dmcanzi@watdcsu.UUCP (David Canzi) (05/30/85)
>... affirmative action is discrimination. ...
Yep. Looks like I really said that. Embarrassing, but there I am,
mouthing a slogan. Gak. Don't know what made me say it, could've been
the cheap drugs, could've been the bad food, but most likely it was
just an unfortunate interaction between the highly adversarial nature
of the verbal combat in the Usenet arena combined with my own natural
tendency to contrariness.
I can think of ways that AA could be implemented that would not be
discriminatory but I have no confidence that the government could
implement AA in such a way, without caving in to pressure groups.
A basic requirement for AA to be fair is a *realistic* setting of
percentage quotas, which would have to be set independently for each
occupation, requiring a small army of statisticians to produce regular
studies in order to adjust the percentages. (I call a realistic
percentage the percentage that a "color-blind" and "gender-blind"
employer would end up hiring by accident. I have a suspicion that AA
fans favor higher quotas than this.) The quotas would have to be
imposed on the rate of hiring, not on the actual percentages of
employees of each race, sex, and handedness that an employer employs,
otherwise employers with a low rate of staff turnover will have
problems turning over enough staff to meet the quotas. (The fact that
some of the feminists at U. of Waterloo are griping about the
percentage of women among faculty, rather than the percentage among
recently hired faculty, leads me to doubt that they will agree with
this.) Employers with a small number of new hires over, say, one year,
may have to be exempted if the number of people they hire multiplied by
a percentage quota is less than 2 or 3, in order to avoid situations
where they *have* to hire a person of some particular race or sex,
regardless of competence.
Can't think of any other problems right now...
--
David Canzi
"All in all you're just another prick in the stall." -- men's room graffitied@mtxinu.UUCP (Ed Gould) (06/05/85)
In article <1435@watdcsu.UUCP> dmcanzi@watdcsu.UUCP (David Canzi) writes: > >A basic requirement for AA to be fair is a *realistic* setting of >percentage quotas ... > (I call a realistic >percentage the percentage that a "color-blind" and "gender-blind" >employer would end up hiring by accident. I have a suspicion that AA >fans favor higher quotas than this.) Certainly some of us do. The quotas should be high enough such that we get to a state where the percentages are those that the "blind" employer would hire if there were no discrimination *and there never had been*. If there were enough role models for girls so that they would aspire to these jobs, then your quota idea would probably be enough. But there aren't nearly enough women who are "successful" enough to provide those models. Until there are, then we neet to over-balance the scales. -- Ed Gould mt Xinu, 2910 Seventh St., Berkeley, CA 94710 USA {ucbvax,decvax}!mtxinu!ed +1 415 644 0146