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From: mom@sftri.UUCP (Mark Modig)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.social,net.women,net.flame
Subject: Re: Discrimination and Affirmative Action
Message-ID: <445@sftri.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 30-May-85 13:31:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: sftri.445
Posted: Thu May 30 13:31:37 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 31-May-85 06:26:21 EDT
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Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Summit N.J.
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> From: scott@hou2g.UUCP (Scott Berry the Unbeliever),
> Message-ID: <478@hou2g.UUCP>:
> 
> >Let's get something straight:
> >
> >	1. "Equal Opportunity" is a FAIR SHOT. 
> >
> >	2. "Affirmative Action" is MORE THAN a
> >	   fair shot and in fact represents
> >	   discrimination on basis of race and sex.
> >
> >			SJBerry
> 
> I'm assuming that "Affirmative Action" is a requirement that a company's
> payroll be (on the order of) 51% females and (on the order of) 11% blacks at
> all levels of employment.  This reflects the current proportion of females
> and blacks in the population as a whole.  Is that what you think it means?
> If so, why do you think that such a requirement offers "MORE THAN a fair
> shot" to females and blacks?  Please elaborate.
> 

In the workplace today, there are certain occupations where the
overwhelming majority of workers and prospective workers are women
or men, due to societal pressures, "tradition", or whatever. Things may
be changing, but in some occupations this is still fact.

What the above definition of affirmative action does is impose
quotas on a business.  About 51% of your employees must be women,
about 49% must be men, (the rest I guess could be anything), and
similarly for a racial distribution.  I am assuming that these
quotas are based on national figures, as the racial makeup of
different areas of the country can be quite disparate.

These quotas are inherently unfair, in my view, because one of the
primary determinations of an applicant's fitness for a job would be
whether or not the applicant was of the proper race and sex.

In a job occupation such as nursing, male nurses would benefit
unfairly because of their sex, not because their ability.  Now it's
true that we seem to be talking about quotas based on a company-wide
basis, so nursing might apply to a hospital, where there are other
professions working as well.  But there would still have to be
juggling among all of the personnel to get the quotas for the whole
hospital to come out right. [We need x male janitors to counter the
y female nurses we hired...etc., etc.,]  And thus we have people
being hired as much because of their race or sex as because of their
ability.

You could also turn the whole example around using a technical firm
that hires a lot of engineers.  In this case, the quotas would be
more than fair to females and minorities because a primary
consideration in their hiring would be their race and/or sex.

It would be conceivable under such a system that I couldn't hire
people I wanted to hire because they weren't of the proper sex or
race.  To me, that's not fair.

What is fair?  Well, my company's affirmative action policy as I
understand it comes pretty close I think.  First and foremost in
consideration is the applicant's ability, along with experience,
personability, would the applicant get along well with others, etc.
Then, and only then, would affirmative action considerations come
into play.  Essentially, the policy is to use affirmative action
considerations to break a tie that can't reasonably be broken in any
other way.  But along with this are workshops held here to let
current employees gain an understanding of the problems faced by
minorities and women and to explain the affirmative action policy, plus
presentations at schools and other places encouraging minorities and
women to consider applying.

Job discrimination is a problem.  But it is a problem that isn't
going to be solved by simply changing which groups are the target of
such discrimination.  I, for one, will fight against such quotas 
until they put the last nail in my coffin.

Cornily yours,
Mark Modig
ihnp4!sftri!mom