mccolm@ucla-cs.UUCP (07/08/85)
There has been a lot of stuff thrown about dealing with discrimination,
individualism, fairness, sins of the fathers, and other such stuff.
So I thought I would pitch in with a few comments. Warning: this is long.
First, why is there a program like AA, or laws like EEOA, anyway?
The answer is really quite simple. We have a (by and large) free-market
economy, and a (by and large) democratic government. But each of these
institutions allow, by their very nature, features which our society sees
as undesirable (abject poverty; domination of minorities by the majority).
So, in the field of government, we have civil liberties and Constitutional
protections and what-not. In the field of economics, we have market
constraints (Welfare, Clean Air Act, etc.) that regulate businesses, BOTH
in what they do individually and in what they do as a market.
(Like not offering as many jobs as there are people.)
One of the truly horrible things that can happen in a democratic, free-market
economy is the businesses can decide (by whatever means) to discriminate
against any minority. The businesses are immune to ill effects from the
discrimination if the minority has little or no purchasing power or job
training, or if *all* the businesses discriminate. In the last century,
both these conditions were filled. In the current decade, each of these
is only partially filled, but there is enough of each that discriminating
businesses are not at *much* of a disadvantage, economically.
But such discrimination is an effect seen as undesirable by the government,
and more importantly, by the liberal establishment of the Northeast, from
which the majority of policy-makers of the 1960's were drawn. These people
decided that discrimination had to go, and so put a market restriction on
American business to the effect that discrimination is not a fair business
practice.
Now comes the $64 question: Is AA, or for that matter any "active" policy,
fair to the businesses it will regulate? Consider this from two different
viewpoints: the pragmatic and the ethical.
In the pragmatic view, AA was adopted in it's current form by the EEOC because
the truly voluntary measures weren't working. This was because, for the most
part, businesses weren't volunteering. An "active", and in a way coercive,
policy was adopted for practical reasons. It would be testable, redressable,
and have the weight of evidence when and if the case went to trial. It has
resulted in tremendous gains for minorities, despite implementation flaws and
ethical questions. From the pragmatic viewpoint, which is admittedly narrow,
it is justified.
Ethically, all kinds of issues come up. "Active" policies of hiring and
firing restrict the ability of an employer to hire and fire whoever they
please. But we must remember that the policy is a market restriction
designed to prevent an economic effect which is seen as blatantly unfair.
So, for the same reason that the ability of an industry is ethically prevented
from polluting the environment, an employer is ethically prevented from
discriminating against members of any group (not just minorities) when
hiring. BUT, because it is an "active" policy, it is targeted at preventing
discrimination against particular groups, which there is reason to believe
are in fact the groups most often discriminated against.
The apparent evil against the individual who is denied a job, because an
individual in the "target" group of the policy received the job, is not
necessarily actual discrimination. Only in the case that the minority
individual was actually *less* qualified is there actual discrimination.
Here we come to the only reasonable argument against an "active" policy:
it promotes group-based discrimination in favor of those who have previously
been discriminated against. So, an "active" policy is ethical if and only
if it does not give rise to "reverse discrimination".
Unfortunately, there is another problem. The average citizen in the
majority group is much more qualified than the average citizen in the minority
group. This is true because the previous discrimination went on so long and
was so pervasive that the minority groups could not reach the standard of
living to even assimilate the goals of the majority culture, let alone reach
the standard of living necessary to raise a qualified applicant. And another
government institution, the public schools, are here largely to blame for the
poor education and vocational training of minorities, who are by and large
clustered in urban areas and other places where our selective educational
system is at it's worst.
Thus, it is nearly impossible for the *average* minority individual to become
qualified enough to compete with individuals of the majority in the more
knowledge-intensive trades, and so, minorities are frequently confined to the
labor-intensive trades, which are lowest-paying and most susceptible to job
instability. But due to the fact that the majority gets jobs "off the top",
it is often difficult for most minorities to find any job at all. This is
also seen as a social evil.
The dilemma is one of the discrimination against the individual member of the
majority against the oppression of the minority as a group. This is the
dilemma of AA as it now stands. But the problem is not one of AA at all,
but one of Educational (instead of employment) Opportunity.
In attempting to correct the Employment Gap, the legislators hoped that
members of minorities would find jobs and raise middle-class children, who
would then not be at a disadvantage. This turned out not to be the case.
It seems the next step in promoting fairness to everyone (including
individuals of the majority) is to remove the Education Gap, that is, to
provide a high school education to the inner-city poor, and everyone else.
The great appeal of this is that it has absolutely no ethical detractions,
and it would provide an undreamed-of boost to the national standard of living.
There are two problems: first, it would cost a lot of money, and second, it
would remove the second to last cheap source of labor in this country, the
uneducated poor. Thus, such a change would act as a tax on the middle-class,
by raising prices in general, to pay the poor minorities better wages.
There can still be no complaint against the idea, because this new "tax"
would in fact be removing the implied subsidy that the poor minorities,
who work for lower wages, pay the rest of the nation, in the form of
artificially low prices.
Even at this point, however, AA should continue, to prevent actual
discrimination in hiring and firing, as long as it does not promote
"reverse discrimination". AA is, it turns out, only a part of the solution,
not the whole solution.
--fini--
Eric McColm
UCLA (oo' - kluh) Funny Farm for the Criminally Harmless
UUCP: ...!{ihnp4,trwspp,cepu,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!mccolm
ARPA: (still) mccolm@UCLA-CS.ARPA (someday) mccolm@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU
Quotes on the Nature of Existence:
"To be, or not to be..." -Hamlet (Wm. Shakespeare)
"I think, therefore I am." -R. Descartes
"<Gleep!>" -Gleep (Robt. Asprin)geoff@burl.UUCP (geoff) (07/19/85)
In article <6268@ucla-cs.ARPA> mccolm@ucla-cs.UUCP writes: > >The great appeal of this is that it has absolutely no ethical detractions, >and it would provide an undreamed-of boost to the national standard of living. >There are two problems: first, it would cost a lot of money, and second, it >would remove the second to last cheap source of labor in this country, the >uneducated poor. Thus, such a change would act as a tax on the middle-class, >by raising prices in general, to pay the poor minorities better wages. > >There can still be no complaint against the idea, because this new "tax" >would in fact be removing the implied subsidy that the poor minorities, >who work for lower wages, pay the rest of the nation, in the form of >artificially low prices. >--fini-- > >Eric McColm In the main I agree wholeheartedly with your article. I disagree with your second con argument. Yes, it would remove a source of cheap labor, but that is because the people involved are now doing something else that is worth more (if a person costs a business more than they provide to it, they certainly won't be around very long!). Hence they are more productive than they were before, which should put a downward pressure on prices. Also, if there were fewer people available to do manual labor, the cost of it would go up, and it would become economically feasible to replace labor with machinery, which should be cheaper in the long run anyway (just a high initial cost). This to me seems the only reasonable (ie, fair by my lights and workable) way to attack discrimination. Make the people involved so good at what they do they cannot be discriminated against (for economic reasons). If there is an objection that this would be expensive, think of the opportunity costs of having these people not work, not to mention the direct costs of welfare and government management (an oxymoron if I ever heard one) of these programs. There is an old quote (from somewhere...) that if you give a man a fish he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. Life is not so simple, of course, but the staggering costs we pay now cannot long be maintained without crippling the economy. And that will hurt EVERYBODY. Treat the causes, not the effects. There will always be bigots. But if they don't affect you, do you really care? geoff sherwood