minority groups are disproportionately represented in the lower classes…again, due to a long history of racial discrimination.
Trying to right that trend has to start with the current generation, and that generation is made up of individuals, whether you think they deserve to be the first in line to receive the benefits of balancing the scales or not.
It has to start somewhere.
Well how about, before you form an opinion, you go do some reading.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053482221000115
That seems to show that many people are discriminated against in job applications, but not the general level of support for that behaviour amongst the general population.
It continues despite general opposition. That's exactly the problem. Systemic and unconscious biases are really hard to combat, even if there wasn't a vocal reactionary minority. "just don't discriminate" has at this point been proven beyond doubt inadequate to equalize opportunities.
It is not common practice to do anything "just because" belonging to a minority group. This is just a lie that conservatives tell each other when they're giving each other a good circle jerk.
Clarence Thomas moment
So if you were equally qualified what should the manager think about when deciding between you two?
Flip a coin because I don't hire unlucky people
They should choose the more qualified, if there's literally no difference I suppose to be totally fair it should be random.
I'll let you in on a secret. In these situations where you have two similarly qualified candidates, if one is actually more qualified in some small way, the employer doesn't have any way of telling which one that is during the hiring process. It's not that precise.
What qualifies being qualified for a job? Should I hire the person who knows a little bit less but is really pleasant to be around and like learning new things or the person who clearly knows more but is a huge pain to be around, thinks he's better than everyone else, and doesn't think he has anything more to learn?
Whatever your criteria are, as long as they aren't based on protected characteristics such as race, gender, etc
I take it you've never been a hiring manager or worked in HR. Hires are almost never made on an objective basis, the bias of interviewers/assessors inevitably affect outcomes. In the absence of positive discrimination, on average, this means unfair outcomes for minorities (because some people are bigots and most people have unconscious bias against out-groups).
So what you're telling me is that being "qualified" isn't the only criteria... But I thought you said the only thing that mattered was hiring the most qualified person...
Qualified is intentionally a vague metric as it can include anything that makes you suitable for the job. What it does not include are protected characteristics.
From what I've seen when those things were actually practiced, it's somewhat different and broken into two parts:
From what I've observed first hand neither feels insecure: the former play the influences game even harder than the rest because they know with absolute certainty that they're only were they are thanks to social and political games, whilst the second just get angry and frustrated because they're not treated as equals - because they are not equals since they're part of a group which got privileges others did not - and thus not respected for their competence.
By creating a separate class of people, who don't go have to pass as high a barrier as the rest, so called "positive" discrimination might land them the job but it also makes sure they'll always be looked at as less competent, further reinforced in the minds of everybody else by those of that groups who are indeed "too incompetent for the job and wouldn't have gotten it if it weren't for quotas"
There are more than enough competent minorities to hire a couple for diversity. And hiring 10 diversity hires, out of a hundred, isn't going to meaningfully impact opportunities for competent non minorities. This is some conservative bullshit trying to sneak in the idea that minorities are dumber than white people.
Sure mate, it can't be that your "'Equality' But Different For Some Than For Others" is neoliberal cosplay of "left" rather than something genuinely left-wing AND that by preserving the differentiated treatment of people based on characteristics they were born with you're just maintaining the very same mindset as the Fascists (that people's gender/etnicity/sexual-orientation determines how they should be treated), no, no, no, it must be that it's the other person (whose history of posts is there for all to see - so feel free to prove it) is a "conservative".
By the way, when I described my conclusions of my own experience, I never said that the group who was getting "positive" discrimination was a minority. Funny how you jumped to conclusions.
Funny how you parroted conservative propaganda and continue to do so while acting concerned.
For anyone not familiar, minorities have had generations of poverty and trauma baked into them. You cannot transition directly to a complete meritocracy and magically repair that. They will remain oppressed and poverty stricken because it's a systemic cycle. Affirmative action breaks that cycle.
Funny how the new age racists trying to pass themselves as leftwing can't stop themselves from grouping people based on the genetics they were born with, just like the far-right.
No, "they" are not "all the same" and shouldn't be treated as if they were.
The way you solve baked poverty from past discrimination is by solving the problems of Poverty, baked or otherwise, which is how a true leftwinger would go after it: you go after the greatest pain and removed it, guided only in the choice of which to go after first by its intensity (as that's how you maximize the good you do) you don't go around deeming every individual with the "right" genetics worthy of support no matter how little pain that specific individual is under and every individual with the "wrong" genetics not worthy of support no matter how much pain that specific individual is under.
For example, make sure the best schools are in the poorest neighborhoods and all of the sudden all the poor kids there have the best chances, and that includes the ones whose poverty is the product of past racial discrimination - breaking the cycle of poverty for all those kids will do a lot more good than a few quotas for only people with the right genetics in places that only help the middle-class.
(By the way, this is actually one of the strongest arguments for there not to be Private Education: so that money can't buy greater life chances for the scions of those who are already better of and the State can channel more educational resources to were it's needed the most)
The only reason to not go after wealth discrimination in general in Capitalism and instead doing very limited measures for only those with the right genetics, is to protect the Wealthy and Capitalism, which is the very opposite of being a Leftie, which is why you Neoliberals love this "lets not go after wealth discrimination which is the main method to transform other kinds of discrimination into lifelong pain and instead let's do symbolic middle-class helping measures based on the genetics people are born with" shit.
You see, you're the one doing the mindless parroting of neoliberal "solutions" fashionable in middle class circles and I'm the one who has been thinking about and guided by, for decades, the core leftwing principle of "the greatest good for the greatest number" rather than adopting unquestioningly some prepackaged ideological tidbits that are popular in my social circle.
So we have to keep brutally oppressing people until we magically stop brutally oppressing people and have a utopia?
No. That's not how that works, that's not how anything works.
You fight the Discrimination by going after every situation of discrimination, punishing the individual offenders and compensating the individual victims.
What you don't do is to carry on Discriminating on the very same visible human characteristics but change the beneficiary groups and call it "positive".
By defending differentiated treatment based on people's genetics (the very same genetic traits that Racists use, no less) you're supporting the very foundation of Racism and every far-right ideology in existence including Nazism.
You're parroting shit you haven't really pondered over and doing so with maximum emotionality and minimal rationaly, in practice defending methods which de facto prolong the very thing you claim to want to stop.
Also, why exactly are you avoiding the point I made about the greatest Discrimination being Wealth Discrimination and fighting that will do a lot more to correct the baked in problems of other kinds of discrimination - what you in perfect political-parrot way mention using the 100% parroted expression "brutal oppression" - than your Descrimination-preserving method?
I'm in a leftwing political party were I live and you sound exactly like the stupid kids who swallowed the neoliberal bullshit and think they're being lefties whilst promoting the far-right way of seeing people, up to and including the raging slogan spewing when confronted with rational analysis of the very neoliberal-think-tank-invented "equality" methods they've learned without questioning.
Because we aren't talking about wealth discrimination here. We're talking about racism. And yes when someone's family was enslaved and oppressed for 500 years because of their skin color, that's going to be the metric for who needs help to repair that damage. This isn't deep, this is some white bullshit to try and justify the continued oppression of minorities. Because there is no movement on anything else you've mentioned and you want to take away the way they are being helped right now.
I don't care who you identify with, this is some Turning Point USA level shit. We can't do the thing we're doing, because we should do something that isn't happening and may never happen. So I guess white supremacists win again by default!
You can come for affirmative action after there's consistent movement on the economic issue, or after, (as one example of many) you can't point out the minority part of town anymore just by looking at a map to see what communities were cut off from services by highways.