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ORIGINAL: MissAsylum

while i se your point and agree with it, i was under the impression that AA came into practice when everybody is equal in skill and knowledge, but a few may be in the minority of who is already employed( afro-americans, women, disabled, etc)

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ORIGINAL: rulemylife

quote:

ORIGINAL: MissAsylum

while i se your point and agree with it, i was under the impression that AA came into practice when everybody is equal in skill and knowledge, but a few may be in the minority of who is already employed( afro-americans, women, disabled, etc)

That may be the reason behind it but the practice of it has often been different.

I'm in a field where experience counts for a great deal but I have routinely seen people given jobs to meet hiring quotas that were completely inexperienced.

As you said on another thread it was meant to level the playing field.

But does that mean people with fewer qualifications should be hired based on race or gender?

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ORIGINAL: thompsonx


Is is possible that those who oppose a.a. when confronted with the situation will pick the least qualified applicant thus setting up a scenario that insures failure and allowing the bigot to crow..."I told you dem dum...(fill in the blank with the appropriate minority)were too dumb to walk and chew gum.
The spirit and letter of a.a. calls for a percentage of those from a "qualified" pool of applicants be from a minority.
I am 60+ years old and I have seen my country progress from segregated busses and services to black quarterbacks and a black president.
Neither the amount of mellinen in ones skin nor the fact that one sits down to pee is a precusor of ability. The fact that it took a federal law to enforce this obvious fact speaks volumes.

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ORIGINAL: igor2003

Here is one example that made the national news several years ago. I don't remember what city it was in, but there was a fire department that needed several firemen. Because of AA a certain number of those firemen had to be from minorities. The problem was that there were no applicants for the job that were from a minority, yet there were a number of white men that had applied and were very well qualified. The end result was that the jobs had to go unfilled and the white men had to look for other work. Because of AA the fire department was short handed and fully qualified men were rejected because of the color of their skin. To me that would be "discrimination".

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

quote:

ORIGINAL: igor2003

Here is one example that made the national news several years ago. I don't remember what city it was in, but there was a fire department that needed several firemen. Because of AA a certain number of those firemen had to be from minorities. The problem was that there were no applicants for the job that were from a minority, yet there were a number of white men that had applied and were very well qualified. The end result was that the jobs had to go unfilled and the white men had to look for other work. Because of AA the fire department was short handed and fully qualified men were rejected because of the color of their skin. To me that would be "discrimination".

I think that was Yonkers, NY. And yeh, shit happens. But there is no moral equivalency between some occasional unintended concequences and misjudgments as against the long history of white male privilege in Ameerica.

There is also a generational component to all of this. The issue seems to be more acutely felt among older white males whereas the generation born in the Eighties seems to be getting along just fine with diversity.

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ORIGINAL: BitaTruble

Hi MissAsylum,

I truly believe that most folks really don't understand how AA actually works and, certainly, it has nothing to do with racism. AA is meant to target those orgs, businesses etc., in which a disproportionate number of qualified applicants from the nearby vicinities are not represented. The key term is qualified. If you have a company in which there are 100 people employed, the general rule of thumb for AA is does the company represent the surrounding area proportionally from the qualified applicant pool. A woman is not going to take the job of a man simply because she is a woman. A woman is going to be offered the job because she is qualified for it. Period. It is when a disproportionate number of qualified personnel are *not* being hired that AA takes effect. A woman with a B average is not going to get into a university that requires an A average just because she is a woman but if the women with an A average are under represented in that same university then, all things being equal, that woman would get preference due to her qualifications for entrance. Certainly, that's not racism since race doesn't even enter into the scenario I represented.

By that same rule, if you have, in your business and surrounding area a pool of applicants of qualified women & men (and in your business men were disproportionately under-represented) then AA would work just as well for them. Most folks don't seem to get that's how it works. It's really about proportional representation.. nothing more, nothing less.

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when everybody is equal in skill and knowledge,