Apparently my replying to an ancient thread regarding Chipotle, and more probably the current denizens responding in a manner of ludicrousness, resulted in its closing. However, let me generalize this issue so as to not offend the all-important corporations which might sue if they don’t like having bad things said about them, I think there is a plague, of a type, of intellectual blindness in regard to racism. The so-called “reverse-racism” is actually, I think, an effect of a desire of employers to distances themselves, by the building of fences upon fences, from any accusation whatsoever. Consider a quote regarding the Tescor Survey,
The Tescor Survey developers wanted to distance themselves from potential accusations of racism, misogyny, and age discrimination so there method of preventing this involves providing a hanicap bonus in their little pass/fail test on the basis of race, gender, and age. So, they effectively run counter to their goal of not being racist or misogynist by being preferentially racist and misandrist in effect. They don’t want to have lawsuits on the basis of people who were once historically discriminated against, so instead they discriminate in favor of three sets of people (non-white, non-male, not below the age of 40) and against three other sets of people (white, male, below the age of 40). Does anyone not see something wrong with this also?
Not really. Employers don’t have to use the Tescor Survey.
ETA: the ludicrous responses had nothing to do with the other thread being closed. I suggest you read the forum rules before continuing to post here; one of the long standing rules is that old (“zombie”) threads should not be resurrected, because the original participants may not be around to defend themselves. Also, because the original participants may no longer hold the views they put forward five years ago.
Actually, some employers, such as Labor Ready, are required to use the Tescor Survey. My usage of a single example is to demonstrate the type of attitude which is effectively, in my opinion, a reason for the perception of “reverse racism”. It is that people do not wish to associate with a more classically stigmatized direction of racism that they are willing to act extremely oppositional in order to “prove” that they aren’t. I’m not saying they are racist or misogynist or anti-40+ or whatever, but they so desire to distance themselves that they are willing to go to diametric opposites - or otherwise extreme measures - to hedge themselves from being labeled negatively.
Ah, forum rules about necromancy. Strange, I really don’t care what the current perspectives of the people with arbitrary usernames are, it was just how they only seemed initially respond to the cashier not being Hispanic as a sign of racism rather than considering that all of the other employees are Hispanic as an actual indicator of racial preference in hiring.
I dislike the term “reverse racism” because it’s essentially meaningless. It makes it seem like somehow discrimination against the majority is meaningfully different from discrimination against a minority. If someone is disadvantaged because of they’re race, it’s racism, whether they’re white, black, or any other color.
I’m also of the opinion that the best way to address racism isn’t to try to correct for it by enforcing these sorts of quotas, especially since there may be other valid reasons. For example, a particular technology corporation may appear to discriminate against people over the age of 40, but it’s not uncommon that valuable skillsets in particularly new technologies end up clustering in younger people, they aren’t hiring more young people because they are discriminating against older people, but simply because that’s where the skillsets they need reside. Or for a more ridiculous example, it’d be like calling Hooters sexist for not hiring male waiters.
So, rather than adjusting tests so that particular protected classes will necessarily get within 80%, I think it would be much more interesting to evaluate why a particular class isn’t within 80%. There very well may be questions on the survey that are somehow discriminatory, or there may be other factors that have some correlation with certain class divides, particularly economic factors. If it’s the former, by all means adjust or remove the question; if it’s the latter, you probably have to consider your approach more carefully.
I think in practice discrimination has simply become a “management reserves the right” policy, discriminating for/against whatever suites their needs often company image related or personal.
I do see a certain logic in the “zombie” argument.
However if you consider the development (and I use an extreme example) of the spherical Earth model from the flat Earth model, you can see that returning to a topic even after the deaths of the original theorists/writers can be useful.
Also, if someone takes the time to read long dead threads and post on them it seems counter-productive to shut them down, if they were dead already they should have been buried/closed/deleted. But I don’t know, maybe the software makes the process too labor intensive.
I agree with you, “reverse racism” is just racism essentially. However, there is a meaningful difference in terms of social acceptability. It seems more acceptable to say garbage generalizations against a majority than against a minority. There is no difference in terms of what it is, but only in how it is treated socially and politically.
Question though, is it against the forum rules to consider the possibility of employers being fallible or otherwise capable of being wrong? You say that the only person banned was one arguing in favor of “racism theory”, but were they banned for arguing in favor of it or what are you trying to say?
Of course not. I think you’re assuming I closed the thread because people said bad things about Chipotle, which is incorrect. I explained why I closed the thread: because it was very old.
I’m not sure why that poster was banned, but he was banned a couple of weeks after that thread was started and it was probably for breaking other rules.
Your understanding of the word “required” differs from general usage, then. Labor Ready requires its employees to use the test. That does not mean Labor Ready is required to use it.
In any event, if you score poorly enough on the survey to be ineligible for a temporary manual labor assignment, you probably shouldn’t be part of the workforce.
He’s saying that the person in that thread who you were arguing with isn’t here to respond. Old threads aren’t a problem per se; they just cause a lot of confusion because people jump in without noticing the original posting dates.
Okay, well this is now a young thread that is not necromanced. Mind if the denizens of this forum are allowed to debate the primary topic of this thread - which is not about your moderation but about diametrically opposite racism in employers seeking to distance themselves from being labeled “racist” yet failing to do so in that the criteria they use are actually based upon such meaningless aspects of a person as the epidermal concentration of melanin?
Where our society jumped the tracks was injecting skin color into the hiring process at all. Employment decisions should have always been based strictly upon best abilities/qualifications and should have been completely colorblind.
This would still have left ample opportunity for discrimination challenges for those employers that continued to inject insert race of your choice here practices.
Okay, fine its employees are the ones who are required to blindly follow the arbitrary policies of the corporation. I was not trying to say it’s required by the government but by corporate policy.
Actually, I passed the Tescor Survey. It is only a pass or fail test, there is no statistical data from it. As it is, it stated “qualified” to the bureaucrat working at the Labor Ready office. Also, that test score will stay with me my entire life, so to the bureaucrats there I am qualified to work for them as long as I’m here.
As I see it the OP is a statement with a ? on the end.
I’m going to repeatedly contradict myself here
Everyone discriminates, it’s in our nature.
I don’t understand how racial discrimination takes hold in a person, is it possibly justifiable? Perhaps.
I also don’t understand why a person would want policies that force racist employers to employ their quarry, surely not going to be a pleasant work experience for either.
Marley: Both you and OP mentioned it, was just replying, but yeah off topic. Thanks for the advice/info but I just got here so not really ready to tell you how to run YOUR place, yet.
You’re right, but I think part of the problem is precisely because of the language. Racism sounds bad, society has grown to view accusations of racism as very serious. “Reverse racism”, though containing the word racism just doesn’t come off sounding as bad. That could be because its just a longer, more convoluted term. It could be because my mind sees reverse and sort of things “opposite” as in “opposite of racism” and almost thinks it’s a good thing. Regardless, by giving what is essentially the same phenomenon different terms, it allows for differences in perception, which only serves to exacerbate the problem.
As long as one type of racism is more socially acceptable than another, racism, and dreams of a colorblind society can never be realized. I can understand a number of possible explanations for why it is that way, possibly that a little overcompensation isn’t so bad after so many years of it being the other way, or perhaps because it’s the majority it’s somehow spread over a larger group and so the impact is lessened… whatever. Regardless, though they may be seen different by society now, we really should strive individually, and ultimately as a society, to treat all forms of discrimination, whether against a minority or a majority, as equally evil.
While I agree, I think it’s understandable in the context of the times in which those decisions were made, why they were made that way. It’s difficult to imagine how things might have turned out if nothing had been done. Yes, it forced integration sooner than it probably would have happened otherwise, but it also left us with some social rifts and resentment that still has ripples today. Either way, I don’t think second guessing about what should or shouldn’t have been done is helpful.
Instead, I do think that it’s a situation that we can re-evaluate. When those laws were enacted, racism was socially acceptable on a pretty wide scale; now-a-days, a company takes a huge publicity hit when accusations of racism or many other types of discrimination surface, even if they’re untrue. As such, we’re probably in a place where those laws, where they may or may not have done good to hasten integration, probably are doing more harm than good now. I think today, the free market probably does as much or more to help mitigate discrimination than any laws do.
I do still think there’s room for society to grow in terms of discrimination, the hot topics of the day being homosexuality, immigration, and religion (ie, anti-Muslim sentiment), but I also think we’re miles ahead of where we were a generation ago, and I expect will be well ahead of where we are a generation from now.
Is that supposed to be regarding my name or ethnicity? Meh, my last name is derived from Latin so, perhaps you’re partially correct. So what?
Oh, making fun of my username. Nope, it’s not a question, for which the syntax would need to be “am I” rather than “i am”. Regarding my username it’s a random phrase I came up with a few years ago regarding how parakeets are bossy to my other birds.
This is probably part of what fuels the effect of diametrically oppositional racism, but not just racism but also other aspects where employers seek to distance themselves as far away as possible only to create other problems. Such as with Wal-Mart being ever ready to fire people on the slightest chance that something they say may be interpreted to mean something it didn’t - such as talking with other gamer coworkers during the mandatory 1-hour break talking about Halo or KillZone and then getting fired due to the possibility of them being “terrorists”. Wal-Mart wants to distance itself from any possible accusation or otherwise poor publicity and they’ll go to any ridiculous lengths in order to do so. Hiring on the basis of superficiality is just one piece of a larger cake of Pakled variety stupid.
The term “discrimination” is one that can quite easily undergo rhetorical equivocation due to its connotation of racism. Taxonomy is a form of discrimination, however I think that the aspect of finding other people to be generally repulsive or appealing on the basis of their skin color or shape of eyes is something learned and not something intrinsic. It could be learned through a couple bad experiences leading to the fallacy of composition or it could be indoctrinated by people who have also learned folly and have made it part of their character. It is often the latter portrayed in movies in which denizens of the southeastern USA are demonized, however I think the former is more likely the case (a bad experience with some random member of subset x or y or z leading to an improper induction).
Employers hiring based on quotas need not be racist, they may just be in it for taxation benefits or whatnot. However, when an employer like Chipotle (which I just had an interview at today) has a staff composed of 8 Hispanic crew, 1 Hispanic manager, and 1 African American manager, it seems to smack of something like a preferential hiring practice. Similarly, a White Castle near where I live hires almost nobody except for middle aged African American women. One Jay’s Fish & Co hires only Iranians. The Chinese restaurants around here hire only Chinese people and Hispanic people. Radermacher’s Grocery store hires only young women with long hair. IDK, something seems odd when people amass an inordinate amount of people with one specific set of traits. It’s sort of like looking into your cabinets to find nothing except Ramen Noodles and then opening your fridge and seeing yet more Ramen Noodles and then opening your closet to find even more Ramen Noodles and then trying to open your garage only to find you can’t because it’s packed with Ramen Noodles. And then you know somebody has a fetish.
Saying something “seems odd” is a long way from conclusive evidence of racism or racial preference, though. You can’t sensibly assume someone is a racist, or that a place is hiring certain people based quota or “taxation benefits” reasons, just because most of the employees are from one group. I’m pretty sure there are no quotas or tax incentives that encourage the hiring of women with long hair.
