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[Morrigi]

Oh look, more violence from anti-Trump rioters. Utterly shocking.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/protesters-assault-trump-supporters-eggs-bottles-punches-after-rally-n585096

Edit: Allowing this kind of shit to happen is how you get militias to form, out of people who want to defend themselves and their communities. Freikorps, anyone?

[Sheb]

I'll shoot you a .pdf by pm. Basically, they found that in India, reserving a portion of village chief seats for women cause the people in those village that were forced to elect a women were a) more likely to elect a woman in the future and b) more open to the idea of femal leadership.

Edit: Allowing this kind of shit to happen is how you get militias to form, out of people who want to defend themselves and their communities. Freikorps, anyone?

Good things the anti-trumper were arrested then.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

That's not really substantively the same thing. Political reservation and private employment are highly different matters, even if the position is as low as a village council. For one thing, the former is payed close attention to by the public while the latter isn't payed attention to at all. It's no surprise that that would put a dent in sexist attitudes, but if anything the latter could have a reversing effect due to people inevitably being slighted.

[Dorsidwarf]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-36439151

Clinton just summed up the reason why trump is so dangerous - "Donald Trump's ideas aren't just different, they are dangerously incoherent"

[Strife26]

... which were a jolly good smashing success, may I add.

Britannia rule the waves!

*dons ballistics monocle and top hat*

[Sheb]

That's not really substantively the same thing. Political reservation and private employment are highly different matters, even if the position is as low as a village council. For one thing, the former is payed close attention to by the public while the latter isn't payed attention to at all. It's no surprise that that would put a dent in sexist attitudes, but if anything the latter could have a reversing effect due to people inevitably being slighted.

I'd disagree. The latter is paid attention by colleague, boss and people in general. That still doesn't mean that a quote is always a good idea, but in some case it can helps.

P.S. The paper in question is actually freely available online, so have it here.

[Frumple]

Employers as a demographic are generally biased against minorities [citation needed] so we should legislate that they must be biased in the other direction.

Yup, nothing could possibly go wrong here.

Blue hell OW, repeat it with me: That's not what goddamn AA does. It's not about or intended to bias in the other direction (saying again, the anti-discrimination laws are still there!), it's meant to correct existent bias. It provides incentive/regulation to help (note: not mandate, help) employers correct for likely bias, particularly of the racial sort.

As for citations, you're welcome to spend a few minutes googling the (many) various studies that have been done over the last few decades that have been regularly showing the problem by the numbers (one was mentioned upthread, even), or workforce/employment demographics that make it fairly obvious that shit may just be a bit off. We're really damn aware of some of the common cultural issues related to this stuff, at this point.

So we want equality of outcome, then, and not opportunity? Why don't we just get the government to put everyone into jobs where they'd be most suited and pay them all the same?

No? Equality of opportunity is the entire bloody point. Inequality of outcome is still perfectly fine, usually even under various AA-style programs, so long as steps are being made to make sure everyone's actually being given their fair shake.

hough to be fair, when are you going to encounter 200 equally-qualified candidates?

Equally qualified, but not identical? Uh. Regularly? Not sure if you've realized this, but the U.S., at least, is a place where you can end up with hundreds/thousands of applications for a friggin' waitress position in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, never mind something that is actually easily a accessible and paying worth a damn. There being dozens or hundreds of candidates in that pile that are roughly equally qualified is... not terribly unusual.

[sluissa]

How about the not insubstantial number of minorities and women who have learned to game the system?

Basically any time you end up hiring a minority or woman, if you ever have reason to fire them you better be prepared to fight a discrimination lawsuit. (Or in the case of women a sexual harassment lawsuit.)

It happens ALL THE TIME... and it's not restricted to people who want to keep their jobs either. Lots of people look to get into large successful businesses, do a horrible job to get fired, and then file a suit or look for a settlement of some sort. That's their game, that's their plan, that's how they make a living.

This is directly because of AA.

I'm not saying AA is all bad, but the same as with any bandage for a problem, it needs to come off eventually or else it does more harm than good. It's just like government subsidies (Oil, namely, but plenty of others out there.) put into place in order to give a minority group a way to step into a market, or as a temporary relief of a unusual problem, but if never taken away it ends up being a crutch that never lets the weak leg regain strength and ends up costing society as a whole more than it's worth.

[Orange Wizard]

P.S. The paper in question is actually freely available online, so have it here.

That's pretty interesting. Roughly similar to the Maori seats we have in NZ, I guess.

It's a fairly specific context, so I'm not sure how relevant it is to the modern world; or the private sector. Quotas for representation are fairly reasonable, but they're not particularly democratic. I can't imagine "you must elect a woman now because equal representation" is going to go over well... anywhere, except possibly Sweden.

...

Blue hell OW, repeat it with me: That's not what goddamn AA does. It's not about or intended to bias in the other direction (saying again, the anti-discrimination laws are still there!), it's meant to correct existent bias. It provides incentive/regulation to help (note: not mandate, help) employers correct for likely bias, particularly of the racial sort.

... so when we say "affirmative action", are we talking positive discrimination or anti-discrimination? I don't actually know how US law on the matter works. I know some countries in Europe have employers favour women over men with the same qualifications, which is the kind of thing I'm protesting.
If you're arguing that employers should... I dunno, have someone pop into their office every now and then to say, "X minority can be intelligent and hardworking too!" then I don't have an issue.

We're really damn aware of some of the common cultural issues related to this stuff, at this point.

Eh. Fair.

Equally qualified, but not identical? Uh. Regularly? Not sure if you've realized this, but the U.S., at least, is a place where you can end up with hundreds/thousands of applications for a friggin' waitress position in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, never mind something that is actually easily a accessible and paying worth a damn. There being dozens or hundreds of candidates in that pile that are roughly equally qualified is... not terribly unusual.

Probably comes down more to the quality of your CV in that sort of case, really, rather than much else.

It happens ALL THE TIME

Does it? There's been a few high-profile cases like the reddit one, but beyond that I'm not sure if abuse of AA is particularly widespread.

[Loud Whispers]

OW why u hev 2 be mad is only antiracism

[Orange Wizard]

OW why u hev 2 be mad is only antiracism

Fucks sake LW go back to the cotton fields

Glorious Africa needs your labour

[Loud Whispers]

I'd rather farm goats in Tibet

[Sheb]

P.S. The paper in question is actually freely available online, so have it here.

That's pretty interesting. Roughly similar to the Maori seats we have in NZ, I guess.

It's a fairly specific context, so I'm not sure how relevant it is to the modern world; or the private sector. Quotas for representation are fairly reasonable, but they're not particularly democratic. I can't imagine "you must elect a woman now because equal representation" is going to go over well... anywhere, except possibly Sweden.

Many countries have quota for women, that were voted in democratically.

... so when we say "affirmative action", are we talking positive discrimination or anti-discrimination? I don't actually know how US law on the matter works. I know some countries in Europe have employers favour women over men with the same qualifications, which is the kind of thing I'm protesting.

Affirmative action and positive discrimination are the same thing. I think it's one of those "US English vs. Everyone Else" thing. I have never heard of a European country with such law though. Source or strawman?

It happens ALL THE TIME

Does it? There's been a few high-profile cases like the reddit one, but beyond that I'm not sure if abuse of AA is particularly widespread.

Yeah, I'd love to have source if that happens all the time. It seems to have to do with anti-dsicrimation statutes, not with AA too.

[Orange Wizard]

I have never heard of a European country with such law though. Source or strawman?

Best I can find offhand is this article about a proposal in the EU for it, which might be what I was thinking of.

[smirk]

Blue hell OW, repeat it with me: That's not what goddamn AA does. It's not about or intended to bias in the other direction (saying again, the anti-discrimination laws are still there!), it's meant to correct existent bias. It provides incentive/regulation to help (note: not mandate, help) employers correct for likely bias, particularly of the racial sort.

... so when we say "affirmative action", are we talking positive discrimination or anti-discrimination? I don't actually know how US law on the matter works. I know some countries in Europe have employers favour women over men with the same qualifications, which is the kind of thing I'm protesting.
If you're arguing that employers should... I dunno, have someone pop into their office every now and then to say, "X minority can be intelligent and hardworking too!" then I don't have an issue.

No expert here, but so far as I understand it a lot of American AA works like so: Some company (ToastApocalypse! The Toasters of Tomorrow) has an applicant pool that is approximately 20% minority. Despite this, their workforce is consistently only 3% minority. It is just maybe possible that this is because only white people are qualified to manufacture toasters, but given the States' history it is much, much more likely that the company's bureaucratic structure (or at least, the bit doing the hiring) is discriminating on race. So AA rules kick in and the government says "Yo, ToastApocalypse, that's some shit. We will offer you incentives if your workforce pool starts to look more like your applicant pool."

Of course, there are other types of AA as well in certain places, even gender/race quotas and such. Like many things in the US, our fetish for "leave it up to the individual states" makes everything a patchwork quilt of confusing legal fuckery. And AA regulations need to be looked after and revised and updated, but arguing that it needs to be done away with entirely is about as naively idealistic as insisting that racism is over because our president is black. Getting people to work together is a good way to make them less racist, but that process needs to be started somehow. And the US isn't nearly out of the weeds yet.