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| 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.
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