regard@ttidcc.UUCP (Adrienne Regard) (06/12/85)
>The point is that AA is a violation of the premise >"innocent until proven guilty" and that it presumes >I'm guilty. (As does Mike Ellis, and someone else who >calls me a Bozo, and so on.) >(ihnp4/allegra)!alice!jj jj, guilty of what? AA isn't on trial, and neither are you. If an employer ignores the guidelines determined by the govt., they may be found guilty, but guilty of ignoring the guidelines, period. "innocent until proven guilty" is a legal concept. Now the guidelines were put in place because people WERE guilty of discrimination, but unless you are an employer who refuses to attempt to implement the guidelines, you aren't guilty of anything. We don't try bigots for bigotry, we try them for something else. Motives aren't on trial. Actions (or the lack thereof) are.
rafferty@cmu-cs-edu1.ARPA (06/13/85)
>> The point is that AA is a violation of the premise >> "innocent until proven guilty" and that it presumes >> I'm guilty. >> (ihnp4/allegra)!alice!jj > > guilty of what? AA isn't on trial, and neither are you. If an employer > ignores the guidelines determined by the govt., they may be found guilty, > but guilty of ignoring the guidelines, period. "innocent until proven > guilty" is a legal concept. > > Now the guidelines were put in place because people WERE guilty of > discrimination, but unless you are an employer who refuses to attempt > to implement the guidelines, you aren't guilty of anything. We don't > try bigots for bigotry, we try them for something else. Motives aren't > on trial. Actions (or the lack thereof) are. > > [regard@ttidcc.UUCP (Adrienne Regard)] But we aren't talking about why people are getting arrested for this. What we're talking about is why these guidelines are around in the first place. These guidelines are meant to be a "fair" way of stopping discrimination, but are they really? That is the question. Are we right in saying that an employer must discriminate against one group so that he doesn't discriminate against another? Are these guidelines fair and valid? Do they promote more good than harm? My answer to all the above: no. But Adrienne, you don't seem to want to talk about the validity of the law, just the existence and the unavoid- ability of it. ---- Colin Rafferty { Math Department, Carnegie-Mellon University } "According to convention there is a sweet and a bitter, a hot and a cold, and according to convention, there is an order. In truth, there are atoms and a void." -Democritus(400 B.C.)
ark@alice.UUCP (Andrew Koenig) (06/19/85)
> guilty of what? AA isn't on trial, and neither are you. If an employer > ignores the guidelines determined by the govt., they may be found guilty, > but guilty of ignoring the guidelines, period. "innocent until proven > guilty" is a legal concept. > Now the guidelines were put in place because people WERE guilty of > discrimination, but unless you are an employer who refuses to attempt > to implement the guidelines, you aren't guilty of anything. We don't > try bigots for bigotry, we try them for something else. Motives aren't > on trial. Actions (or the lack thereof) are. I worked at Columbia University in the early Seventies. They had an exchange with the (then) department of Health, Education, and Welfare that went somewhat like this: HEW: We have decided that you might be practicing illegal discrimination in your hiring and promotion practices. Therefore, we insist you prove to us that you are not doing so. Otherwise we will revoke the tax-exempt status of the university and you will be forced to shut down. CU: Can you tell us what you think we are doing wrong? HEW: We have no evidence that you're doing anything wrong; we just want you to prove that you're not. CU: In order to do that, we would have to go back and look at everyone's records, so that we could compile statistics breaking down hirings, firings, promotions, and salaries by sex and race. HEW: That's right. And if those statistics show you're absolutely clean, we'll leave you alone until next year. CU: But in order to do that, we have to put the sex and race of all our employees into their personnel files. HEW: That's right. CU: But up to now, it has been illegal to do that! You are asking us to give you statistics based on information that it was ILLEGAL to gather at the time! Sure, we can go around and ask each of our tens of thousands of employees about their racial background. But what about the ones who have left? And how can you demand that we come up with illegal information? HEW: That is your problem, not ours.