Is Scaffold Obscuring The View?
| By Bluejacket - Dec 6th, 2005 at 9:37 pm EST |
FEM brought up something I have been looking over for a while. Quotas. She brought up the fact that there were no female writers or creators for Adult Swim. She then challenged the people in charge of Adult Swim to get with the program and hire some. My response to that was posed below. I'll let you industrious people read it.
Quotas had a time and place. I am no longer sure we need to keep dragging them around. They seem to cause as many problems as they solve. Friends of mine keep running into them in work and in play. Minorities that quotas were designed to help out are in places where they can now help out others. Four black men are heading Fortune 500 companies. Female owned companies in 1998 employed about 1 in 5 workers in the U.S. We have had two black Secretaries Of State and several women have also held that position. The Supreme Court has had black men and women on it over the last two decades.
What exactly were quotas created for?
Affirmative action and quotas seem to have been created to level the playing field. Since we held back minorities for so long, we needed to give them a boost to catch them up to the rest of us. Let them gain access to the institutions that led to the success of so many white people: universities, quality public schools, good jobs, and health care.
When does it stop? It should stop when those same rules start to hobble people from performing routine business tasks without jumping through hoops. Steve Mariucci, the recently fired head coach of the Detroit Lions, we the first choice for coach by Matt Millen. They had worked together. They had a history together. Steve was the man that Matt wanted to run his team. Due to an NFL diversity program, the Lions were fined heavily for not giving minorities interviews. Which, to be fair, the Lions did. But, the interviews went more like "We know who we want, but we are doing this to please the league." Not like the NFL does not have it's fair share of black head coaches. Tony Dungee leading the flawless Colts, Martin Lewis reviving the Bungles to the Bengals, Romeo Crenell trying to rebuild the ailing Browns after helping the Patriots to three Super Bowls.
It should also be reconsidered when it threatens top institutions. The University of Cincinnati has a brilliant architecture program. In the early 90's, they almost lost accreditation. They did not have enough black people in the program to fill the AIA quota for minorities. They kept the program, and then reviewed why they did not have that many black people in the program: they were going to the engineering program. It had nothing to do with not trying to attract minorities; it had everything to do with the people with those skill sets going to where the money is. Which is a good thing. But not so good if you have to fill a quota.
It was built as a scaffold to bring people who traditionally had nothing to a place where they could have something. Now, in greater numbers, they do. Accolades, accomplishments, money, fame. There is even serious talk about having two women running for president in 2008. How long does this scaffold need to be up? When is there enough of a foundation for us to take it down? Are we so focused on the scaffold in front of us, that we are missing the view?
Quotas had a time and place. I am no longer sure we need to keep dragging them around. They seem to cause as many problems as they solve. Friends of mine keep running into them in work and in play. Minorities that quotas were designed to help out are in places where they can now help out others. Four black men are heading Fortune 500 companies. Female owned companies in 1998 employed about 1 in 5 workers in the U.S. We have had two black Secretaries Of State and several women have also held that position. The Supreme Court has had black men and women on it over the last two decades.
What exactly were quotas created for?
Affirmative action (U.S. English), or positive discrimination (British English), is a policy or a program providing access to systems for people of a minority group who have traditionally been discriminated against, with the aim of creating a more egalitarian society. This consists of access to education, employment, health care, or social welfare.
In employment, affirmative action may also be known as employment equity or preferential hiring. In this context affirmative action requires that institutions increase hiring and promotion of candidates of mandated groups. (Wikipedia)
Affirmative action and quotas seem to have been created to level the playing field. Since we held back minorities for so long, we needed to give them a boost to catch them up to the rest of us. Let them gain access to the institutions that led to the success of so many white people: universities, quality public schools, good jobs, and health care.
When does it stop? It should stop when those same rules start to hobble people from performing routine business tasks without jumping through hoops. Steve Mariucci, the recently fired head coach of the Detroit Lions, we the first choice for coach by Matt Millen. They had worked together. They had a history together. Steve was the man that Matt wanted to run his team. Due to an NFL diversity program, the Lions were fined heavily for not giving minorities interviews. Which, to be fair, the Lions did. But, the interviews went more like "We know who we want, but we are doing this to please the league." Not like the NFL does not have it's fair share of black head coaches. Tony Dungee leading the flawless Colts, Martin Lewis reviving the Bungles to the Bengals, Romeo Crenell trying to rebuild the ailing Browns after helping the Patriots to three Super Bowls.
It should also be reconsidered when it threatens top institutions. The University of Cincinnati has a brilliant architecture program. In the early 90's, they almost lost accreditation. They did not have enough black people in the program to fill the AIA quota for minorities. They kept the program, and then reviewed why they did not have that many black people in the program: they were going to the engineering program. It had nothing to do with not trying to attract minorities; it had everything to do with the people with those skill sets going to where the money is. Which is a good thing. But not so good if you have to fill a quota.
It was built as a scaffold to bring people who traditionally had nothing to a place where they could have something. Now, in greater numbers, they do. Accolades, accomplishments, money, fame. There is even serious talk about having two women running for president in 2008. How long does this scaffold need to be up? When is there enough of a foundation for us to take it down? Are we so focused on the scaffold in front of us, that we are missing the view?
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Comments are closed for this post.
I could go on about affirmative action at length, but sufficed to say, I can understand that it once served an important purpose, but I think the time for that has come and gone. Nowadays, people should stand on their own merits, not be judged differently by the system based on the color of their skin.
Then a white center could sue for not being given an advantage in the hiring process.
A black hockey player could as well.
Let's say your kids are getting a critical operation, would you want the best qualified man or woman for the job; regardless of race, or would you be happy to have your kids under the knife as long as the individual in question helped make the community of that surgical specialty reflect the general population?
Come to think of it, and here is where you will dismiss me as being hyperbolic; why not the senate, the presidency, etc.? Why worry about having the best person for the job when you can have diversity?
Form a consistent argument and maybe you will be more widely heard.
David
There was a justification for affirmative action in the past, because it used to be that again and again, the best qualified man was not getting the job when the best qualified man was black, due to persistent racism. Police and firefighter units, where you sure as hell want the best man even moreso than some white collar desk job, were proving the hardest to integrate in many places. They tried all the other options, and they didn't work, so then they tried affirmative action - it worked.
Nowadays, it's different. Racism is the exception, not the rule, and affirmative action has to go away if we're ever going to have a society that judges on merit, not skin color.
Affirmative action now does more harm to the American project than good.
What's really needed is a doubled effort by universities to recruit students from low-income and disadvantaged backgrounds who display real potential (beyond simple test scores) for making something of themselves, no matter what skin color they are. Breaking the cycle of poverty lifts up people no matter what their skin color.
In this post I think there is a general misunderstandment of what currently is affirmative action. Here are the current pillars of affirmative action in the United States under TITLE VII:
Increased Recruitment efforts... i.e. going to a Latino Job Fair.
Remedial training.. Provide training to a protected group group..
And Preferential treatment.. which means that two persons of equal qualification, the preference to the protected group.
There are still guidelines one must follow in order to give preferential treatment:
*Determination of under-representation of a protected group
*It must be part of a formal affirmative action program, so an employer cannot just nonchalantly say I'm going to hire this said ethnicity today.. there must be guidelines set up
*The program cannot be open-ended
*And the program cannot create undue hardship for nonprotected groups
Quotas are 110% illegal in hiring practices unless they are put in place by a court of law due to evidence of egregious (sp?) discriminatory hiring practices.
Currently you cannot discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin
Note to author I think you should state in your main article that quotas are illegal in US hiring practices unless otherwise instated by a court of law.
In general, there are very few situations where two people are "equally qualified" for a job. The rosy scenario that affirmative action doesn't at times involve more qualified candidates of white, east asian, or south asian backgrounds being passed over is something close to a fiction.