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-- The race card
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quote:

Originally posted by Orko this would be great if it were possible! but unfortunatly, people do not hire just on merit. ever heard the stat that good looking people get hired more easily, or have higher paying jobs? its true. so hiring based on merit, still doesnt happen.

As long as youre not referring to that stupid lawsuit against Abercrombie & Fitch i'm cool with you

But yes looks do matter like it or not it's important because at higher positions youre representation of the organization...

quote:

Originally posted by MarkT ^^^ hiring quota systems have nothing to do with that though... The real issue here, that Jayx1 and I agree on, is not the minorites don't need help. It's that the help they receive ought NOT penalize everyone else as a result. So, instead of band-aid solution of hiring quotas or affirmative action, why not pump that money into subsidizing education costs for people who are poor, or providing additional resources to schools with a lot of "at risk" youth who don't get the same level of education as most, etc. That way, they get the "hand up" they need to get the education and skills they require to truly be able to compete with everyone else on a more level playing field, while at the same time not being detremental to everyone else's opportunities too. This doesn't mean existing anti-discrimination laws and policies should be scrapped...if you don't get a job because you're not "pretty", you can still seek legal recourse.

i don't think you really understand how the quota system works. Its not a "band-aid solution". AS explained earlier, its putting visible minorities along side your "WASP" in positions of authority in companies, therefore when it comes to hiring time, all races are represented by those hiring them, making it more fair for them in getting hired. and then the cycle continues, but by then all races can equally manage on their own to reach these positions. firthermore its balancing the financially state of all races, so that education can be afforded by all, instead of your rich (and u don't think that thats they was it is now? go to oakville or burlington. look at their private school, and their rich neighbourhoods. go to their private golf clubs. hell i'll give u the tour. we have 2 visible minorities in a club with over 900 members.u think 2 ppl, one a white male, another a black woman, with the same qualifications, are gonna have equal opportunity getting into one of their companies? racism exists. still.

give it 20-30 years. maybe u personally don't like how it affects you, but this is a bigger issue than if u get that job u want. its working to fix society, and thank god for sec 1 of the ccrf, cuz its working

quote:

Originally posted by chanoa i don't think you really understand how the quota system works. Its not a "band-aid solution". AS explained earlier, its putting visible minorities along side your "WASP" in positions of authority in companies, therefore when it comes to hiring time, all races are represented by those hiring them, making it more fair for them in getting hired. and then the cycle continues, but by then all races can equally manage on their own to reach these positions. firthermore its balancing the financially state of all races, so that education can be afforded by all, instead of your rich (and u don't think that thats they was it is now? go to oakville or burlington. look at their private school, and their rich neighbourhoods. go to their private golf clubs. hell i'll give u the tour. we have 2 visible minorities in a club with over 900 members.u think 2 ppl, one a white male, another a black woman, with the same qualifications, are gonna have equal opportunity getting into one of their companies? racism exists. still. give it 20-30 years. maybe u personally don't like how it affects you, but this is a bigger issue than if u get that job u want. its working to fix society, and thank god for sec 1 of the ccrf, cuz its working

Took the words right outta my mouth, if you dont think its good to be a white man, think again...I love when I hear the white man complaining about the racial card because quite frankly, you should never complain, you guys had a 200 year head start.

Lets put it this way, if a white man and me both apply for the same job, if he is better qualified and more experienced, than by all means, he deserves the job, but if were both the same...fuck him, give me the racial card anyday...I want that job baby!

quote:

Originally posted by MarkT ^^^ hiring quota systems have nothing to do with that though... The real issue here, that Jayx1 and I agree on, is not the minorites don't need help. It's that the help they receive ought NOT penalize everyone else as a result. So, instead of band-aid solution of hiring quotas or affirmative action, why not pump that money into subsidizing education costs for people who are poor, or providing additional resources to schools with a lot of "at risk" youth who don't get the same level of education as most, etc. That way, they get the "hand up" they need to get the education and skills they require to truly be able to compete with everyone else on a more level playing field, while at the same time not being detremental to everyone else's opportunities too. This doesn't mean existing anti-discrimination laws and policies should be scrapped...if you don't get a job because you're not "pretty", you can still seek legal recourse.

well kids in poor areas do get equal PUBLIC education. It is not like the US, where the income tax from the area pays for the school, therfore poor area, poor school. In canada, im pretty sure the taxes are divided up equaly over the school board, the a school recieves a certain amount per student, so its fair across the province. Kids that go to private school, yes, have an advantage, but thats just living in a capitalist society, its fair.

You cannot always "seek legal recourse" because how are you even to know that you were not hired because you were ugly? You cant. You do not know the qualifications of the people you are competing against.

sorry guys, but there is still a need to help minorities/women get jobs. I am a man, and i know that women do not get fair treatment. Why cannot some whites, see that minorities need help too? its basically the same thing.

if you think that racism doesnt still exist, would any of you(who are white) trade places with a minority, because they have equal or more rights???? i think not.

quote:

Originally posted by Rodrico but if were both the same...fuck him, give me the racial card anyday...I want that job baby!

This comment is exactly why most people of colour cant think straight on this issue. Who is ever going to argue against something that benefits them even if its wrong?

Thanks for proving my point!

hey most of us(minorities) have already stated, that if the system could be built purly on hiring on merit, we would prefer that.

dont take one person's views and apply it to all of us. and if you wanna use the same argument and apply it to, hiring policies, sorry budy the problem was that too many people were hiring based on other things than merit.

WHOA WHOA WHOA...hold on a minute guys. I understand quite well how it works. How is it NOT a band-aid solution when instead of addressing the underlying problems that resulted in this situation, we instead just treat the symptoms, ie. the lack of representation of minorities in the workforce or in gaining access to post secondary education? A bad-aid solution is defined as treating the symptom intead of the cause...ie. addressing the lack of representation (the cut, for eg.), instead of addressing the underlying issues (why the cut happened in the first place and how to prevent it from happening again).

It a similar arguement I make with health care...instead of just pumping money into treatment, we should focus more on prevention. Why don't we? Because it costs more, is more resource intensive, te results are indirect and harder to measure, the benefits come more slowly, and are only seen further down the road (ie. whoever's implementing them won't be around the reap the rewards of success).

It's easy to measure how spending money on hospital staffing benefits the community. It's not so easy to measure how spending money on health education benefits the community. I'll argue the latter is still better in the long run though! We can't ignore the short term needs of people NOW, whether it's employment, education, health care, etc. but I think that focusing on the long term by addressing the roots of the problem is more beneficial.

This is absolutely NOT about putting minorities in positions of authority so that when hiring time rolls around, everyone is represented. Um...are people suggesting that because one manager is white and now one is black, that come hiring time, it means that now the white manager will hire whites, but the black will hire blacks, so it's equal? LMFAO, that's clearly *not* the intent of these types of programs

What needs to be addressed is why that white manager only hired whites or why there aren't even many minorties applying for positions in that company. Is it an "old boys club" of white people? Is it because minorities don't aspire to that type of work? Is it because minorities are having some difficulty in obtaining the necessary education/skills that would allow them to qualify? There can be various reasons. My arguement is that we should be working more to address those reasons early on, not just when it comes time to apply.

There are also larger issues here...it's not just a numbers game. I'm saying that "success" is not merely having proportional representation. Success is addressing the underlying hiring/admission practices and attitudes of the members of various communities so that such programs become unnecessary.

btw...Orko, just because kids have equal ACCESS to education doesn't mean they get it.

I think I can word my feelings best with this:

I'm not criticizing the "end" of helping people. I'm critical of the means to achieving that end. I'm arguing that the help should come earlier so that it's not needed later on in the process.

quote:

Originally posted by Jayx1 This comment is exactly why most people of colour cant think straight on this issue. Who is ever going to argue against something that benefits them even if its wrong? Thanks for proving my point!

I guess I just leave it to you white folk to sort this shit out then, right? Oh boy, everybody, Jayx1 and his white friends are gonna talk this through and save us all with their justice, fairness and balance within the world, just like they always have for the past 100 years! yay!

You really made me laugh at the fact you said, "Most people of colour", I read between the lines you piece of shit, I know what you meant by that line. Also, thanks for generalizing alot of coloured people of this country by making me the voice that expresses all their opinions, I feel honoured. Sadly enough its not an issue of race that makes mine or your argument any better, its any PERSON would not argue against something that benefits them, white, black, brown or purple, so instead of crying to me about how unfairly you (or someone white guy you know)has been treated because of the colour of your skin, try to live in a colored persons shoe in the past 20 years and then talk about seeing racial discrimination.

You honestly proved the point that you really dont see past that white finger of yours. Thanks for the laugh Jayx1, I guess you cant really see people past the color of their skin instead of seeing them for the person they are inside...

quote:

Originally posted by MarkT WHOA WHOA WHOA...hold on a minute guys. I understand quite well how it works. How is it NOT a band-aid solution when instead of addressing the underlying problems that resulted in this situation, we instead just treat the symptoms, ie. the lack of representation of minorities in the workforce or in gaining access to post secondary education? A bad-aid solution is defined as treating the symptom intead of the cause...ie. addressing the lack of representation (the cut, for eg.), instead of addressing the underlying issues (why the cut happened in the first place and how to prevent it from happening again). It a similar arguement I make with health care...instead of just pumping money into treatment, we should focus more on prevention. Why don't we? Because it costs more, is more resource intensive, te results are indirect and harder to measure, the benefits come more slowly, and are only seen further down the road (ie. whoever's implementing them won't be around the reap the rewards of success). It's easy to measure how spending money on hospital staffing benefits the community. It's not so easy to measure how spending money on health education benefits the community. I'll argue the latter is still better in the long run though! We can't ignore the short term needs of people NOW, whether it's employment, education, health care, etc. but I think that focusing on the long term by addressing the roots of the problem is more beneficial. This is absolutely NOT about putting minorities in positions of authority so that when hiring time rolls around, everyone is represented. Um...are people suggesting that because one manager is white and now one is black, that come hiring time, it means that now the white manager will hire whites, but the black will hire blacks, so it's equal? LMFAO, that's clearly *not* the intent of these types of programs What needs to be addressed is why that white manager only hired whites or why there aren't even many minorties applying for positions in that company. Is it an "old boys club" of white people? Is it because minorities don't aspire to that type of work? Is it because minorities are having some difficulty in obtaining the necessary education/skills that would allow them to qualify? There can be various reasons. My arguement is that we should be working more to address those reasons early on, not just when it comes time to apply. There are also larger issues here...it's not just a numbers game. I'm saying that "success" is not merely having proportional representation. Success is addressing the underlying hiring/admission practices and attitudes of the members of various communities so that such programs become unnecessary. btw...Orko, just because kids have equal ACCESS to education doesn't mean they get it.

Dear god, you actually wrote something I agree with completely. I'm scared...

It's all very similar to the ever-present question of why we see so few women in Information Technology or Engineering positions. Except in that case, I think very few people are going to point the finger at sexist hiring practices. It's more because of societal stereotypes, peer pressure, etc., you all know the deal. Ask around with the women you know and find out how many of them want or wanted to be engineers.

Take Queen's Commerce for instance - used to be an Old Boys' club, now it's seeing a lot more women and some other "races" but for some reason there aren't a lot of blacks, natives, latinos, and so on. In fact it's mostly comprised of Jews, Asians, rich white guys, and a growing number of Arabs. This occurs in spite of the fact that preferential treatment is given on admissions to those same minorities whom we see so few of. And if you take a look at many MBA programs, you see the same sort of demographics.

You want to know the cause of this problem? Maybe one of our TAs still in high school could do a survey for us and find out who is aspiring to go into business, MBA, etc. You may be unpleasantly surprised to find that the "yes" group consists mostly of the same people.

People always look at individual cases and say look, I know one kid who moved here from Jamaica with his parents when he was 2 years old, lived in a slum his whole life, and the university helped him get his MBA and now he's successful and taking care of his family. Well great, but there are lots of other kids of all colours and ethnicities who probably lived in that same ghetto and never aspired to be anything other than drug dealers. And I'm willing to wager there were probably a few poor white kids who genuinely wanted to succeed but weren't given any government handouts - shouldn't they be helping the poor in general and not just the poor minorities?

People rely on government handouts - they play the race (or "visible minority") card as a way of life. They play right into their own shitty stereotypes and then complain and threaten to sue in order to get what they want later on. The problem with a band-aid solution is that not only does it not address the root causes (like why these kids were living below the poverty line in the first place, and why many more well-off minorities don't seem to have any serious aspirations in life at all), but it can actually make them worse, because the small but growing number of people who are able to do better for themselves don't bother to do so because they know they don't have to. It's okay for my 2-year-old to play on the Monkey Bars because if he cuts himself I've got bandages, and if he breaks his leg the doctor is only a few blocks away.

Think about cold medicine - they treat the symptoms, not the virus, so people feel better enough to go outside and spread their sickness onto everyone else. In every other walk of life this philosophy has been proven to do more harm than good, but since people are sensitivity-trained into a coma here, they dare not question it...

Personally, I blame the pop culture that force-feeds us these stereotypes and drives the idea into so many people's heads that they can never be anything more than parasites on society. It happens with white people too - all the time I'm seeing groups of kids where the girls all look like Britney Spears and the guys look like her latest boyfriend. Very disturbing when the girls are 12 and the guys are any age.

quote:

Originally posted by MarkT It a similar arguement I make with health care...instead of just pumping money into treatment, we should focus more on prevention. Why don't we? Because it costs more, is more resource intensive, te results are indirect and harder to measure, the benefits come more slowly, and are only seen further down the road (ie. whoever's implementing them won't be around the reap the rewards of success). It's easy to measure how spending money on hospital staffing benefits the community. It's not so easy to measure how spending money on health education benefits the community. I'll argue the latter is still better in the long run though! We can't ignore the short term needs of people NOW, whether it's employment, education, health care, etc. but I think that focusing on the long term by addressing the roots of the problem is more beneficial.

I can't believe I agree with a looney leftist j/k ; )

I think I'm in the same boat as Diginut.

This part of your post is entirely accurate regarding health care. I totally agree.

Rodrico = one bitter Mofo

I think i must have hit the nail on the head and he went ballistic. The jig is up my friend

ok this is off topic, but the terms white and "coloured" are BS

are light Middle-Easterns white?
are dark Europeans white?
are Jews white?
how about mixed people?
or how about "white" Eastern Euros who never had anything to do with building this country?

Personally I don't care about racism or whatever. I never got any problem before (maybe because I am white? ), but I just can't stand it when people use these terms


rant over

Its true because most italians who consider themselves european and "white" are actually a mix of middle eastern african and european which is why they are much darker than northern europe. Try ever telling an italian this though and he'd send you to the hospital! LOL

quote:

Originally posted by bass drive or how about "white" Eastern Euros who never had anything to do with building this country?

So now "eastern european" is a minority cultural group?

Im blond so do i get minority status too?

LOL

quote:

Originally posted by Jayx1 Rodrico = one bitter Mofo I think i must have hit the nail on the head and he went ballistic. The jig is up my friend

Yeah...thats it...

quote:

Originally posted by Jayx1 So now "eastern european" is a minority cultural group? Im blond so do i get minority status too? LOL

this is not what I meant, but nevermind. I was hung-over when I worte that post

yeah i know... i was just taking the piss when i made fun of your eastern european comment

I guess I find it funny to think that a white male can feel that he is ever being discriminated against when a quick look at senior management of almost any company would see a complete team of - you guessed it - white men, with a couple token women and minorities thrown in for "diversity". Is it possible that there are so few "qualified" women and minorities in the workforce that anything other than systemic discrimination has caused this?

Ie. women make up about 42% of the workforce and yet only 12% of management. Are they less intelligent? Less capable in their jobs? In Toronto, over 40% of our population identify as minorities? Would it not make sense that 40% woud end up in management.

Quotas are funny things. There are the government-style quotas where the purpose is to rearrange our social fabric - ie. make long term change to the realitiies of our situations here in Canada. These take a long time to put into place, but the intent is that the government uses the power of their payroll to change the long term situation of minirities, women, etc.

Then there are service quotas. These ones are hard to find fault with, as they represent the customer base of the companies doing the hiring. Ie. Bell Canada is currently seeking people who speak various Asian languages. Why? Because a lot of their clients are Asian.

A few years ago, there was a serious problem with Asian gang violence, so the Toronto Police went through a period where Asian candidates were given preference over Western candidates. To the people in charge it made sense to hire people to police the community who spoke the language, knew the community and understood the culture. Funny thing was. IT WORKED. Once the force had a team of Asian cops who could perform community policing, the people of that community started to trust them, and the gang violence went way underground (instead of on the streets, where it had errupted..)

The point here is that sometimes there are good reasons for quotas.

quote:

Originally posted by chrismack Is it possible that there are so few "qualified" women and minorities in the workforce that anything other than systemic discrimination has caused this?

YES!

I'm sorry Chris, but your whole argument here is based on a series of causal fallacies, by which I mean that you consistently suggest (and indeed, insist upon) a cause-and-effect relationship without providing any evidence that it is so.

Your reasoning here falls into the category of what the logic textbooks usually call "complex cause", which in a nutshell means that yes, you've identified two issues that are related (inequities in the workforce and past systemic discrimination) but are in reality only part of a much bigger picture. You've ignored sub-cultural morals and values; you've ignored pre-existing economic conditions; you've ignored the sorry state of the schools in "ghetto" areas; and you've ignored, most importantly, the question of how many so-called "minorities" actually want to be in the positions where they are "under-represented!"

The context of this complex cause question is this:

quote:

I guess I find it funny to think that a white male can feel that he is ever being discriminated against when a quick look at senior management of almost any company would see a complete team of - you guessed it - white men, with a couple token women and minorities thrown in for "diversity".

Now aside from the fact that it isn't senior management that makes these decisions (it's the Human Resources departments of these companies, which are dominated now by women and Pakistanis and a small number of Arabs and Asians), this argument makes a few assumptions that simply don't make sense.

Is it logical to assume that white males will only want to hire white males? The implication here is the hackneyed argument that everyone is secretly prejudiced toward their own "kind". While that may be somewhat true on a subconscious level, it is a great insult to people who have worked so hard to get to the top of the business food chain to insinuate that they aren't capable of hiring the most qualified people, whatever their race or ethnic background is. Clearly they are capable, otherwise they would not have made it as far as they did.

And even if this were true - even if white men really did favour white men as potential employees - it would follow logically from this assumption that quotas could never *ever* correct this problem. You have to concede that people either *are* intrinsically racist or *are not* - if they aren't, then they are capable of hiring the right people with or without quotas - and if they are, then quotas will never cure the greater societal ill and will only result in the aforementioned band-aid solution of racist white men hiring white men and racist black women hiring black women.

Unless your argument is that white men are prejudiced while black women are not - and it should be clear to anyone that this statement is racist in its purest form (the belief that one race is superior to another).


---
To wrap this up: it is at best illogical, if not patently false, to identify a specific cross-section of a large population and insist that they be represented equally in every small pocket of society. There are many reasons why they are not. They may be under-represented in some places, but over-represented in others - that is not discrimination, that is statistics! Why would you assume that an arbitrary grouping of people (and these groupings ARE ARBITRARY if you really call yourself "colour blind") would spread themselves out perfectly evenly over every facet of society? That just doesn't make sense - it completely ignores the intrinsic randomness of individuals. Am I going to go out to rural Saskatchewan and ask why they don't have more people in the high-tech industry? Am I going to insist that the high-tech industry discriminates against farmers? Of course not!

Statistics don't prove causation. In this case, they don't even really provide a correlation in a "before and after" sense with affirmative action. I could just as easily watch a toothpaste commercial where they say "9 out of 10 dentists recommend Colgate Total" and say that hey, Crest and Aqua-Fresh have just as many products on the market so dentists must be biased toward companies with 7 letters in their name. One could make the argument that no matter what their reasons were for recommending Colgate Total, they are in fact biased toward companies with 7 letters in their name - you can't really prove it wrong, can you? Or, maybe the "9 out of 10" statistic is total bullcrap and they left out part of the sentence which originally read "9 out of 10 dentists recommend Colgate Total over Dog Shit in order to prevent Gingevitis".

You just don't know where these statistics came from or what they really mean. You can't just make assumptions - for one thing, the way we group different "minorities" is arbitrary in itself and it's entirely possible that many "invisible" minorities, like Italians, are also grossly under-represented in some parts of society and over-represented in others. Maybe the under-representation of visible minorities is the result of a societal ill, and I'll be the first to concede that it probably is, but it's premature to point the finger at "discrimination", especially in the 21st century in a country like Canada where nearly 40% of the population, as you yourself said, identify as "minorities". That's almost half the country! How about instead of falling back on tired old clich� leftist generalizations, we actually do some work into locating the real causes of the problem (if you even consider it a problem)?

Talk is cheaper than research, I suppose...

quote:

Originally posted by DigiNut [FONT=Tahoma][COLOR=#99CCEE]YES! Now aside from the fact that it isn't senior management that makes these decisions (it's the Human Resources departments of these companies, which are dominated now by women and Pakistanis and a small number of Arabs and Asians), this argument makes a few assumptions that simply don't make sense.

... and you accuse me of making assumptions.

quote:

Originally posted by chrismack ... and you accuse me of making assumptions.

Er, how was any of that an assumption? Is it your strategy to take known facts and try to pass them off as mere stereotypes?

You're sidestepping the issue anyway - that was a minor point and certainly not the foundation for my argument.

[QUOTE
Statistics don't prove causation. In this case, they don't even really provide a correlation in a "before and after" sense with affirmative action. [/QUOTE]

You are right that statistics don't prove causation. They do point to trends though.

The very same men who are at the top of the corporate ladder rose through the ranks and did have the power to hire and fire people at points of their careers. The trend prior to affirmative action (and many might argue, even today) was to hire similar minded (and looking) individuals (that is, people with similar backgrounds, who shared similar interests, and who shared cultural values... note none of these things has anything to do with capabilites or intelligence) - and to promote those individuals through the company.

That was a clear trend. And affirmative action programs were implemented to try to change that trend. The intent was to make the managers look beyond the first impressions (the cultural stuff) and instead look at the next layer (capabilities, possibility for success).

quote:

Originally posted by DigiNut [FONT=Tahoma][COLOR=#99CCEE]Er, how was any of that an assumption? Is it your strategy to take known facts and try to pass them off as mere stereotypes?

If you have facts that HR departments are actually comprised of "women and Pakistanis and a small number of Arabs and Asians" Then please share.

I pulled this out because it is a perfect example of an illogical argument. Much (perhaps even most) of what you had to say might be true, but how can I possibly agree with you when you muddle your message up with "facts" like the above.

I may be totally off base, but there is a general discussions forum for this kind of thing... I mean the random stories that normally show up are usually ok because they start with; "So I was getting out of the club @ like 6am totally tripping..." and end with "can't remember how, but I was naked in bed and my car was gone..." This really has nothing to do with the scene. But what else is new, it's good to be back from vacation lol.

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