Affirmative action vs. Equal opportunity

taliovelez

taliovelez

Member
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Too much reading for me right now. My thoughts are

Equal opportunity is something like speed car racing - each competitor has roughly the same opportunity to win the race. Doesn't matter who your daddy is, it's down to how good you are at racing. Doesn't matter whether you are big, small, male or female; it's what you bring to the race.

Affirmative action is more like a golf tournament where players are allocated handicaps to allow the weaker players a chance of occasionally scoring a trophy.

I know that this is a fairly crude analogy but it is the best I can do.
 

We’ve made this a very complicated and divisive issue that IMO has provided small benefit in comparison to the damage it has done to all involved.

At the end of my working life we attempted to have our workforce imitate the statistical makeup of the communities where our facilities were located.

The important things is that we don’t give up until we get it right.
 
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Warrigal said:
Equal opportunity is something like speed car racing - each competitor has roughly the same opportunity to win the race. Doesn't matter who your daddy is, it's down to how good you are at racing. Doesn't matter whether you are big, small, male or female; it's what you bring to the race.

Affirmative action is more like a golf tournament where players are allocated handicaps to allow the weaker players a chance of occasionally scoring a trophy.

I know that this is a fairly crude analogy but it is the best I can do.
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If only what I bolded were true. While I can't speak specifically to how it works in AU, I suspect it's much like the US: for top employment prizes, women and people of color generally begin the race far behind the starting line reserved for white males with family and other legacy connections.
 
To me affirmative action was a much needed and worthwhile effort to give certain people a little bit of advantage to try to make up for centuries of disadvantage.

For example, when I was young you never ever would have seen a black person as manager of a mainstream company or store. In fact, when I shopped in the big department stores in Charleston, I didn't even see a single black clerk. When I looked for a job as a bank teller I was told "We never hire women, men don't trust women with their money."

So affirmative action came along and forced stores and companies to, at the very least, hire a few token non-whites and women. Within a few years everyone was used to seeing blacks and women in these positions and they learned that women actually could handle money and nothing awful would happen if the local grocery was managed by a person of color.

Affirmative action in colleges also helped to open doors and give a slight advantage to young people whose schools might have been below par.

That mental adjustment for everyone was essential. Not just for the people who were hired and those doing the hiring, but for the children who saw them.

"Equal rights," I see as color-blind or gender-blind hiring and school placements.

So I voted for affirmative action and still think it was a great thing. Is it time to stop it now and return to equal rights,? Maybe so. Along with the advantages there have been disadvantages in the form of resentment from others and a pre-conceived notion that the people hired under affirmative action were not well qualified. I've know high-ranking military women who knew they were more qualified than most and hadn't needed any help moving up, yet feel that everyone thinks they didn't deserve their promotions but were just filling a quota. In college placements affirmative action actually hurt some Asians and black students would occasionally find themselves over their heads if they were given scholarships their schools hadn't prepared them for.
 
StarSong said:
If only what I bolded were true. While I can't speak specifically to how it works in AU, I suspect it's much like the US: for top employment prizes, women and people of color generally begin the race far behind the starting line reserved for white males with family and other legacy connections.
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StarSong, what you say is generally true, I think. However it's worth noting that women now represent 60 percent of enrollment in US medical schools, about 42 percent in business schools and 56 percent in law schools. If Asians are "people of color" (a really dreadful term IMHO) they outperform white males dramatically in terms of income and professional accomplishments and head many major corporations. So things are changing, and pretty rapidly at that.
 
NPR has been talking for the last several days with the person who wrote "Falling Behind" about how boys have been left behind in schools in recent years. While teachers are all about girl-power and telling the girls they can be anything they want to be, many of them are treating the boys like sociopaths just for being a little more restless in class. It's been on , "On Point" for the last four days and it's mind boggling.
 
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Della said:
NPR has been talking for the last several days with the person who wrote "Falling Behind" about how boys have been left behind in schools in recent years. While teachers are all about girl-power and telling the girls they can be anything they want to be, many of them are treating the like sociopaths just for being a little more restless in class. It's been on , "On Point" for the last four days and it's mind boggling.
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There has been a lot written about this lately. Hard to tell if it's true but women are certainly outperforming men in many sectors of society. We are handy for opening recalcitrant jars and reaching higher shelves, however.
 
Perhaps my opinion is jaundiced, but I believe dispensing with affirmative action will push women and non-whites back 50 years. We've gotten where we are because of aggressive affirmative action.

I have zero confidence the Elon Musks of the world will, of their own volition, behave in a color-blind, gender-blind fashion.

Simply because more women hold college degrees does not necessarily equate to earning power. My nephew, a HS degreed, construction welder, earns well over $100K/year, plus generous benefits. His wife, a teacher with a bachelor's and master's, underearns him. Few women have the physical strength to perform his job, and that's true of nearly all heavy construction work.

LAPD is comprised of only 18% female officers. Before any overtime, after 2 years on the job: $92K.
LAFD has fewer than 4% female firefighters. They make as much or more than LAPD officers.
Both jobs require no more than high school graduation or a G.E.D.

If boys are being left behind - and there's little evidence they are - then that situation needs attention. But throwing the baby out with the bathwater isn't the answer.
 
StarSong said:
Perhaps my opinion is jaundiced, but I believe dispensing with affirmative action will push women and non-whites back 50 years. We've gotten where we are because of aggressive affirmative action.

I have zero confidence the Elon Musks of the world will, of their own volition, behave in a color-blind, gender-blind fashion.

Simply because more women hold college degrees does not necessarily equate to earning power. My nephew, a HS degreed, construction welder, earns well over $100K/year, plus generous benefits. His wife, a teacher with a bachelor's and master's, underearns him. Few women have the physical strength to perform his job, and that's true of nearly all heavy construction work.

LAPD is comprised of only 18% female officers. Before any overtime, after 2 years on the job: $92K.
LAFD has fewer than 4% female firefighters. They make as much or more than LAPD officers.
Both require no more than high school graduation or a G.E.D.

If boys are being left behind - and there's little evidence they are - then that situation needs attention. But throwing the baby out with the bathwater isn't the answer.
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I will state an unpopular opinion: Women should not be firefighters, at least not the type that go into burning buildings. I weigh 175 lbs and there are damn few women who could pick up my unconscious body and carry me to safety. Changing the test standards so that it's 135 lbs and not 180 pounds or whatever it was doesn't help me much when my life is on the line.

Of course the nasty female LAFD fire chief who said not to get in trouble in the first place perfectly encapsulated a certain type of thinking.

You said
Few women have the physical strength to perform his job, and that's true of nearly all heavy construction work.
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Those are market forces at work. It's not just physical strength, it's the willingness to work outdoors in all weather and risk physical injury. Is it fair that a construction worker makes more than a teacher? Sure. Degrees aren't everything, and in some cases (as we have seen at major US universities) multiple advanced degrees seem to be a sign of corrosive stupidity.
 
StarSong said:
Perhaps my opinion is jaundiced, but I believe dispensing with affirmative action will push women and non-whites back 50 years. We've gotten where we are because of aggressive affirmative action.

I have zero confidence the Elon Musks of the world will, of their own volition, behave in a color-blind, gender-blind fashion.

Simply because more women hold college degrees does not necessarily equate to earning power. My nephew, a HS degreed, construction welder, earns well over $100K/year, plus generous benefits. His wife, a teacher with a bachelor's and master's, underearns him. Few women have the physical strength to perform his job, and that's true of nearly all heavy construction work.

LAPD is comprised of only 18% female officers. Before any overtime, after 2 years on the job: $92K.
LAFD has fewer than 4% female firefighters. They make as much or more than LAPD officers.
Both jobs require no more than high school graduation or a G.E.D.

If boys are being left behind - and there's little evidence they are - then that situation needs attention. But throwing the baby out with the bathwater isn't the answer.
Click to expand...
Two points about salary discrepancy

1. Male dominated industries have higher earnings for a number of reasons. One is that they are more likely to be unionised

2 Men are more confident about arguing their case for a higher salary than women are. Women do not usually know how much less they are being paid than their male equivalents due to confidentiality.

As for boys in school - they are much more likely to be disruptive in class. They are worse in co-ed classes.

Girls do better in single sex classes without their male counterparts taking up so much of the teacher's time. However, single sex schools tend to offer more limited choice of subjects for both sexes, limiting their vocational choices.
 
affirmative-action-main_0.jpg

Part 5 Negative internal and external influences

www.reuters.com/legal/affirmative-action-ruling-could-place-target-us-corporate-diversity-programs-2023-06-30/

www.explodingtopics.com/blog/employee-theft-stats

Timeline of Congress of Racial Equality Actions 1942-1970 - Mapping American Social Movements Project

www.bet.com/article/ujnvnh/commentary-the-hypocrisy-of-the-naacp

www.manhoodraceculture.com/2024/05/27/bobby-seale-the-black-panther-partys-10-point-platform-and-program/

www.governing.com/now/black-elected-officials-and-the-nuanced-issue-of-expectations

www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/12/14/gender-discrimination-comes-in-many-forms-for-todays-working-women/

Why Liberalism Failed

Attendance - Wikipedia

Wage theft - Wikipedia

Reverse discrimination - Wikipedia

Liberalism in the United States - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciongress_of_Racial_Equality

LGBTQ community - Wikipedia

Feminisation of the workplace - Wikipedia






What Does Liberalism Mean?
 
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Irishdude said:
I will state an unpopular opinion: Women should not be firefighters, at least not the type that go into burning buildings. I weigh 175 lbs and there are damn few women who could pick up my unconscious body and carry me to safety. Changing the test standards so that it's 135 lbs and not 180 pounds or whatever it was doesn't help me much when my life is on the line.

Those are market forces at work. It's not just physical strength, it's the willingness to work outdoors in all weather and risk physical injury. Is it fair that a construction worker makes more than a teacher? Sure. Degrees aren't everything, and in some cases (as we have seen at major US universities) multiple advanced degrees seem to be a sign of corrosive stupidity.
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My point was many well-paying career opportunities that don't require advanced degrees are available to men (because of their physical strength advantages) than women, but I can't think of a single instance of the reverse situation.

I was responding to your comment:
Irishdude said:
However it's worth noting that women now represent 60 percent of enrollment in US medical schools, about 42 percent in business schools and 56 percent in law schools.
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StarSong said:
My point was many well-paying career opportunities that don't require advanced degrees are available to men (because of their physical strength advantages) than women, but I can't think of a single instance of the reverse situation.

I was responding to your comment:
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I think we're on the same page. I think my late sisters would have had brilliant careers had they not been stifled by the times they lived in. Discrimination now is more subtle but still extant on many levels.
 

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