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From: jeffw@midas.UUCP (Jeff Winslow)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.sci
Subject: Re: Why are there so few [female|black] physicists?
Message-ID: <502@midas.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 16-Jul-86 13:23:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: midas.502
Posted: Wed Jul 16 13:23:30 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 18-Jul-86 04:31:18 EDT
References: <1970@brl-smoke.ARPA> <320@rtech.UUCP> <2064@brl-smoke.ARPA> <14838@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <2240@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Reply-To: jeffw@midas.UUCP (Jeff Winslow)
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton, OR.
Lines: 34
Xref: watmath net.women:11383 net.sci:1278

In article <2240@brl-smoke.ARPA> gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) writes:
>In article <14838@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>, weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Wimpy Math Grad Student) writes:
>> ... there is no basis for even
>> choosing among the middle by *any* objective "fair" means.  So what's wrong
>> with being generous to minorities in the process?  ...
>
>Discriminating FOR someone on the basis of such an inessential is
>wrong for precisely the same reasons as discriminating AGAINST the
>person on the same basis.  It does not do justice to the person as
>an individual, but places importance on something over which the
>individual had no control.  That's a disservice and an insult to
>the person's values.  The wider context of this error I have
>discussed in other postings.

All very righteous and high-minded, but would you really feel just as
insulted if you were given a chance you didn't deserve as you would if
you were denied a chance you deserved? I sure wouldn't, and I would be
very skeptical of anyone else saying they would.

>I am sure that there are many relevant "tie-breaker" criteria that
>could be used to disambiguate such a situation.  The LAST thing
>that would be advisable would be to stoop to employment of the same
>kind of thinking that brought on the evils you're trying to combat.
>How can you actually expect to establish good ends with evil means?

I hope you are right in your first sentence. But about the rest:
It's not the same kind of thinking at all. Discrimination against takes
the form of "I'm not going to hire any lazy niggers". Discrimination for
takes the form of "I'm going to give these people the benefit of the
doubt". Just because you can cast it in a form where these two sound
similar doesn't make them the same. Life is not mathematics, or even
physics.

						Jeff Winslow