Do you think the system does a fair job of leveling out the playing field, or does it continue the plight of discrimination?

I really have no idea, though it does remind me of a conversation I had with my brother about a year back.


I'm sure most everybody here will remember my bringing this up in a previous post, but here we go...I write stories and the majority of the main characters in them are women...and for some reason my brother doesn't like that, he says you can't have women always being the main characters because that would be affirmative action. And all the while I'm like :scratch: I don't get where affirmative action comes into it because men have had the center stage in things about 5 billion times over the years and any competition from the women in these areas would be like...what, 30 maybe?

Although I gotta wonder...on one hand, pregnant women get passed up on a lot of jobs because it's assumed their kid will make them unreliable for work...but you never hear of them doing that to an expectant father even though HE might be the one called on to take the kids to school in the morning and try to find a babysitter. And on another hand, maybe more women are getting hired these days than used to be, but men still get paid more so I don't really see how anything is getting balanced out here.

I think the original plan was that it would even the scales since one side had always had such a huge advantage over the other. But with AA, I'm not really seeing any kind of "leveling" going on. Instead just momentary reverse discrimination where the companies hire their quota minority requirement, then they stop. The principal is being lost.

Eh, it prob. did back in the day....but I'm not so sure now. I'd definitely wouldn't want to see it abolished but like the poster above me said....they fill their quota and then they're done. I think that 'reverse discrimination' is complete bullshit.

The system is no where near perfect and is very skewed....but if it were done away with, old institutionalized bigotry and shutout would immediately reinstate. So just leave it be. The difference is that with AA in place, at the very most it speed bumps or temporarily holds up the white hire....it doesn't completely annihilate his employment prospects or opportunity that way a system without AA does minorities.

I think fighting bigotry with more bigotry is just going to leave the world twice as bigoted as it was before.

Affirmative action just seems like discrimination fighting discrimination. That never works, hence the problems with affirmative action.

I don't think many modern businesses still hold the prejudices of decades past. If they want to stay in business, without being forced to make a quota(the fact that they have to do that really screams bigotry to me), will hire the better of two candidates, regardless of race or ethnicity. Sure, they can be free to still be discriminatory, but if they truly are passing up more qualified candidates simply because of race or whatever, they likely won't be in business very long anyway.

Hence I was never for forcing businesses to stop discriminating. I don't like government telling them who they have to hire. It is a privately run business, they should be able to hire who they want and forcing them to hire minorities to meet a quota, IMO, is itself discriminatory. In the modern world, businesses looking to survive will choose the most qualified candidates.

@Supernova: Why does he have a problem with you writing only for women? You are the writer, you can write about who you choose. You shouldn't be told that you have to write for a specific group of people. My characters mostly tend to be male, especially if they are below the age of 16. I'm a writer, I write about what comes to me. Just like businesses shouldn't be forced to hire anybody, writers should have the freedom to write for who they want to. So I think you're brother is wrong. It doesn't matter how long men have had center stage. On principle alone, he's wrong.

Forgiveness_Man wrote:

@Supernova: Why does he have a problem with you writing only for women? You are the writer, you can write about who you choose. You shouldn't be told that you have to write for a specific group of people. My characters mostly tend to be male, especially if they are below the age of 16. I'm a writer, I write about what comes to me. Just like businesses shouldn't be forced to hire anybody, writers should have the freedom to write for who they want to. So I think you're brother is wrong. It doesn't matter how long men have had center stage. On principle alone, he's wrong.

Don't I know it? And it's not like he even has to read the stuff I write, I just tell him what I think are the better parts for the stories. I gotta read all of his stories which are all about darkness and the real monsters in the world and the end of civilization and it's all the same stuff, after a while it all plays to the same depressing tune, and I'm supposed to encourage him, tell him how great his stuff is, but does he have to do the same for me? Noooooooooooo, he never even has to know what I'm writing, but somehow he automatically thinks I'm wrong for what I do.

Supernova wrote:

Don't I know it? And it's not like he even has to read the stuff I write, I just tell him what I think are the better parts for the stories. I gotta read all of his stories which are all about darkness and the real monsters in the world and the end of civilization and it's all the same stuff, after a while it all plays to the same depressing tune, and I'm supposed to encourage him, tell him how great his stuff is, but does he have to do the same for me? Noooooooooooo, he never even has to know what I'm writing, but somehow he automatically thinks I'm wrong for what I do.

Well I can't knock depressing stuff. lol A lot of my work is bittersweet. But I get the point. I do encourage that writers make efforts to step out of their comfort zone and write new types of characters, but that isn't to avoid discrimination as much as it is to strengthen one's abilities as a writer. Writing an all-female cast of characters could limit it's appeal but it's your story and if that's what you like to write, that's all well and good. It's common for people to write characters that share many similar physical traits with them(ie race, gender, location). We write what we know typically. From a diversity POV, it's fine.

Affirmative Action may be an imperfect system, but it is not in any way "bigotry." In morbid terms, it is basically like chemotherapy...while helping to combat the bigger illness, its own effects makes the patient sick. The ends justify the means however.

RiteDiva wrote:

Affirmative Action may be an imperfect system, but it is not in any way "bigotry." In morbid terms, it is basically like chemotherapy...while helping to combat the bigger illness, its own effects makes the patient sick. The ends justify the means however.

When I see useful ends coming out of this, then maybe I'd agree. Right now it seems less like chemotherapy and more like cutting off your arm cause you have a hangnail. Affirmative action is bigotry. It's answering discrimination with more discrimination. It won't yield good ends ever because it's more than an imperfect system, it's a fatally flawed one.

Nystyle709 wrote:

Bull. Who the hell does AA discriminate AGAINST?

Making race a factor at all in hiring for the average job is itself discrimination.

Nystyle709 wrote:

Answer the question. Who does AA discriminate AGAINST?

AA discriminates against everybody it comes into contact with.

I agree that it does not operate exactly as is intended (what institutionalized system does?), but it works better than the status quo otherwise would. So, in this regard, it is better for AA to exist than for it to not...at least with regards to its goal: diversifying the workplace. As Marc pointed out, the likelihood of a white candidate whose been passed up because of minority quota still ultimately getting a position in his desired field is high. A qualified minority who gets passed up because management has a slant against employing people of color has a much more difficult road ahead.

Nystyle709 wrote:

Everyone it comes in contact with? Hmmm. Is that your final answer?

Was that a Regis or a Meredith impersonation attempt? Either way,

This is getting old already.

Nystyle709 wrote:

I totally agree, because I'm getting tired of having to go in on you. AA doesn't discriminate against anyone when the reasons why it was put in place were never TO discriminate. And in any case, I was looking for a specific group of people that you thought AA discriminated against. And I'm pretty sure you knew exactly what I was asking, but of course, your blase generic and pretty much predictable answer confirms my suspicions just as much.

Having to go in on me? You don't have to reply to me hun.

Who cares what the reasons were for putting it in place? WHY it was put it place doesn't speak to my point, which is the results. Sure, it might've been put in place to stop discrimination, but it doesn't work. AA discriminates against everybody. It's fighting discrimination with more race labeling. Frankly it was a stupid concept from the getgo, very hypocritical.

I knew what you wanted but I gave you what you asked for instead. Your evasive answers confirmed my suspicions too. Oh we can all rejoice in our confirmation now.

Forgiveness_Man wrote:

Having to go in on me? You don't have to reply to me hun.

You don't have to 'reply' to me either, yet you do. This is a discussion forum, I'll go in on whoever I please.

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Who cares what the reasons were for putting it in place? WHY it was put it place doesn't speak to my point, which is the results.

My specific question to you was who you thought AA specifically discriminated against. Because that's what you said. The results and whether it works or not wasn't my question. AA doesn't discriminate when it benefits EVERY minority, women included. Minorities are typically the ones to face discrimination simply because they aren't the majority. That is a FACT. Common sense really. For some reason, AA opponents think AA is only a race issue. Or only a 'black' issue. Quite frankly, the only group of people who claim that reverse discrimination bullshit are white, more likely than not, conservative, bigoted (more likely than not) men. And in my suspicion, I'm pretty sure that's who you were referring to.

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Sure, it might've been put in place to stop discrimination, but it doesn't work. AA discriminates against everybody. It's fighting discrimination with more race labeling.

Race labeling? LOL, I'm pretty sure AA doesn't 'label' anyone of any race. Most people have eyes.

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Frankly it was a stupid concept from the getgo, very hypocritical.

So it was stupid to diversify the workplace and educational institutions because it wasn't being done? It was stupid making companies who take and use government funds, who take and use government tax breaks (from the same people they refuse to hire mind you) hire people who are qualified because they wouldn't have gotten the same consideration otherwise.....which HAS been proven? AA was initially enacted during the Civil Rights movement so basically you're saying that the Civil Rights movement was stupid. Mmmkay.

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I knew what you wanted but I gave you what you asked for instead.

No, you gave me a big old pile of hot, steaming bullshit. Which is what you always do. If you knew what I wanted, then why were you being a douche bag? I think I won't ask you questions anymore.

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Your evasive answers confirmed my suspicions too.

Evasive answers? LMAO, you are on that shit for real. What evasive answers? You didn't ask me a damn thing.

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Oh we can all rejoice in our confirmation now.

Yep. I'm always right about you. You're so damn transparent, it almost isn't even funny.

femme fatale wrote:

Do you think the system does a fair job of leveling out the playing field, or does it continue the plight of discrimination?

Of course not, but I have near subzero faith that the job market (especially at corporate and executive level) won't return to the behavior of a restricted country club if it's done away with. Affirmative Action isn't always fair, but neither was the 'system' that inspired it. Doing away with Affirmative Action will just make it easier for the haves to continue to use supreme authority to keep the have-not's from accelerating.