Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Brentai]

Everyone is wrong but thad, again

Getting tired of people thinking they can have serious discussions here

Considering that Thad's opinion was "Alex's post didn't make any sense", and it took three different interpretations to successfully explain it, I'm willing to concede to his point on this particular matter.

Seriously, save the "Thad is being an uptight prick" for the times Thad is being an uptight prick.  Especially in the middle of a discussion about people crying wolf.

[Norondor]

Halp i can't understand your post. Did you think i was being sarcastic? I was not being sarcastic. Thad actually understands the issues; other people have weird-to-stupid knee-jerk worries that amount to "b-b-b-but... reverse racism!" That's the thread in one sentence.

[Detonator]

I don't have a good enough grasp on how AA works to argue its effectiveness or lack thereof.  I think that's the problem with most of the people on this thread: we assume it works a certain way because that's how it sounds from other people discussing it (these people probably are not in favor of it).

If you can't provide an example of a qualified white person not getting a job over a less qualified black person because of AA, don't assume that's what happens.

[A²]

My father mentioned to me of an air force buddy he kept in contact with lost a job he was extremely well qualified for to a colored person who was...not nearly as qualified as he was. Said employer basically said "You're more qualified, but he's black."

[Thad]

the Bill Cosby Pound Cake speech.

I think Cosby makes some great points in that speech (as well as saying some batshit crazy things), but unless the transcript I'm reading is incomplete, none of them have anything to do with affirmative action, at all.

Anyway, I think there's truth in both Cosby's side and the "institutionalized racism keeps minorities down" side.  And it's best summarized here:

By simply handing them a job, and not requiring that they better themselves, Affirmative Action only perpetuates the problem, and does nothing to solve it

So how do YOU think affirmative action works?  Because it sounds like you think they just pick random black guys off the street regardless of training, education, or skill.

I think the notion that affirmative action means just handing jobs to unqualified people is nonsense.  People work hard to earn what they get, whether affirmative action is part of the process or not.

Getting tired of people thinking they can have serious discussions here

This is probably the part that led Brent to assume you were being sarcastic.  I did too at a glance, up until I remembered you DO generally subscribe to the "Thad's the only one who knows what he's talking about" school.

...Still, saying something constructive instead of just kissing my ass would be nice.

My father mentioned to me of an air force buddy he kept in contact with lost a job he was extremely well qualified for to a colored person who was...not nearly as qualified as he was. Said employer basically said "You're more qualified, but he's black."

And my grandmother told me I should vote for Bush because the Antichrist is alive and somewhere in the middle east.  A thirdhand personal anecdote originally told by someone who has a personal axe to grind doesn't really qualify as an objective statistic.

You know who else has been passed over for a job in favor of someone they believe to be less qualified?  EVERYBODY.

But hey, let's take the story at face value.  Let's assume that your dad's Air Force buddy did not allow personal perception to cloud his judgement at all and what he said was exactly what happened, and he did in fact lose his job opportunity to someone less qualified solely because of race.

So let me ask you something: which do you think is more common, a black man getting hired over a more-qualified white man solely because of race, or a white man getting hired over a more-qualified black man solely because of race?

[A²]

There was a less than 1% chance that said anecdote was false, due to both my father's character (Why would he tell his daughter a lie about that?) and his bullshit radar.

And yeah, given what I've read, seen, and heard, Affirmative Action is pretty much pulling random black guys off the goddamn street to fill a quota.

[Thad]

Facts, Lyrai.  Give me a single fact or statistic.  Increasingly vague personal anecdotes aren't going to cut it, and if your defense of your argument is going to be "My dad is never wrong about anything, ever" then you should probably move this over to the Religulous thread so we can talk about why faith is not a substitute for analytical reasoning.

We already established, eight posts into the thread, that affirmative action in the US does NOT use a quota system.  It appears that you're not even reading the thread but simply parroting talking points.  If you have a case to make to the contrary, then make it, don't just SAY stuff.

Now, I will grant that the last two paragraphs of my post were a late edit, so I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you simply did not see them.  So I will ask again:

But hey, let's take the story at face value.  Let's assume that your dad's Air Force buddy did not allow personal perception to cloud his judgement at all and what he said was exactly what happened, and he did in fact lose his job opportunity to someone less qualified solely because of race.

So let me ask you something: which do you think is more common, a black man getting hired over a more-qualified white man solely because of race, or a white man getting hired over a more-qualified black man solely because of race?

Simple question.

[Brentai]

I'm going to fall back on my earlier comment that every time a white guy is nudged out of a spot by a slightly less qualified minority, there's probably also a completely unqualified white guy in one of the other spots.

[Joxam]

My tribe uses a type of AA called Ho-Chunk (the name of my tribe) Preference, along with general Native American Preference and Veteran Preference policies in hiring. Their policy for this, which can be found on the internet is as follows.

5. Employment Clause.

a. Equal Employment Opportunity. With the exception of Ho-Chunk Preference in Employment as set forth in paragraph (b), below, it will be a violation of this Act to discriminate based on an individual’s sex, race, religion, national origin, pregnancy, age, marital status, sexual orientation, or disability.

b. Ho-Chunk Preference in Employment Clause. The Nation exercises Native American Preference in employment and may exercise Ho-Chunk Preference inemployment under limited circumstances, which furthers a legitimate governmental purpose.

(1) The Nation will exercise Ho-Chunk Preference in Employment, prioritized as follows:

(a) Hocak Wazijaci Tribal member.
(b) Spouse or Parent of Hocak Wazijaci Tribal member.
(c) Native American Tribal member.

(2) Ho-Chunk Preference may be used to recruit, hire, train, recall and lay off employees of the Nation. For hiring purposes, Ho-Chunk Preference shall be used for tribally funded positions and Native American Preference shall be used for all federally funded positions. Preference is only afforded to distinguish between equally qualified candidates or applicants for a position. The Department of Personnel is responsible for monitoring the Preference Policy. Disciplinary action will occur for supervisors who do not adhere to this policy.

(3) The Department of Personnel shall research and prepare a written response to all written inquires of possible misapplication of the Ho-Chunk Preference Policy and Native American Preference. Individuals have the right to submit a written inquiry to the Department of Personnel, regardless of whether such individual is an employee at the time of the application process. Should the Department of Personnel find a violation of preference policy, the Director of Personnel can require additional interviews of all eligible candidates or the Director can override the selection of candidate.

c. Veterans Preference. Veterans are given priority-hiring status over equally qualified individuals for tribally funded positions. To be eligible for preference, the veteran must have an honorable or general discharge. Applicants claiming preference should supply a copy of the DD Form 214, (Certificate of Release or Discharge from Active Duty).

d. Hiring Policy. Upon a written offer of employment, the Nation shall require a preemployment medical screening. Subject to the results of the pre-employment medical screening, confirmation of employment shall be by the Department of Personnel or supervisor.

I'm posting this in response to the Thad v Lyrai discussion. I will admit that this policy is probably abused from time to time but it is written, as I'm sure most AA policies are, to only allow for equally qualified candidates to be chosen because of race.

The Ho-Chunk Nation Legislature has officially adopted a policy for implementing Ho-Chunk Preference. Since this is a tribally owned organization, the goal is to employ, train, and promote the Ho-Chunk Nation’s enrolled members to promote economic self-sufficiency.

This disclaimer is on our tribe's application for employment and I think it explains perfectly well what AA is supposed to be used for.

Lyrai, I like you a lot, but quite frankly, I think you're too busy complaining about something you don't understand to realize that you don't understand it.

[Norondor]

Getting tired of people thinking they can have serious discussions here

This is probably the part that led Brent to assume you were being sarcastic.  I did too at a glance, up until I remembered you DO generally subscribe to the "Thad's the only one who knows what he's talking about" school.

...Still, saying something constructive instead of just kissing my ass would be nice.

I consider it constructive in that i don't want to hear the opinions of people who don't understand anything.

SERIOUS ANSWER BELOW; WARNING, BREAKS CHARACTER

I think, really, that you and I and a few other people around here have True Political Understanding of some sort. I will confess to being poorly-read in comparison to you or Hraedon (who doesn't post, which is kind of a pity), but at some point about a decade ago i came to understand politics in some weird, general, systemic way. Part of this is; infringing on the rights of individuals to do what they like is Always Bad, unless what they want to do is be dicks, which is Always Good. Affirmative Action does infringe on people's freedoms to hire whoever they like by forcing minimum quotas; however, it also prevents them from being intentionally discriminatory. It's an inelegant solution to a nearly-unsolvable problem; the only way to make it go away entirely is probably the one i support, which is to continue the restoration of the South by enslaving any political dissidents (i.e. conservatives) over the age of 25 for the rest of their lives and revoking their right to vote, while taking their children away to be educated properly somewhere sane. Weirdly, i do not think this would find many supporters.

Most everyone here, like everyone else i am willing to actually associate with, don't have either an instinctive or intellectual understanding of Correct Political Ideas, but they vote the right way, because personal experience or a gut feeling or some similar thing tells them they should. This is fine! It means their hearts are in the right place, which absolutely nobody can complain about. It's just that, thinking the way i do about things -- and i know Hrae has the same problem, and maybe you do, as well, Thad -- when a question comes up like "should women have the right to abort an unwanted pregnancy?" it sounds to me like "should objects, when released from the hand, fall towards the largest nearby center of gravity, in accordance with the fundamental laws of physics?" I mean, yes. Obviously yes, why are we talking about this?

When something like this comes up you present well-reasoned arguments, which, coming from the world of Correct Political Ideas, cannot be defused before they explode, rationally destroying their intended targets. For this you ought to be commended. After eight years of living day-to-day at nearly my threshold for moral and political outrage at absolutely everything i read on the news every single day, it is everything that i can do to be presented with incorrect political views and not instantly provoke a shouting match or fistfight.

[Mongrel]

infringing on the rights of individuals to do what they like is Always Good, unless what they want to do is be dicks, which is Always Bad.

Okay, am I misreading this?

Either you're saying that this is what politicians always try or want to do (in which case, that sentence and the preceding one are written terribly), or you had a PROOFREAD FAIL and mixed the two up, or you're completely fucking insane (which seems to run counter to the context of the rest of your post, but hey, if you're completely insane, you can do that kind of thing).

[Kashan]

Why does everybody (on both sides  ) seem to think that AA involves quotas? It's a statement about what you do when you have equally qualified applicants for the same position.

The only time I can ever remember interacting with quotas in my life was at the magnet school I went to, and honestly if you weren't able to make it into a place like that because of quotas, you didn't belong there.

[Norondor]

... oh yeah, massive proofreading failure. i went over that twice in case i fucked it up, too. Clearly i should not trust myself to write things properly at 4 AM!

(i mean, i'm out of my mind as well, but not in that way.)

[Kazz]

I kind of want to put a bullet into my brain for bringing up AA here.  I was never an opponent of it, but it's just a patch over a serious economic problem.  Actually, several serious problems, economic and otherwise.

What AA does is allows non-whites to get hired in place of whites.  I never said that the problem was that they were probably less qualified.  I don't think that's the case, and I don't necessarily think that's a problem if it is.  My complaint is that the world around this hiring process sucks so much that such action is necessary.  Affirmative Action is a tacit admission that the black guy who gets through higher education is such a rarity that he needs special treatment.  If the world made any sense, whites and blacks and whoever else would be vying for positions in equal proportion and we wouldn't need a system to make sure that the blacks get hired when one of them manages to deserve to.

The system itself is not a problem, it's the world that makes the system necessary that is the problem.

[Mongrel]

I would also add that it's harder for poor folks of any stripe to make it through higher education. The poorer you are, the higher the likelihood that you will have to drop out due to a shortage of funds or po' family confuckery ("Haha we spent your tuition, oops.", "None of us are employed. Can you come get a job to support your siblings?", etc. etc.)

[Niku]

didn't we do this a year ago with resident evil 5.

[Kazz]

Sort of.  That was also the difference between haves and have-nots, except what they "have" is the T-Virus.

And no, it is not okay to shoot them unless you are also black.

[Transportation]

It think it's worth while pointing out a situation that AA is designed to fix.

For an extreme example: Infoplease.com

United States v. Paradise

In July 1970, a federal court found that the State of Alabama Department of Public Safety systematically discriminated against blacks in hiring: "in the thirty-seven-year history of the patrol there has never been a black trooper." The court ordered that the state reform its hiring practices to end "pervasive, systematic, and obstinate discriminatory exclusion of blacks." A full 12 years and several lawsuits later, the department still had not promoted any blacks above entry level nor had they implemented a racially fair hiring system. In response, the court ordered specific racial quotas to correct the situation. For every white hired or promoted, one black would also be hired or promoted until at least 25% of the upper ranks of the department were composed of blacks. This use of numerical quotas was challenged. The Supreme Court, however, upheld the use of strict quotas in this case as one of the only means of combating the department's overt and defiant racism.

Even quotas are justified in some cases. Are there any other methods of countering racism by employers that don't involve billions of lawsuits that must be paid for by the victims?

[Thad]

I consider it constructive in that i don't want to hear the opinions of people who don't understand anything.

"Shut up until you've spent five minutes Googling the subject you're talking about" IS probably constructive advice, yes.

I'm frankly concerned, given Lyrai's choice of debate techniques, that I'm going to have to go back to basics and start a thread (probably on Guild Hall) to discuss basic logic, things like the difference between facts and opinions, objective and subjective information, that sort of thing.  Which, while important to understand, is only germane to the current discussion inasmuch as it's required for a fundamental understanding of, well, pretty much everything.

When something like this comes up you present well-reasoned arguments, which, coming from the world of Correct Political Ideas, cannot be defused before they explode, rationally destroying their intended targets. For this you ought to be commended. After eight years of living day-to-day at nearly my threshold for moral and political outrage at absolutely everything i read on the news every single day, it is everything that i can do to be presented with incorrect political views and not instantly provoke a shouting match or fistfight.

...I have decided to let Guild back on the board just so he can read that.

[Ted Belmont]

This seems as good a place as any to put this: Katrina's Hidden Race War.