I think tolerance is the enemy

[Asex]

Let's have two people: A and Z

They both apply for a job and A performs better on the tests but the one who gets hired is Z because of their sex, nationality or race (hence sexism, nazism or racism) we tolerate their shortcomings.

What I find just is hiring of the better.

[Absol]

But in that case, is it really tolerance? I would more consider that to be bias, just bias in favor of a group that normally experiences unfavorable bias. (but bias all the same) Because if the scenario was reversed, and person Z was a minority race (for example) and person A was white, then it is still bias, just a more common racist bias. The world needs more tolerance!

[ShyFeather]

It's called positive discrimination, and I also don't think it's right either. I got my fair share of it while in Japan and despite its benefits it still made me feel like I'm an outsider that needs special treatment. You have to be careful when you make these accusations too. Sometimes people will feel they deserved a job and will claim the other person was only hired because of x, y, or z. They don't actually know the reason themselves and it could really be that the employer felt they were better for the job from their interview or past experience. It's messy.

[LaMaestra]

Positive discrimination is just as bad as negative. It is unfair on both parties. It is also downright patronising as the person hired due to 'special circumstances' may worry that they didn't get the job on genuine merit.

In Britain there exists a 'quota system' which means that any company with more than a certain amount of employees (currently 20) has a legal obligation to employ such people. This is wrong on every level. People should be hired because they can do the job.

[Chemic]

Ah yes, what's known as affirmative action here in the US and still a touchy subject. The common example we give is that you have 2 people applying for a job. They have identical resumes, experience, etc. but one is white and one is a minority race. With affirmative action, it says to go with the latter person, but truth is, so much more goes into who people decide to hire. Many, while they don't want to admit it, are nepotistic or require networking to get a job. And some studies were done that showed that the more attractive someone is (male or female) the more likely they were hired than someone with the same resume, but less attractive. Not to mention, when one is interviewed, the company hiring is also trying to get a feel of the person, to see if they'd be a good fit and get along with other employees. Granted, this can work against someone if the company is mostly one particular race, as people tend to gravitate towards others like themselves (if you've ever been in a school where 2 or more races make up the same portion of the student body, you'll see during lunch that the majority self segregate and mix a bit in the middle).

Then there's colleges and who they accept. Some prestigious colleges tend to accept an abnormally high amount of blacks to any other race, and one study showed that asians actually had to score a near perfect score to have the same chances of being accepted as whites and blacks who scored lower. So there's even the issue where affirmative action may only be working for one race but not others. Not to mention their "good intentions" of accepting minorities could backfire if they accept one with a low score simply because they're a minority, and then the person fails because they can't handle the strenuous workload.

In an ideal world, we'd hire based purely on who's better fit for the job via experience and skill sets, but sadly, we don't live in that kind of world.

[Hobbes!]

Positive discrimination is just as bad as negative. It is unfair on both parties. It is also downright patronising as the person hired due to 'special circumstances' may worry that they didn't get the job on genuine merit.

In Britain there exists a 'quota system' which means that any company with more than a certain amount of employees (currently 20) has a legal obligation to employ such people. This is wrong on every level. People should be hired because they can do the job.

Could you cite your source on that? I've never heard of an actual quota being put in place.

In any case, if the legal obligation does exist, it's not enforced

[LaMaestra]

My ex boss actually said so, Hobbes. Also my brother said the same thing when the branch of Royal Mail for whom he works decided to run sign language classes to communicate with deaf employees. My brother is not deaf but he attended them.

[warrigan]

i strongly disagree. i think that an unfortunate result of sexism/racism/etc is that the people being discriminated against are subconsciously viewed as being less capable (in an interview setting, say) and passed over for the job, or are systematically denied opportunities/resources, causing them to score worse on a test.
i find it incredibly unlikely that there would be no good candidates that weren't white men..

[Asex]

... i find it incredibly unlikely that there would be no good candidates that weren't white men..

who said anything about white men?

[warrigan]

... i find it incredibly unlikely that there would be no good candidates that weren't white men..

who said anything about white men?

i just assumed based on this:

but the one who gets hired is Z because of their sex, nationality or race (hence sexism, nazism or racism) we tolerate their shortcomings.

people who are not discriminated against based on sex, nationality, or race (and therefore passed over in favor of those who are) would be white men.

[Sally]

My ex boss actually said so, Hobbes. Also my brother said the same thing when the branch of Royal Mail for whom he works decided to run sign language classes to communicate with deaf employees. My brother is not deaf but he attended them.

Your brother and your boss don't constitute a quota system.

[Hobbes!]

My ex boss actually said so, Hobbes. Also my brother said the same thing when the branch of Royal Mail for whom he works decided to run sign language classes to communicate with deaf employees. My brother is not deaf but he attended them.

Your brother and your boss don't constitute a quota system.

No, but it is some evidence of it. I'd always thought that the equality and diversity questions were just a convention, but then for all that I've applied for a lot of jobs I've also never worked in recruitment - there could be some law like that buried away

In any case, I'm not a fan of positive discrimination, but that's not the same thing as tolerance. Tolerance means not letting people reject applicants solely on the basis that they're of an ethnicity the recruiter doesn't like, or whatever. Problem is, there are so many ways to explain away a prejudiced choice. "He wasn't the right fit", and other business-speak meaning "Didn't like him and didn't have an objective reason for it".

[Sally]

Problem is, there are so many ways to explain away a prejudiced choice. "He wasn't the right fit", and other business-speak meaning "Didn't like him and didn't have an objective reason for it".

Yes -- women and blacks have been shut out of jobs and housing through all those other ways of discriminating. Even with laws prohibiting discrimination, there's usually a "but for" clause: a charge of discrimination will only stick legally if the person would have been chosen "but for" the fact that they were black, female, etc. That's very difficult to prove.

[Asex]

... i find it incredibly unlikely that there would be no good candidates that weren't white men..

who said anything about white men?

i just assumed based on this:

but the one who gets hired is Z because of their sex, nationality or race (hence sexism, nazism or racism) we tolerate their shortcomings.

people who are not discriminated against based on sex, nationality, or race (and therefore passed over in favor of those who are) would be white men.

To me racism has no color/nationality.

[Rising Sun]

Positive discrimination is both good and bad, as it has both good and bad reasons. Let me take 2 local examples.

• Parity in politics. If I remember well, the number of female politicians was about 10% before. The government decided that there should be 50% of female politicians in local elections. The thing is that there aren't even enough women involved in politics to reach that number and as a result, some women don't even have enough knowledge and experience but are still elected.
• Disabled workers. The law forces all big enterprises to hire at least 6% of disabled workers if they don't want to pay a tax. Some employers think that paying a tax is still better than hiring "inefficient" employees who need adaptations to work. But it's still a fact that without this law, almost no one hired disabled people before. Disabled people have a very bad image in my country. I was so surprised to see one day a person with Down syndrome working in the US. In my country, you would never see a person with Down syndrome working as almost all live a vegetative "life" in mental hospitals.

So, yes, ideally positive discrimination shouldn't exist. However, when without positive discrimination, you would have no chance of success, should you still consider it as only a bad thing (like in the first case) ? Shouldn't it rather be considered as a necessary evil in a few specific cases until things get better and society doesn't need it any longer (like in the second case) ?

[CNGB]

What you're describing here--as other people have already stated--isn't "tolerance" at all, but just another form of discrimination.

[warrigan]

... i find it incredibly unlikely that there would be no good candidates that weren't white men..

who said anything about white men?

i just assumed based on this:

but the one who gets hired is Z because of their sex, nationality or race (hence sexism, nazism or racism) we tolerate their shortcomings.

people who are not discriminated against based on sex, nationality, or race (and therefore passed over in favor of those who are) would be white men.

To me racism has no color/nationality.

except that as a white person, i have never been discriminated against for being white. i suppose it might be different elsewhere (i'm from the us/canada), but i literally cannot think of a single time that i have been at a disadvantage because i was white. until i see proof otherwise, i'm going to assume that racism does, in fact, have a color.

[ThaHoward]

No it doesn't have a color. It can also be about ethnicites, hence the black on black racism, or rather South African/Zulu against immigrants, in South Africa. Also I know plenty of example of interwhite racism, and non-whites being racist to whites because of skin color, ethnicity and/or religion. Of course white racism have been the most dominant in the past, and perhaps still in northern america, but it doesn't mean that other types of racism exist. And positive discrimination can also be the other way around, quotaing in males into teacher jobs or nurses and so on. So it works both ways.

[Asex]

The way I see it, to say racism has a color is to categorize certain people as lesser/inferior humans.

Rising Sun I think society should be found guilty if disabled people don't get hired to do jobs for which they are fit.

I think society should take responsibility and change.

I also think that positive racism will lead to increase in negative racism and we can bounce between the two sinking down the spiral of eternal conflict.

I think society must change, I think if we don't hire disabled people fit for the job this is horrible, these people already have enough problems and to doom them to being unemployed...

... sometimes the military are guilty, sometimes the politicians are guilty, but this time I think it's society so society is the solution.

[Lost247365]

Let's have two people: A and Z

They both apply for a job and A performs better on the tests but the one who gets hired is Z because of their sex, nationality or race (hence sexism, nazism or racism) we tolerate their shortcomings.

What I find just is hiring of the better.

Are they really shortcomings though?

The example you give strongly hints that the person who got the job, got it because they are a minority of some sort. This usually means they come from a background that has been strongly affected by historical and institutional discrimination. Discrimination that has benefited person A.

This can take many form but let say that person Z is from a ghetto with one of the worst schools in the country, and person A is a sub-average school. Already person A was given an advantage over person Z that is of no fault of person Z's own. Its only fair to give extra consideration to such a thing when hiring someone.

I think this cartoon sums it up well:

Similarly, there could also be widespread institutional discrimination against whatever group person Z is from, and the only way to make up for it is to set up required guidelines that give extra consideration to Z to alleviate the imbalance. While person A is discriminated against, it evens out what is a far wider and more common discrimination that actually happens against person Z's group.

Anyway that is my $0.02.

Edit: Removed green text. Sorry didn't realize it was not allowed.

[Hobbes!]

Let's have two people: A and Z

They both apply for a job and A performs better on the tests but the one who gets hired is Z because of their sex, nationality or race (hence sexism, nazism or racism) we tolerate their shortcomings.

What I find just is hiring of the better.

Are they really shortcomings though?

The example you give strongly hints that the person who got the job, got it because they are a minority of some sort. This usually means they come from a background that has been strongly affected by historical and institutional discrimination. Discrimination that has benefited person A.

This can take many form but let say that person Z is from a ghetto with one of the worst schools in the country, and person A is a sub-average school. Already person A was given an advantage over person Z that is of no fault of person Z's own. Its only fair to give extra consideration to such a thing when hiring someone.

I think this cartoon sums it up well:

Similarly, there could also be widespread institutional discrimination against whatever group person Z is from, and the only way to make up for it is to set up required guidelines that give extra consideration to Z to alleviate the imbalance. While person A is discriminated against, it evens out what is a far wider and more common discrimination that actually happens against person Z's group.

Anyway that is my $0.02.

But we don't know if Z is from a disadvantaged group. We only know that Z ticks a box marking them out as a minority of some kind. Not all people within the same category (black, gay, female, whatever) are equal - it could be that Z comes from a wealthy background and had access to better schooling than A.

If we assume for the sake of argument that A is white (And white people in this hypothetical example are typically wealthy with access to good schooling) and Z is black (With the opposite being true), how do you account for individuals that don't follow the trend? Suppose A is from a poor background, or their local school was unusually bad, but A has managed to make themself employable through working hard. In this example, A hasn't benefited from the typical advantages of their ethnicity, but they have to pay for it as if they did.

Further to that, the point is that it is hypocritical to give someone an arbitrary advantage based not on their skills, but on their gender/ethnicity/race/whatever. If you can't reject someone based on an attribute that has nothing to with the job, you can't declare that it's right to hire someone based on the same reasoning. If the issue is that Z never had the chance to develop the same skills as A, then that's an education issue, not a recruitment issue and should be tackled in the schools rather than the workplace. Now granted, if the point is to try and break institutional discrimination, there is some merit to it, and I don't claim to have an easy alternative solution.

My argument is that the job market should ideally be about individuals rather than groups. People are too diverse to give any one group an arbitrary advantage based on what is quite a nebulous concept of disadvantage. It's better to target specific problems - such as a proliferation of poor schooling, for example - than to try and slap on a blanket solution.

[Guest]

My ex boss actually said so, Hobbes. Also my brother said the same thing when the branch of Royal Mail for whom he works decided to run sign language classes to communicate with deaf employees. My brother is not deaf but he attended them.

Your brother and your boss don't constitute a quota system.

No, but it is some evidence of it. I'd always thought that the equality and diversity questions were just a convention, but then for all that I've applied for a lot of jobs I've also never worked in recruitment - there could be some law like that buried away

There's not. I did about 4 minutes of research and found an answer. Not only do ya'll not have quotas, it is illegal to have quotas.

http://www.personneltoday.com/hr/is-there-a-case-for-positive-discrimination/

[Trava u doma]

It is a really tricky topic for me. I first met with the idea of affirmative action and quotas when applying to a university in the US, and I found it really unfair then. On the other hand, now, knowing people who are actually discriminated against through no fault of their own, I feel like something really does need to be put in place (and anti-discrimination laws don't do shit, because as it's been mentioned before, it's really easy to simply lie about the reason for not hiring someone).

I SORT OF think it might be a good idea to put in quotas, but sufficiently low that it won't end up in less qualified people getting in, but will help at least a few people into a job despite the prejudices and odds that are stacked against them.

At the end of the day, I doubt there is a system that would make things fair for everyone. One person will always have an unfair advantage over the other, be it economic background, upbringing, educational opportunities. race, ethnicity, language, or the recruitment process.

[Lost247365]

But we don't know if Z is from a disadvantaged group. We only know that Z ticks a box marking them out as a minority of some kind. Not all people within the same category (black, gay, female, whatever) are equal - it could be that Z comes from a wealthy background and had access to better schooling than A.

If we assume for the sake of argument that A is white (And white people in this hypothetical example are typically wealthy with access to good schooling) and Z is black (With the opposite being true), how do you account for individuals that don't follow the trend? Suppose A is from a poor background, or their local school was unusually bad, but A has managed to make themself employable through working hard. In this example, A hasn't benefited from the typical advantages of their ethnicity, but they have to pay for it as if they did.

Well, based on the OP I assumed we were talking about disadvantaged groups as they specifically said women and races.

Just because someone doesn't follow the trend does not mean they have not mean they haven't been subjected to discrimination in other ways. They might of gone to a good school but because they were a girl or minority did not receive the same education. Bias still exists in the education system and is sometimes done unintentionally. Teachers giving far more attention and instruction to male children over female is widespread throughout the country.

Further, the culture of discrimination affects life in a variety of ways. In African American, communities, for example, the issue of absentee fathers is a major concern. A black child could be raised by a single mom who is working two shifts just to send her child/children to good schools. While they got a step up from going to a bad school, they still don't have the same homelife. Where A had got to go to a good school and had the benefit of two supportive parents and a nice prepared dinner every night, Z might spend most of their time alone with no one to help them with their school assignments and having to cook their own food and prepare their own clothes.

Note that I said supportive parents. I had one college professor tell our class her experience with a black student whose family actively tried and sabotage their child's education because they didn't want their child to grow up think he/she was better than them. There are all sorts of ways discrimination affects these groups that either don't affect the advantaged population anywhere near the same degree or in some case at all.

Similarly, just because A is from a poor background, doesn't mean they don't benefit in other ways from institutionalized discrimination. A doesn't have to worry about getting racially profiled and possibly spending a night in jail (due to no fault of their own) causing them to be unprepared for a big test. A also doesn't have to worry about employers having a racial or gender bias against them.

Though, in my personal opinion, there should also be a type of affirmative action in place for the poor as well members of historically disadvantaged/unjustly discriminated groups.

Further to that, the point is that it is hypocritical to give someone an arbitrary advantage based not on their skills, but on their gender/ethnicity/race/whatever. If you can't reject someone based on an attribute that has nothing to with the job, you can't declare that it's right to hire someone based on the same reasoning. If the issue is that Z never had the chance to develop the same skills as A, then that's an education issue, not a recruitment issue and should be tackled in the schools rather than the workplace. Now granted, if the point is to try and break institutional discrimination, there is some merit to it, and I don't claim to have an easy alternative solution.

My argument is that the job market should ideally be about individuals rather than groups. People are too diverse to give any one group an arbitrary advantage based on what is quite a nebulous concept of disadvantage. It's better to target specific problems - such as a proliferation of poor schooling, for example - than to try and slap on a blanket solution.

I, obviously and respectfully, have to disagree.

Mainly because I see it perfectly fine to give someone an advantage if they been held back due to other factors such as racial or gender bias, not to mention how slavery and jim crow helped keep African Americans and other minorities impoverished. I see it like having a long distance race and finding out that one participant was unfairly required to wear a 100 lbf vest for the first half of the event. Giving that racer a little extra time to cross over those who weren't weighted down is not being hypocritical, but rather its just being fair and correcting an error we had at the start.

I guess the difference is, where you see it as just another form of discrimination based on skin color I see it as correction to alleviated the institutionalized advantages A has over Z. A and Z are already grown, you can't go back in time and fix that, and giving them and their circumstances added consideration and is a workplace solution in my opinion.

I do agree with you that there is no easy alternative solution and would go further to say I don't think any solution will ever be perfect. However, I think giving this added consideration to disadvantaged groups will do more to minimize the discrimination overall.

That said, this is an issue with many many nuances; so I can see how and why you hold the position you do. It is not my intention to try and change your position (something that almost never occurs in political discussions), but rather just to explain my view on the subject.

Edit: Removed green text. Sorry didn't realize it was not allowed.

[Hobbes!]

Similarly, just because A is from a poor background, doesn't mean they don't benefit in other ways from institutionalized discrimination. A doesn't have to worry about getting racially profiled and possibly spending a night in jail (due to no fault of their own) causing them to be unprepared for a big test. A also doesn't have to worry about employers having a racial or gender bias against them.

Now come on, you're pushing the argument a bit far there. I'm not saying there isn't such a thing as racial profiling, what I am saying is that trying to make it a commonplace negative factor on education is pushing it.

While most - well, damn near all - of your points are good ones, there's a lot of "mights" in there and issues that can and do apply to everyone. This is why I'm saying it's better to apply specific solutions to specific problems - because if you make allowances for kids having, say absentee parents when you don't know if they do, you do a disservice to anyone outside that group who had the same problem. And then from A's perspective, all that's happened is that someone else has got favourable treatment for the colour of their skin.

Now you make a good point in that it doesn't seem fair to ignore adults who have grown up in a bad system. I suppose then, my immediate thought is that if you were going to have positive discrimination, you'd need to also have it alongside targeted solutions to problems caused by discrimination, and most importantly, have an idea of what circumstances would be needed in order to scrap it entirely

[Lost247365]

Now come on, you're pushing the argument a bit far there. I'm not saying there isn't such a thing as racial profiling, what I am saying is that trying to make it a commonplace negative factor on education is pushing it.

I was not trying to accuse you of that, and if that is the way my post came off I sincerely apologize.

I get what you are saying and I feel that you make some great points as well. I was just trying to explain my perspective on the issue and why I don't see things the same way.

Edit: Removed green text. Sorry didn't realize it was not allowed.

[Hobbes!]

No need to apologise, looks like it was just a miscommunication

In any case, as I say, I don't have an easy solution to all of this. You're right, I think, that almost nobody ever enters a discussion like this with the intention to change their position. For the record, that's something I try to avoid

[LaMaestra]

My ex boss actually said so, Hobbes. Also my brother said the same thing when the branch of Royal Mail for whom he works decided to run sign language classes to communicate with deaf employees. My brother is not deaf but he attended them.

Your brother and your boss don't constitute a quota system.

No, but it is some evidence of it. I'd always thought that the equality and diversity questions were just a convention, but then for all that I've applied for a lot of jobs I've also never worked in recruitment - there could be some law like that buried away

There's not. I did about 4 minutes of research and found an answer. Not only do ya'll not have quotas, it is illegal to have quotas.

http://www.personneltoday.com/hr/is-there-a-case-for-positive-discrimination/

A brilliant article, Skullery Maid.

I once saw a job vacancy advertised stating 'Disabled applicants are automatically granted an interview'.

It echoes what the article said, it must be discouraging to get the job knowing you only got it on your disability rather than your ability.

[AshenPhoenix]

I think that a lot of the time when this stuff comes up I go between confused and angry. This is mostly because there's lots and lots of talking about unfairness and discrimination, but there isn't to me. That's not a personal opinion, it's true, where I live (and generally most fo the places where I grew up), the tables are turned and mentioning nearly anytime a bigoted comment is made all eyes go to them and they get a serious "what the fuck man?" moment. Sexism is practically gone here, I didn't even KNOW the whole stereotype/discrimination of females in the STEM type fields existed until just a couple years ago, and females certainly aren't viewed as weak. No one really cares if they dress tomboyishly or not. Racism, dunno, I would like to say it's nonexistent, but it's not... In a way. It's more... A joke. Literally racism is a joke here, most races aren't AFRAID of stereotypes and making jokes off of it, because they know 99% of the time, the person doesn't mean it, and if they do, it becomes very obvious very quickly. So it's more like it's such a rare idea that people are comfortable to joke about it as long as it's within reasonable bounds. Homophobia... I'll say that's still the most there, but in smaller and smaller amounts, it's nearly nonexistent with the general public and I can walk around holding my boyfriends hand and no one will really double take.

So, with this in mind (AKA please take this with a grain of salt as I can't REALLY know the true problems personally). I also know that quite a few of my attitudes would be disliked by people more "for tolerance" because racial jokes are never okay, women need to be pushed more for STEM, etc. I don't really think that, at least here, I need to push more. I don't really think I need to be mindful of race or gender or... Well, anything, other than the person themselves, because isn't that a discrimination in and of itself? I think that if we need to, we should really focus more on the root, paying more attention to race really can't do anything more than keep the IDEA of racism, sexism, etc alive. I was actually talking to this about my friend the other day, I don't think the best way to go about it is things like affirmative action, or trying to push our cultural norms, because all that will do is make the culture push back. The best thing to do is fund schools, encourage the kids to grow up with dreams that are OUTSIDE what society expects of them, and then maybe one day, that will become the norm instead. Which really, isn't that the ultimate goal. I think the real way to get rid of some of the position ideas in society is not to directly fight them, but to hurtle over them and conquer them instead

So in summary, basically I don't think I necessarily like the "general mindset" (excuse the term) of today's activists for tolerance, because I think it helps to bring more attention to the issues, yes, but it also keeps all thsoe issues on the surface. Which, yes, was fine when we had to get laws and such made to have people treated equally legally, but we can't really make a law that makes it so no one in the world is allowed and/or physically able to have a racist, sexist, homophobic etc. thought. So the best thing to to now, IMO, is to instead attempt to normalize society with these ideas of tolerance. Instead of trying to force adults into jobs to try and promote equality, why not try and raise the kids up so they are more likely not to be limited by these factors, or judge others due to these factors?

I dunno, I feel like I've contradicted myself more than once in this post, and that it might come out harsher than I like, but there ya go

[Sally]

it must be discouraging to get the job knowing you only got it on your disability rather than your ability.

But you don't; you simply got interviewed.