Quotas and Affirmative Action Discussion Thread

[Bananarama]

Why don't they do it based on class it would be much more accurate than race or gender.

No, it wouldn't. While black people, for example, tend to be proportionally more likely to be lower-class than white people, there are still more lower-class white people than lower-class black people. Doing it based on class and not race/gender still wouldn't fix the systemic racism and sexism in placement into these positions.

 

[Genaller]

No, it wouldn't. While black people, for example, tend to be proportionally more likely to be lower-class than white people, there are still more lower-class white people than lower-class black people. Doing it based on class and not race/gender still wouldn't fix the systemic racism and sexism in placement into these positions.

I disagree. SES should be the primary factor instead of race or gender. Once again equality of opportunity does not equate with equality of outcome (there are a plethora of reasons for this). What you're doing is sub-dividing the human species into categories that potentially don't (or atleast didn't in the past) have equality of outcome relative to eachother and deriving that the only explanation is that they somehow don't have equality of opportunity as well which is actually incorrect. The truth (believe it or not) is that there will always be a way to divide the human species in a manner such that you can find inequality of outcome in order to facilitate a never ending sequence of blame games. Instead of assuming that the system is conspiring against some subset of humanity that you belong to (which is narcissistic) or some other subset (which is still a toxic mindset to have) try focusing on how you can better yourself as an individual and tell others to do the same. Sure in the past affirmative action based on race and gender was helpful but it really isn't needed in the present day in comparison to general SES. A poor person has had to go through hardships irrespective of being white, black, brown or grey. Also cut it out with this "systemic" stuff. The number of white males that are sincerely racist and/or sexist in today's era are a severe minority due to the amount of awareness in today's western society so stop placing collective blame on them (amazing how people seem to forget that a significant portion of white men actually fought for black freedom and women's equality but these points are hardly emphasized in comparison to how racist/sexist they've been throughout the ages). Also another truth is that most people are going to feel oppressed/discriminated/victimized/that the world was unfair against them in some way or another so stop asserting that some major subsets of humanity suffer more by labeling them "victims" and other subsets as "oppressers" and focus on how you can improve as a person despite the problems you may have (coming from a guy with a genetic disability). If you want to see what actual oppression/inequality/sexism looks like, I suggest you look at the east (seriously comparing the west and the east when it comes to such problems is literally like comparing pebbles to mountains. The reason for this is that the east for the most part never understood that free speech is a core virtue unlike the west).

 

[chess-z]

I disagree. SES should be the primary factor instead of race or gender. Once again equality of opportunity does not equate with equality of outcome (there are a plethora of reasons for this). What you're doing is sub-dividing the human species into categories that potentially don't (or atleast didn't in the past) have equality of outcome relative to eachother and deriving that the only explanation is that they somehow don't have equality of opportunity as well which is actually incorrect. The truth (believe it or not) is that there will always be a way to divide the human species in a manner such that you can find inequality of outcome in order to facilitate a never ending sequence of blame games. Instead of assuming that the system is conspiring against some subset of humanity that you belong to (which is narcissistic) or some other subset (which is still a toxic mindset to have) try focusing on how you can better yourself as an individual and tell others to do the same. Sure in the past affirmative action based on race and gender was helpful but it really isn't needed in the present day in comparison to general SES. A poor person has had to go through hardships irrespective of being white, black, brown or grey.

Also cut it out with this "systemic" stuff. The number of white males that are sincerely racist and/or sexist in today's era are a severe minority due to the amount of awareness in today's western society so stop placing collective blame on them (amazing how people seem to forget that a significant portion of white men actually fought for black freedom and women's equality but these points are hardly emphasized in comparison to how racist/sexist they've been throughout the ages). Also another truth is that most people are going to feel oppressed/discriminated/victimized/that the world was unfair against them in some way or another so stop asserting that some major subsets of humanity suffer more by labeling them "victims" and other subsets as "oppressers" and focus on how you can improve as a person despite the problems you may have (coming from a guy with a genetic disability). If you want to see what actual oppression/inequality/sexism looks like, I suggest you look at the east (seriously comparing the west and the east when it comes to such problems is literally like comparing pebbles to mountains. The reason for this is that the east for the most part never understood that free speech is a core virtue unlike the west).

Paragraph spacing is really helpful for reader comprehension. That being said, i don't like the way you argue. It seems like you subscribe to the "overwhelm your opponent with lots of useless words" school of debate. I'm pretty sure that most of the GOP leadership are both misogynistic and racist.

Provide sources for all of your claims. I'm challenging your notion that systematic oppression doesn't exist, and until I see loads of scholarly sources, I'm not going to feel bad about disregarding you.

 

[Genaller]

Paragraph spacing is really helpful for reader comprehension. That being said, i don't like the way you argue. It seems like you subscribe to the "overwhelm your opponent with lots of useless words" school of debate. I'm pretty sure that most of the GOP leadership are both misogynistic and racist.

Provide sources for all of your claims. I'm challenging your notion that systematic oppression doesn't exist, and until I see loads of scholarly sources, I'm not going to feel bad about disregarding you.

I honestly don't care about how you "feel" about my argumentation unless you can actually refute my claims from a logical standpoint. Alright so your claim is "most of the GOP leadership are both mysognistic and racist". Already there's ambiguity thanks to the word "most". I'll assume most means 80% and above.

Well let's look at the GOP's history. The GOP was founded by the very same people that fought to end slavery; seems pretty anti-racist. They also don't believe in affirmative action for women and minorities anymore (but do support AA based on SES) because they believe women and minorities are just as meritocratically capable as white males unlike supporters of affirmative action who believe women/minoriies need special treatment in order to succeed. I wonder who's really the racist/sexist on this issue.

The only issue I can immediately think of that could constitute "misogyny" would be their stance on abortion but then again that doesn't have anything to do with hating woman rather than just affirming that all human life is sacred (that's why the position is called "pro-life" and not "anti-woman"). I disagree with their viewpoint on the scientific basis that a pheetus doesn't have sentience (much less consciousness) until 24 weeks (by which point a woman should know if she wants to have the baby or not) which means that they can't experience any kind of suffering (much less any understanding that they're actually "loosing" something), but despite this I can still respect the moral sentiment behind the position and I wouldn't give them such an extreme label like "misogynists" because of this.

FYI you're the 1 making the affirmative claim therefore the onus is entirely on you to prove that most of the present day GOP leadership are racist/sexist rather than on me to prove that they're not. So please give me your sources that will likely all contain vague/ambiguous correlative claims that fall flat when measured up against real scientific rigor and I'll refute them 1 by 1.

To make this easier you don't even have to convince me that this is the case for most (> 80%) republican leaders. Just try to justify why the claim that the majority (> 50%) of GOP leadership are sexist/racist should be rationally accepted.

There are many views that the republicans hold that I don't agree with (especially those concerning god and religion). That doesn't mean I'm going to collectively label them as morally reprehensible people but rather have honest and intellectual discussions with them about said disagreements. Now there are specific republicans who are reprehensible; however, extrapolating from those individuals to the set of the entire GOP leadership is the very definition prejudice and stereotyping. Instead try judging each Republican Party member on the merits and de-merits of their own viewpoints.

Also minorities and women are hardly innocent of racism and misandry respectively though I'm really not interested in facilitating the blame game so I'll just stick to refuting your claims.

 

[Bananarama]

What you're doing is sub-dividing the human species into categories that potentially don't (or atleast didn't in the past) have equality of outcome relative to eachother and deriving that the only explanation is that they somehow don't have equality of opportunity as well which is actually incorrect. The truth (believe it or not) is that there will always be a way to divide the human species in a manner such that you can find inequality of outcome in order to facilitate a never ending sequence of blame games.

I'm not responsible for constructing race; I'm just trying to find ways to minimize its impact. Of course there will always be ways to divide humanity up into neat little boxes, but those boxes shouldn't be a factor in whether you get chosen to fill a position you want.

Instead of assuming that the system is conspiring against some subset of humanity that you belong to (which is narcissistic) or some other subset (which is still a toxic mindset to have) try focusing on how you can better yourself as an individual and tell others to do the same.

Simply telling people to figure out their own problems won't solve anything at all.

Also cut it out with this "systemic" stuff. The number of white males that are sincerely racist and/or sexist in today's era are a severe minority due to the amount of awareness in today's western society so stop placing collective blame on them (amazing how people seem to forget that a significant portion of white men actually fought for black freedom and women's equality but these points are hardly emphasized in comparison to how racist/sexist they've been throughout the ages). Also another truth is that most people are going to feel oppressed/discriminated/victimized/that the world was unfair against them in some way or another so stop asserting that some major subsets of humanity suffer more by labeling them "victims" and other subsets as "oppressers" and focus on how you can improve as a person despite the problems you may have (coming from a guy with a genetic disability).

But it is systemic. Black folks in the US have been given the short end of the stick for generations. From slavery to Jim Crow to the police disproportionately murdering us, we're still nowhere near equal to whites yet. The fact that white people aren't as blatantly racist as they used to be doesn't change anything.

If you want to see what actual oppression/inequality/sexism looks like, I suggest you look at the east (seriously comparing the west and the east when it comes to such problems is literally like comparing pebbles to mountains. The reason for this is that the east for the most part never understood that free speech is a core virtue unlike the west).

Nobody is bringing up the east here; you really need to find better arguments than just bashing an entire geographic region for not being any "better" than us.

 

[Genaller]

I'm not responsible for constructing race; I'm just trying to find ways to minimize its impact. Of course there will always be ways to divide humanity up into neat little boxes, but those boxes shouldn't be a factor in whether you get chosen to fill a position you want.



Simply telling people to figure out their own problems won't solve anything at all.


But it is systemic. Black folks in the US have been given the short end of the stick for generations. From slavery to Jim Crow to the police disproportionately murdering us, we're still nowhere near equal to whites yet. The fact that white people aren't as blatantly racist as they used to be doesn't change anything.



Nobody is bringing up the east here; you really need to find better arguments than just bashing an entire geographic region for not being any "better" than us.

Right and everything you've just stated concerning racism are correlative claims and not causal claims. Try looking at all other factors and explanations before concluding that being black (or whatever other race) is really the reason why you're not prospering. Once again, equality of opportunity does not lead to equality of outcome.

"Not any better". Wow that's the most understated and ignorant statement I've heard. The general situation in the east with respect to the supposed problems you keep whining about would be 1000s of times worse (and I wish I was exaggerating) because free speech, capitalism and democracy are not core virtues in many countries over there.

 

[Bananarama]

You talk as if racism and other forms of bigotry no longer exist in America, and that just isn't true.

Right and everything you've just stated concerning racism are correlative claims and not causal claims.

I'm fairly sure that Jim Crow laws were specifically implemented to racially segregate black and white Americans and favor the latter, thereby causing black people to be favored less in practically every factor in life.

 

[Walterman123]

No, it wouldn't. While black people, for example, tend to be proportionally more likely to be lower-class than white people, there are still more lower-class white people than lower-class black people. Doing it based on class and not race/gender still wouldn't fix the systemic racism and sexism in placement into these positions.

Yeah but it woulld still benefit the proportion of black people more and work towards equality lol. Think about it.

 

[bobjr]

Do we have to have the talk again about why "correlation doesn't equal causation" isn't the best thing to say? Because everyone knows that, it's becoming one of those lines people say to make themselves sound smart instead of actually working towards a problem.

 

[chess-z]

I honestly don't care about how you "feel" about my argumentation unless you can actually refute my claims from a logical standpoint. Alright so your claim is "most of the GOP leadership are both mysognistic and racist". Already there's ambiguity thanks to the word "most". I'll assume most means 80% and above.

Well let's look at the GOP's history. The GOP was founded by the very same people that fought to end slavery; seems pretty anti-racist. They also don't believe in affirmative action for women and minorities anymore (but do support AA based on SES) because they believe women and minorities are just as meritocratically capable as white males unlike supporters of affirmative action who believe women/minoriies need special treatment in order to succeed. I wonder who's really the racist/sexist on this issue.

The only issue I can immediately think of that could constitute "misogyny" would be their stance on abortion but then again that doesn't have anything to do with hating woman rather than just affirming that all human life is sacred (that's why the position is called "pro-life" and not "anti-woman"). I disagree with their viewpoint on the scientific basis that a pheetus doesn't have sentience (much less consciousness) until 24 weeks (by which point a woman should know if she wants to have the baby or not) which means that they can't experience any kind of suffering (much less any understanding that they're actually "loosing" something), but despite this I can still respect the moral sentiment behind the position and I wouldn't give them such an extreme label like "misogynists" because of this.

FYI you're the 1 making the affirmative claim therefore the onus is entirely on you to prove that most of the present day GOP leadership are racist/sexist rather than on me to prove that they're not. So please give me your sources that will likely all contain vague/ambiguous correlative claims that fall flat when measured up against real scientific rigor and I'll refute them 1 by 1.

To make this easier you don't even have to convince me that this is the case for most (> 80%) republican leaders. Just try to justify why the claim that the majority (> 50%) of GOP leadership are sexist/racist should be rationally accepted.

There are many views that the republicans hold that I don't agree with (especially those concerning god and religion). That doesn't mean I'm going to collectively label them as morally reprehensible people but rather have honest and intellectual discussions with them about said disagreements. Now there are specific republicans who are reprehensible; however, extrapolating from those individuals to the set of the entire GOP leadership is the very definition prejudice and stereotyping. Instead try judging each Republican Party member on the merits and de-merits of their own viewpoints.

Also minorities and women are hardly innocent of racism and misandry respectively though I'm really not interested in facilitating the blame game so I'll just stick to refuting your claims.

Provide sources on the eradication of systemic racism. That is the crux of your arguement.

Also, the GOP endorsed Trump. I think they are racist and misogynistic. Actions speak volumes.

 

[Genaller]

Provide sources on the eradication of systemic racism. That is the crux of your arguement.

Also, the GOP endorsed Trump. I think they are racist and misogynistic. Actions speak volumes.

Systemic racism was a major issue in the past. Anti-racism laws have been implemented since. To still assert that "systemic racism extists" the burden of proof is on you.

They endorsed Trump because they (and nearly half of USA) were sick and tired of all the postmodernist political correctness nonsense. Also Hilary would have outright caused world war 3 with her no fly zone in Syria policy (a simple google search will let you understand why) so Trump is still the far lesser of 2 evils (we don't what Trump is going to do but Hilary would have definitely caused the deaths of millions). Personally it's the democrates that messed up by scr**ing Bernie (the guy that actually cared about the people) but what to do. At the end Turmp is still only 1 man and so the claim that most of the GOP leadership is like that doesn't stand. That's analogous to saying that the Democratic Party supports WW3 because they endorsed Hilary. I really hope that's not true.

 

[GhostAnime]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/02/civil-rights-act-anniversary-racism-charts_n_5521104.html

I mean this is common knowledge even to the most staunch conservatives. Only people who think racism still doesn't exist are alt-right personalities.

 

[Bananarama]

They endorsed Trump because they (and nearly half of USA) were sick and tired of all the postmodernist political correctness nonsense.

If you really care about "political correctness" over things like the economy and national security, then I'm sorry to say, but you have some really crappy priorities.

Also Hilary would have outright caused world war 3 with her no fly zone in Syria policy (a simple google search will let you understand why) so Trump is still the far lesser of 2 evils (we don't what Trump is going to do but Hilary would have definitely caused the deaths of millions).

I guess this would be an unpopular opinion, but I think Hillary Clinton would've been an excellent president. It would've been like four more years of Obama.

Also stop telling us to Google things. Either post them yourself or stop debating with us.

Personally it's the democrates that messed up by scr**ing Bernie (the guy that actually cared about the people) but what to do.

There's no way Bernie could've ever won. Hillary got both more delegates and more votes.

 

[chess-z]

Genaller, sweetie, it's really telling that you can't provide sources.

At the end of the day the republicans decided that they would put their support behind someone who bragged about explicit sexual assault. Also fun fact: TrumpCare would kill millions, who knew?

How do you know that Hillary would have caused WW3? How much Breitbart have you been reading?

 

[U.N. Owen]

I intended this to be a thread about the benefits or harm a quota can bring into a business. Let's say board room meetings needed at least 40% of members needed to be asian or latino. What happens? I'm serious.

 

[Ereshkigal]

I intended this to be a thread about the benefits or harm a quota can bring into a business. Let's say board room meetings needed at least 40% of members needed to be asian or latino. What happens? I'm serious.

That depends entirely on the quality of the candidates. Questions like this cannot be accurately answered purely on racial quotas.

For example, let's say that you want to stock that board with African Americans who have some experience with running a business of any type, without particular care for quality. Limiting it to just the ones who have been upper management or even the guy in charge, you still would be swamped with candidates. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the realities of discrimination that African Americans face and the self-fulfilling prophesy that is the stereotype of them being criminals, most of those people would be gangbangers or minor drug lords. Which, in turn, is only going to make the stereotypes and discrimination that African Americans face worse instead of doing anything to improve their lot in life, since most people will see what they think is objective evidence that the stereotypes are right.

It can also be used to create an unofficial ghetto with even worse discrimination. A simple quota system, of X black to Y white, is the underpinnings of desegregation... and also why, in quite a few communities, it was an epic failure worthy of a Greek poem. After all, how can you say you're managing to desegregate if the whites simply leave and force an even worse segregation than existed before?

A quota system simply focused on numbers of one group without focusing on also improving the quality of those numbers is simply doomed to fail. Assuming it's not actively sabotaged like in the case of desegregation, it's still going to run across a problem that fields in which certain minority groups simply don't have the numbers or high amounts of people with the skill, adding in a quota system without addressing the underlying societal problems that help create that lack ultimately only reinforces those societal mechanisms because it forces companies to accept substandard employees just to meet the quota and, in turn, has those employees unwittingly be evidence in favor of the original discrimination the quote sought to address. And, in turn, increases discrimination against those people by reinforcing any societal negativity towards them in members of the more dominant groups who might otherwise have been predisposed to helping them do away with the discrimination.

So, to answer your question purely as it was asked and without considering any other efforts to fight discrimination: It increases discrimination and makes things worse for everyone.

That's why we cannot discuss the topic without also discussing broader issues at play.

 

[bobjr]

Also companies tend to be more general. Instead of saying "We need X amount of minorities" they tend to go "We want to be more diverse so we're going to focus more on minority hires" without giving a hard number.