You are an employer and have had extensive experience with employees of various ethnic groups. Your experience has been that Mexican immigrants have tended to be the hardest working. Further, you have spoken to other employers, and their experience has been similar. And so, when looking to hire a new employee, you feel the odds are best in your favor if you hire a Mexican immigrant.
But you do not overtly discriminate. Specifically, you do not interview all sorts of applicants and hire only the Mexican ones. But what you do is go over to some of your Mexican workers and ask if they have any buddies that want a job. Or you contact a local Mexican organization and ask if they know of anyone looking for work. You do not ask the same of any person or organization of another ethnicity.
Morally justified or not? I would think that if you actively discriminated against specific job applicants it would be unacceptable, but I’m unsure of this case. And I’m not sure what the distinction should be either. In the case when you are dealing with an actual person standing in front of you I have a strong sense that you should treat each person as an individual and allow them to be judged on their own merits. In the case at hand, there is no individual being dealt with. But the overall impact of your actions is the same in both cases.
And how about if you are not discriminating in favor of one ethnic group - what if you similarly approach employees and organizations from every ethnic group except Blacks? Similarly, this feels a lot wronger, although essentially the same principle is at stake. So perhaps the distinction is bogus, and the hypothetical case is equally abhorent.
It is about as morally acceptable, IMO, as an “Ol’ Boys Network.” It seems that is roughly what this is, in fact, only instead of being based on a network of given associates and their contacts, it is based on a perception that certain social group in your area seems to outperform. :shrug:
This is not morally justified. Engineering matters so that members of certain groups have little or no opportunity to apply for jobs is no different, morally, from engineerting the assessment and interview procedure so that members of certain groups have little or no opportunity of being selected.
I can’t agree with UDS (not the first time) or superfreakicus. Your question is not whether you can/should discriminate against, but whether you can discriminate in favour. Maybe there’ll be a nit-pick that one is the mirror-image of the other, but I’ll wait for that to happen rather than anticipate.
Put the question in a different way. If IzzyR had a business that needs tall people to work at optimum efficiency (?contract to change lightbulbs on the highway?), is he obliged to open his doors to all people, even knowing that he will in the end only hire tall people. Is he not maximising his own efficiency, and sparing short people unneccesary time/expense, by going down to his local Masai social club and spreading the word that he’s hiring.
I know this is over-simplifying, but the general rule seems to me to be applicable.
To me the key question is whether the Mexicans in IzzyR’s scenario really do have some inherent advantage over the other groups, or is it simply a matter of perception and comfort-zone. Saying “Mexican immigrants have tended to be the hardest working” needs to be justified before it can be taken as a correct basis on which to hire. However, if such justification exists, then go for it, in my view! It’s called free enterprise.
Neither of these is the correct approach. He should seek applications from people of the requisite height, whether or not the are of the Masai tribe. He is perfectly free to stipulate that he won’t entertain applications from people of below 6 feet, if that is an objective requirement of the job.
The general rule is
(a) that you can discriminate by reference to some criterion which has an objective relevance to the job (such as height or a willingness to work hard);
(b) that you cannot discriminate by reference to some criterion that has no objective relevance to the job (such as being Mexican or Masai);
(c) that, if you cannot measure a relevant quality (such as willingness to work hard) that does not justify you in using an irrelevant quality (being Mexican) instead; and
(d) that candidates are entitled to be judged by reference to their personal qualities, and not by reference to qualities that they are presumed to possess because of the group (male, or Mexican, or Protestant, or blonde, or Harvard-educated) into which the employer has rather arbitrarily chosen to classify them.
Actually, I’m suggesting some first principles for an equal opportunities approach to employment, on common sense or moral grounds. I suspect that these principles, or something like them, underly the legal equality codes of various countries, but I don’t know this. In particular I don’t know if they underlie the laws in IzzyR’s home state, which is what is relevant here.
You mean if these principles have been accepted as the basis for somebody’s legal code you’re going to reject the principles for that reason, without any examination of their intrinsic merits? If so, it’s going to be difficult to have a Great Debate with you.
No sir or ma’am (as the case may be), the only thing I am saying is that you are using phrases like
"Neither of these is the correct approach.
and
"He should seek applications from "
etc.
Nowhere do we see an “I think”, or “IMO” (dare one even hope for “IMHO”), so I am asking you to cite the source for these absolute facts you are stating.
<sigh>
It seems you and I are destined never to see eye-to-eye. What a pity. I really like Micks!
The question posted by IzzyR was “Morally justified or not?”. What the f…k does where he live have to do with it (or are you telling me that it does make a difference, in which case I’m going to have terrific fun with you in some other threads).
In regards to Mexican immigrants, well the truth is that the realy DO work harder than everyone else. At least in the resaurant industry. The place I work at has hired all kinds and all colors. these are some of the things that I have observed on the job.
#1 Kids who go to culinary school are just about the dumbest and laziest things going. They will take 4 hours to make soup and bitch all night if they end up working more than 8 hours a day. #2 Certain ethinic groups think that they are still being oppressed by the white devil if they are asked to do anything that they dont want to.
#3 white people think that they deserve more money just because they are white. #4 Spanish people think that everyone should speak spanish to acomodate them , instead of them learning english like everyone else.
#5 Mexicans and Guatemalans will work 80 hrs a week without a complaint,everyone else starts bitching after 60 hrs.
These are just a few of the things that you see working in kitchens. My boss asks all of us if we know anyone looking for work. Almost always the immegrants know someones cousin or aunt looking for a job. I dont think that its descriminatory because he will give everyone a chance . Unfortunately most people would rather complain than cook ,so out they go. Last summer(the busy time there) we had 20 people working in the kitchen most days. By the end of summer 14 of them were spanish immegrants. We started the summer out with just 2 spanish guys in the kitchen.
I don’t think you’re morally justified to make assumptions and generalizations about huge groups of people.
Your experiences may tell you that Mexicans (or whoever) are harder working, but that doesn’t mean this is true.
Discrimination in itself is neutral behavior. If we didn’t discriminate in hiring, anyone–regardless of abilities and qualifications–would be just as eligible for a job as anyone else. However, discrimination so that select groups of people are consistently chosen over others is another thing. If these people are chosen based on prejudice (even the “good” kind), then it is clearly wrong. If these people are chosen for other purposes–such as increasing diversity or compensating for past discrimination–then the “goodness” or the “badness” is more debatable.
I don’t understand why this question is so hard to answer. If a group is being discriminated against, logic says that there has to be a group (or groups) who are being discriminated for. On the flip side, if you favor one group, logic says that there is going to be a group (or groups) who is going to be shafted. If you see the moral wrongness in one scenario, why can’t you see it in another?
A fair point. WEhere he lives has nothing to do with it.
But, given that IzzyR asks about moral justification, when I post using terms like “should” and “correct”, shouldn’t you have assumed that I was discussing moral obligations? It was you who raised the issue of whether these were legal obligations, not I, and once that issue was raised then where IzzyR resides did become relevant.
But I return to my earlier point; you seem to be saying that, if the principles are outlined have been adopted as the basis for a legal obligation, you will reject them for that reason, which is surely not a sound position.
An alternative reading of what you said is that you reject my suggested principles on grounds which you don’t consider it necessary or useful to state, and that you would therefore reject any laws based upon them. Fair enough but, again, if you’re not going to give reasons for rejecting the principles, we’re not going to have much of a Great Debate.
Wait a second here… Izzy, are you saying you’ll advertise much more heavily among, say, Mexican immigrants, or that you’ll advertise only among Mexican immigrants, or what? I’m not sure if I read your OP correctly, you see… So you contact your local Mexican organization, but don’t contact your local Asian organization; do you also publish ads or what have you? If you don’t, I have to agree that this is surely verboten.
But I have to admit that I’m not sure I see a real problem with the situation in which you advertise to the world in general and also to some subgroup in specific so long as your actual hiring decisions are fair.
In other words, to use the example of needing tall people again, it would be a problem if I went down to my local Masai social club and only told them, but I don’t see why it should be a problem at all if I tell the whole city but make extra certain that the Masai social club is aware that I’m hiring. If I have reasonable expectations that group X is a bountiful source of whatever qualities I’m looking for in an employee, why should I not make sure that group X is aware that I’m hiring?
The problem with the Masai example is that height is something that will become readily apparent as soon as the guy shows up. So your recruiting decision is purely a matter of efficient use of advertising efforts. By contrast, whether a given employee will turn out to be hardworking is something that can be hard to discern when you’re interviewing a candidate. So your recruiting decision is an attempt to skew the ultimate hiring.
I don’t know. At the extreme, suppose a reliable friend of yours assured you that a certain candidate would make a good employee - I can’t imagine that anyone would have a problem with hiring on that basis. The much maligned “old boys network” is merely a looser form of the same. But the distinction is that you are hiring a person based on their (perceived) personal qualities, not because you judge them to have good qualities based on their membership in a certain group.
and
Your experience can be wrong about anything. But experience is widely used in business and life. This is one argument that I would reject outright.
g8rguy, the scenario I’m envisioning is the second, but I don’t see much difference between stacking the deck a little or a lot.
I’m a bit confused. Are you saying that only recruiting among Mexicans because of the impression that they work hard is NOT judging them to have good qualities based on their ethnic membership? Or are you asserting that the “old boys network” works independent of favortism to a certain group, and is based only on personal qualities? If you believe either one, I’d have disagree with you.
The difference as I see it is that if you stack the deck too much, you’re not giving others a fair opportunity, which you need to do. Maybe I’m just rationalizing here, but I think it’s wrong to not give others the chance to fairly compete for the job and not so wrong to make sure that people you think will be good at the job are aware of it.
This is to be distinguished, of course, from whether it’s reasonable to suppose that ethnic group X is actually well suited for whatever work you happen to be doing. But if you think they are, for whatever reason, I don’t see anything wrong with making sure they are aware of the job opportunity as long as the rest of the world is given the chance to compete for the job anyway.
Discrimination is defined in civil rights law as unfavorable or unfair treatment of a person or class of persons in comparison to others who are not members of the protected class because of race, sex, color, religion, national origin, age, physical/mental handicap, sexual harassment, sexual orientation or reprisal for opposition to discriminatory practices or participation in the EEO process.
Federal EEO laws prohibit an employer from discriminating against persons in all aspects of employment, including recruitment, selection, evaluation, promotion, training, compensation, discipline, retention and working conditions, because of their protected status.
Following the OP’s thinking, if you discrimate in favor of one class of employee, you are then unfavorably discriminating against another class of employee.
Yes, I think we agree that it’s illegal, but I was rather under the impression that the question was a moral one, not a legal one. I happen to not be convinced it’s morally unacceptable.
To take a rather ridiculous example, if I’m trying to hire tenors for a choir, I’m going to want to do most of my advertising in places where I would think tenors are likely to notice it. And that means I’ll be wanting to direct my advertising at men, even though I could conceivably find a woman who happens to have a deep enough voice that she could sing the part. Being male may not be required for being tenor, but if I’m looking for the latter, I’d choose to look among the former.
Is it morally acceptable for me to do so? If so, and if I have a similar belief that I’m much more likely to find whatever qualifications I’m seeking among members of a certain ethnic group, why would it be morally unacceptable to look mostly among members of that group? How do we draw the line and say that in once case, it’s okay, in another case, it’s not?
