welsch@houxj.UUCP (09/11/83)
Back when net.women was just starting to form Laura Crieghton and I debated amongst other topics whether or not affirmative action was reverse discrimination or even a wise action. We got off onto many other topics and finally lost interest in the subject. I now notice that affirmative action is again gaining interest and my thoughts on the subject have matured. In the spirit of debate: I am going to propose the following three hypothesis and then provide supporting arguments. 1. Affirmative action when used properly is not reverse discrimination and is desirable. 2. In many cases affirmative action is improperly applied and may do more harm than good. 3. The reason why affirmative action is improperly applied is that people are more interested in complying with the letter of the law as opposed to the spirit. Affirmative action when used properly has three parts. a. To ensure that "equal opportunity" is adhered to in the hiring/firing/promoting of employees. b. To ensure that the work place is a pleasant environment for all employees. c. To ensure that all employees understand what is expected of them to succeed. Minority employees often are at a disadvantage in all three areas ie. Equal opportunity is not always the rule, pleasant environments do not always exist, and not all employees understand what is expected to succeed. For a employer to take affirmative action to ensure that these conditions exist is only fair and just. I am just as upset when an "old boy" network causes me to be discriminated against unfairly as a minority person is. Affirmative action properly applied is ensuring these conditions for everyone "white/yellow/green/purple/male/female" etc. Next, I'll discuss why I believe affirmative action is being improperly applied. Have you ever seen an add that reads like a person's resume? This I find most upsetting. Most typical is the case of OKV University wants to hire graduate student B for a full time position. OKV University due to its affirmative action program, which the university must adhere to due to its large government grants, the university places an add in a trade magazine. The add reads like this: Position open for VLSI research in AI, applicant must have two years programming experience on lisp machine, taken Carver Mead course in 1978, three years experience programming Cobol on a 7090, and be familliar with OKV DECsystem-20. OKV is a an affirmative action employer. I read that last sentence and say sure baby and tell me another good story. Sometimes graduate student B is a minority and the school still does not understand why they place the add. After all by hiring minority B they meet their "quota." I claim that adds such as this do more harm than good and OKV should be penalized for false advertising. Next I'll turn to the "pleasant environment" issue. What happens with this issue is that companies see the issue of one of "sensitizing" the "white male" to the "problems of the minority." This sensitizing process can take many forms: Some sessions take the form of religious events with a preacher (usually a white male manager) spewing forth the gospel (how bad white males are) and confessors (white males who see the light and jump up confessing their sins.) I still remember one manager who proclaimed that it was not okay to discriminate against people in DVN because they were the top people, but when shopping at el cheapo discount store it was just fine cause people there just didn't count. The poor guy just didn't understand. Management must learn that they cannot create a pleasant environment by beating on employees. Employees only leave sore and the next time someone touches that soreness they are liable to react worse than before the sensitizing. The next thing is that a pleasant environment is everyone's responsibility. Strangely I hear the most racist remarks and see most racist actions coming from other minorities about minorities. (The NYT recently reported the formation of an Oriental group to combat racism from the black and Spanish minorities) Sensitizing as I have seen it applied is scape goating. Creating a better work environment for everyone is what we should be interested in. I see the reason for sensitizing is that it is the easist solution for management to take without doing anything. First, believe it or not most of the work environment is controlled by management and management can set a certain tone. Perhaps the worst case of poor work environment I can think of is with coal miners. It is very easy to blame the "workers," for sexual harassment, yet they were just reacting to the environment of harassment set up by the management of the company. In the particular case I thinking of reported in 60 minutes it was the supervisors who were the worst harassers. Surprisingly, at DVN it is common to "roast" people at lunch. Managers play a major role in the roast and frequently tell dirty jokes putting women down or implying that a new woman supervisor got her job in a less than honorable fashion or to call male management impotent. They do not realize they were creating a work environment that invites sexual harassment. The final thing that companies handle wrong with respect to affirmative action is helping employees to succeed. This is where we have the "restricted" groups to "help women become competitive." The assumption that white males don't need just as much help as minorities is wrong. (Believe it or not one minority group "orientals" make more money on the average than white's.) The point is that we all need help to succeed. Child care during working hours is not just an issue for women. I grant more women than men may be faced with this problem, but think of the single man with a child. He probably needs more help than a woman. It is the restriction of the group to "minorities only" that is wrong, not the issue the group is concerned with. What happens with the restriction is resentment. When someone is interested in the issue to be covered but cannot participate that person resents that. Why should an advantage be given to one person and not another on the basis of group status? No good reason! The resentment, of course, will work its way out in other ways, probably racist. The result is that management by setting up "minority only" groups has participated in creating a poor work environment. I have covered why I believe affirmative action when properly applied is good, what's wrong with current applications of affirmative action how we can fix what's wrong, Unfortunately the solutions are not simple bandaides that can be easily applied. Larry Welsch houxu!welsch
laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (09/13/83)
For people who keep lots and lots of news online and can go back and read old issues, the AA debate between Larry Welsch and myself went on in net.flame, not net.women in net.flames infancy... Laura Creighton (I still think that AA boils down to an attempt to make "white men" out of minorities because "It is better for them" or "It is what it takes to succeed" as it is currently proposed in Canada where it is not implemented) utzoo!utcsstat!laura