Does anyone actually support Affirmative Action?

Great Debates
21

kimstu,
Did you read your cite?

“Affirmative action constitutes a good faith effort by employers to address past and/or present discrimination through a variety of specific, results-oriented procedures. This is a step beyond equal opportunity laws that simply ban discriminatory practices.”

Affirmative action is a means to an end. How do you define the end? It depends on the results you want to achieve. Who gets to decide what the results are? That’s one of the major problems with affirmative action - how do you measure success or failure? You can claim it’s not a quota system but ultimately it comes down to numbers. And somebody else gets to dictate what numbers you have to achieve in order to be non-discriminatory. And those numbers can change depending on whether you’re talking to the NAACP or The Gay and Lesbian Alliance or NOW or the EEOC.

22

thewiz: Affirmative action is a means to an end. How do you define the end? It depends on the results you want to achieve. Who gets to decide what the results are? That’s one of the major problems with affirmative action - how do you measure success or failure? You can claim it’s not a quota system but ultimately it comes down to numbers. And somebody else gets to dictate what numbers you have to achieve in order to be non-discriminatory.

Nope. Achieving “results” affirmative-action-wise is not about coming into line with somebody else’s quota—see the statements I cited about most affirmative action policies involving re-evaluation of recruiting and selection procedures, with “establishing goals and timetables for hiring underrepresented groups” being the “least common and least understood method.” (That one was easy to miss because I screwed up the list formatting—my apologies.) The majority of affirmative-action procedures do not involve setting numerical goals at all—you try to make your organization more minority-accessible via recruitment and selection criteria, but then you take what you get in terms of representation.

Most importantly, when affirmative action plans do set numerical goals and timetables, those are not legally imposed according to the wishes of the NAACP, say. Legally mandated quotas are part of specific consent decrees, imposed only in specific lawsuits when a court finds that a particular organization has shown a pattern of entrenched discrimination for a long time. The vast majority of institutions using affirmative action policies have never been subjected to a consent decree and are in no danger of one.

Your question about “how do you measure success or failure?” reflects the same misunderstanding about affirmative action. It’s supposed to be, as the above definition says, a good-faith effort to address past and/or present discrimination. It’s not about “how can we change our numbers and what should we change them to?”, it’s about “how can we change our policies to make sure that minorities have full access?” Paradoxically, an all-white organization (for example) that is genuinely working to recruit minorities is an affirmative-action success, even if it doesn’t find any minorities to hire. The measure of “results-oriented” success is whether you’re actively working to get results (as opposed to just saying “we’re officially opposed to discrimination” and letting all the unofficial discriminatory biases operate unchecked), not what results you end up getting.

And yes, since the long-term aim of such policies is to change the representation of underrepresented groups overall, it’s easy for detractors to claim that any employer who’s not increasing minority hires isn’t pursuing a policy of affirmative action. All that shows is that the detractors don’t understand affirmative action either.

(By the way, oldscratch, nice to see you back, hope you’re feeling better.)

23

There was a time in which ‘affirmative action’ meant that White males are in the affirmative. There were pro-affirmative actions such as the Dred Scott decision, the Jim Crow laws, Plessy v. Ferguson, the banning of Chinese immigrants in this country. Today, we hear specious arguments such as The New York State Board of Education saying that New York City kids (read: minority) only need an eighth-grade education, so that’s why they don’t deserve the money NYC kids are supposed to get. I tend to think that people are cryng just because minorities are using affirmative action to take advantage of the many opportunites of educational, social and financial advancement that were once the exclusive domain of White males.

24

Umm, we are not supposed to call folks names, or engage in personal attacks here in GD. Even you.

AA certainly IS “synonymous with quotas”, at least in popular perceptions. True, quotas are NOT the end-all & be-all of AA, they are only a part, but the largest, most visable, most controversial, and here in CA, the now ILLEGAL part. The CA initiative that ended “Affimative action”, ended quotas, etc. So, as far as California law goes, “quotas” were = AA. I suppose the folks that drafted the Law were "dunces’, tho. Now, as far as “outreach programs” go, they are still legal, but only so much as they are not used to require a new set of “quotas”. Thus, by the definition of CA law, “outreach programs” are NOT AA.

Now, in the “good old days” of AA, here at the Federal Gov’t, here is what AA meant- Amoung the QUALIFIED canditates for a job, if any belonged to a “underrepresented minority” he/she got the job, over someone who could very well have been MORE qualified. That is racism. Racism is wrong, no matter how you attempt to justify it.

25

DITWD: AA certainly IS “synonymous with quotas”, at least in popular perceptions.

To quote the Master, “Here at the Straight Dope, we don’t take votes on the facts.”

26

Is that not what you are doing? I am quoting the Law of the State of California, which defined, (to a great extent) AA=quotas. I am sure you can come up with another definition, and even back it by a Law. But that does not make my fact any weaker than yours.

27

DITWD: *I am quoting the Law of the State of California, which defined, (to a great extent) AA=quotas. *

Er, Daniel, no you’re not, and no it didn’t. Here is the text of Proposition 209, which made the change to the California state constitution:

This change outlawed certain kinds of preferential treatment that fell into the category of affirmative action. It did not define “affirmative action” to be “quotas” or any of the other forms of preferential treatment it outlawed, and as you point out, all the other forms of affirmative action that don’t involve preferential treatment are still legal. Just because the media found it simpler and more headline-friendly to describe Prop. 209 as “outlawing affirmative action” doesn’t make it accurate.

28

OK. Easy example. I worked at a major manufacturing/engineering firm (before it was destroyed by the idiots who took it in a hostile takeover). The programming manager was extremely hostile to quotas, but was persuaded to try Affirmative Action. Each winter the IT department set out to recruit new programmers. Under a previous (non-AA) administration, the (white) managers simply got in their cars and visited the campuses of the three Ohio universities with the best-rated IT departments on “job fair” day, then went home.

Under the AA policy, the recruiters made the effort to include a fourth college–primarily black–that also had a “decent” IT program. When they went to each of the colleges, they made a point of taking along a black programmer from the department so that the kids would have someone with whom they could identify and ask questions about treatment in the shop. In the course of four years, they hired nine new programmers. Three of the new programmers were black. In each case, they hired no one below the minimum standard set years before by the department. They did not hire a “minority” student every year, because they did not get applications from minority students who met the qualifications and passed the interview process each year. However, starting with a single black programmer (who had come to the company from the Air Force), they quadrupled the number of black employees by simply going where the black prospective employees could be found and appealing to them to apply where previous administrations had never bothered to even look.

That is affirmative action.

No one has a budget to visit every campus of every school in the state (much less the country). However, a company that consistently limits their search to “white” campuses and uses only “old white males” as recruiters is, effectively, limiting the pool from which they will draw talent. Going the extra step to be sure that minorities (and not just black minorities) will be exposed to their recruiting efforts means that they will have a better opportunity to find talent among non-white, non-male applicants.

29

And so did the author, who said HIS prop would “end affirmative action in this state”. And the City of San Jose is finding out that some of those “outreach programs” when taken to extremes, are also illegal.

30

I support Affirmative Action policies, not as a redress for previous social inequities but rather as an adjustment and (hopefully) cause of change in existing racism in our culture.

It is an unfortunate but real fact that as an articulate, well-dressed, white male, I have an advantage in the first impression that I make on intervewiers over an articulate, well-dressed woman or minority man.

Before I get flamed for calling all hiring processes racist, that is not what I mean. I mean that in the all important first impression, formed from a million subtle and inarticulable judgements about clothes, smiles, handshakes and poise that our society has instilled in most people a subconscious favoritism.

31

I thought you had to be proven guilty of something but here we have that all white males are considered guilty of racism. Oh, I also thought profiling was supposed to be a no-no, but I guess it is only bad when applied to blacks but it is ok to consider all whites as racist.

>> all the other forms of affirmative action that don’t involve preferential treatment are still legal

This is an oxymoron. Affirmative Action is preferential treatment. There is no other way. Either the treatment is equal to all races or you have preferences called affirmative action. You cannot have equality and affirmative action at the same time.

32

The problem with AA and all other attempts at social engineering, is that the Gov’t can not, in all it’s good intentions, prevent some people from being prejudiced.

Unfortunately for everyone, people actually do have a right to their prejudices, be they what they may. It is even evident in the example of 2nd graders who were taught by 2 different teachers (a John Stossel report, I think) and almost unanimously the kids thought the “prettier” teacher was smarter and better, despite a taping which seemed to reveal that the teachers were equal, except in “attractivenenss.”

But the wall comes down one brick at a time. Perceptions are improving and changing, albeit too slowly for most.

33

What’s a “white” campus? If they’re going to job fairs to recruit people then odds are they’re also advertising in the newspaper. Are minorities not capable of sending their resume to these companies? Why should a company feel obligated to go out of their way to hire minorities? And if a minority or female can’t talk to a white recruiter who needs them? They obviously aren’t going to be very good at dealing with people in the work place.

Marc

34

sailor, MGibson, take another look at these remarks from the source I cited above:

There is still a lot of racism and sexism out there, even if nowadays it’s more likely to be subtle or even unconscious than aggressively bigoted, and it won’t help to get indignant about being “presumed to be racist.” It doesn’t seem at all unreasonable to push employers to counter these lingering prejudices by means of affirmative action practices such as the ones Tom described.

MGibson: Why should a company feel obligated to go out of their way to hire minorities?

Good business, right? It’s a simple fact that all people are more comfortable with an organization if they see some people in it who are like themselves (although that certainly doesn’t imply that minorities and women are incapable of talking to whites or men—jeez, what a suggestion!). Get some minorities and females in the organization and boom, you’ve broadened your appeal to a huge percentage of the population who constitute your potential clients and employees. Most employers recognize the advantages when they experience them, it’s just that (as Tom said) they don’t always think far enough into it to take the initiative in actively recruiting minorities and women where they are most likely to be found. Anybody who’s been involved with HR knows there’s often a lot of inertia in it, yes? people keep advertising in the same places and going back to the same campuses for recruiting and using the same recruiters, and then they wonder why they keep coming up with the same kind of recruits…

And Wrath, it’s perfectly understandable that people have the sort of unconscious prejudices that you’re talking about, and that contribute to the ongoing discrimination described in the above cite. This is part of why we don’t let second graders make hiring decisions, for one thing, and why we try to counter those prejudices with affirmative action, for another.

35

The following is an opinion on the matter, none of which is based upon any third party facts whatsoever. I am solely responding to the initial post concerning support for Affirmative Action… I do support it.
I believe the goal of affirmative action and later the supposed resultant quotas was to insure equal opportunity of all races to enjoy the use of tax-funded programs, schools and jobs. That can be summed up by Equal Opportunity.

However, where we ‘need’ continued affirmative action and quotas is in minority participation, whereby any contracts with the federal or state or local government requires a percentage of the work to be performed by minority owned companies.

The social injustices of decades has caused a great inequity between the size, success and existence of minority owned businesses. Encouragement of these businesses to exist is a necessary step of the government. Here, in Baltimore City, over 50% of the City population is minority. Actually, let’s be honest, we are mostly referring more to African-Americans than any other class. Actually, we are talking about black-skinned people because they aren’t all decendents from Africa.

At any rate, in a City populated by over 50% black-skinned people, the existence and success of black-skinned owner companies is miniscule in comparison to the population. Now, the government doesn’t do a whole lot about the open market, i.e. contracts that have nothing to do with government business, nor should they. However, when it comes to business conducted with or on behalf of the government at any level, they have an obligation to their constituents to include a representative group.

I am open to coersion on this matter as the black-skinned owner of the company I work for is against quotas, and he is very liberal. (confuses me)

I definately believe the country is making great strides towards not needing quotas some day, but we aren’t there yet.

Is it racism?

If someone is automatically excluded because they are the wrong color, it is racism. How often do the ‘majority’ find themselves suing over this issue? How often does the ‘minority’ find themselves discriminated against? It may well be racism, but it is a necessary evil until the racism that created the need is discarded.

With all the social programs available to minorities for self improvement and advancement, we may well find relative equality in another generation or two. I sincerely hope so.

36

Now, herein lies perhaps the best possible solution. We’re not only talking about job discrimination, but also business discrimination. I personally don’t believe anyone should ever have to pay more for less (contracts to businesses should be awarded on cost & ability, not race, which is where the free market reigns), but since you say that minority businesses are underrepresented in the marketplace to begin with, let’s give minorities every opportunity as the rest have.

We have scores of programs to enable challenged folks (mostly financial) to get ahead. Free tuition and training programs, for instance. But like the peter principle, the cream will rise to the top. The minorities have but to use what’s available to them. Let’s face it, no matter who you are, the country gains when we have a smarter, better trained workforce.

But that’s where the programs should end, IMHO. It is still now and will always be up to the individual to be the best s/he can be, and that may still not be as good as the next person. Companies should hire the best qualified candidates, and contracts should be awarded to the best qualified companies, and nothing about any of that is racial.

In the free market, no one has anything to gain by employing the less-qualified. But, no amount of legislation can change people’s feelings and prejudices.

37

So your position is that no company should ever actively recruit anyone?

Let’s talk real world. Companies do try to recruit. They expend money, time, and energy seeking applicants so that they will have an opportunity to get to know the applicants before the actual interview process begins. The only “change” that the company I mentioned made was to include a primarily black campus in the locations where they recruited and to include black employees in the process.

This company did not hire entry level people from the newspaper or cold–ever. That policy was in effect years before AA was an issue. They were hardly unique in that practice, either. None of the first four companies for whom I worked in IT hired entry-level people “off the street.”

Since they were going to limit the number of potential recruits from the outset, limiting their pool to colleges where the IT student population was 95% white and 90% male had the obvious effect of reducing the chances for women or non-white applicants to be considered for a position. (This had been the case before they began AA.) Once they modified their pool selection of colleges to include colleges with IT student populations of 40% to 60% female and included at least one college where there was a greater number of black students, the numbers of good, qualified applicants among women and blacks went up dramatically.

Why should they bother? Because to do otherwise is to create a nice self-fullfilling prophecy where only white males ever get hired:

Entry-level people must be recruited. Experienced people may be hired off the street. Provide virtually no opportunity for a non-white applicant to get experience. Complain that there are no non-white people with experience.

We ran the whole country that way for years.

Note that the company using AA did not expend any more time, money, or energy in their recruiting than they had when they had kept themselves “white.” They did not lower the standards that they had set. They did not bring in anyone whom the hiring managers did not unanimously agree to hire. The change in policy extened only to the selection of where their resources would be spent and who would be included among their recruiters.

Do you object to the company making those choices? Would you prefer that they make sure that only whites (and usually males) get chosen? Since this company (and this country) used de facto segregation for years after de jure segregation was outlawed to limit the access of non-white workers to the job market, I am not sure why there are complaints against taking an affirmative action to reverse that trend.

38

I don’t presume that a minority contractor should be paid more because they are a minority contractor. Right now it probably happens due to lack of competition amongst minority-owned companies.

Real life example…

My employer’s father, because of the color of his skin, could not get a real estate license in the State of Maryland. His son, my employer, became the President of the same Association that denied him membership. Due to the inequalities of his father’s time, the government that allowed these discriminations to exist has an obligation to right the wrongs that continue to punish my employer. His father could not get into the real estate industry when many of the existing, larger, white-male owned companies could. Now he suffers by having to build a name amongst long existing, larger and wealthier companies.

A great portion of the federal government is social programs whether we like that or not. This is a necessary social reform. Only by empowering people to take care of themselves can you overcome the injustices that exist. You can’t do that just through education. Then you end up with minorities working to make white-male-owned companies larger and wealthier. Minority empowerment and ownership should be priorities of the government in their contracts until such a time as the public is indifferent to minority status. Which, as alleged, may never happen.

It is true that the government cannot legislate against prejudice. However, the government has an obligation to provide opportunities to minority businesses that would not receive these opportunities without government intervention. When you are comparing startup company A with a white male owner to startup company B with a black female owner, agreed that they both have relatively the same chance of success/failure. But it isn’t fair to allow long-existing company C with it’s market domination over the last century to be compared to startup company B above. C was allowed to function when the laws of the government would not allow B to exist.

Not all business in this country is related to the government, but alot of it is. Enough to help some minority enterprises get on their feet and level the playing field. I’m not talking about handouts. I am referring to the policies enacted to enable minorities to lift themselves up.
Policies that, at least with government contracts, require some involvement of minorities.

Even the ‘quotas’ aren’t representative of the population. City contracts here require between 15% minority participation in a City populated over 50% by minorities. (which of course doesn’t make them minorities, but still discriminated against) And still the large white-male, fifth generation companies complain that they can’t find qualified minority contractors to do that 15% of the work. It isn’t because minorities are in some way inferior, it’s because they don’t have the company ownership due to long existing social injustices. Without government intervention, these injustices will continue in perpetuity.
I am not alleging that there aren’t very successful minority companies out there. I am saying that there should be alot more and if the private sector won’t encourage or allow them to be created, it is the public sector’s responsibility to do so.

39

I don’t presume that a minority contractor should be paid more because they are a minority contractor. Right now it probably happens due to lack of competition amongst minority-owned companies.

Real life example…

My employer’s father, because of the color of his skin, could not get a real estate license in the State of Maryland. His son, my employer, became the President of the same Association that denied him membership. Due to the inequalities of his father’s time, the government that allowed these discriminations to exist has an obligation to right the wrongs that continue to punish my employer. His father could not get into the real estate industry when many of the existing, larger, white-male owned companies could. Now he suffers by having to build a name amongst long existing, larger and wealthier companies.

A great portion of the federal government is social programs whether we like that or not. This is a necessary social reform. Only by empowering people to take care of themselves can you overcome the injustices that exist. You can’t do that just through education. Then you end up with minorities working to make white-male-owned companies larger and wealthier. Minority empowerment and ownership should be priorities of the government in their contracts until such a time as the public is indifferent to minority status. Which, as alleged, may never happen.

It is true that the government cannot legislate against prejudice. However, the government has an obligation to provide opportunities to minority businesses that would not receive these opportunities without government intervention. When you are comparing startup company A with a white male owner to startup company B with a black female owner, agreed that they both have relatively the same chance of success/failure. But it isn’t fair to allow long-existing company C with it’s market domination over the last century to be compared to startup company B above. C was allowed to function when the laws of the government would not allow B to exist.

Not all business in this country is related to the government, but alot of it is. Enough to help some minority enterprises get on their feet and level the playing field. I’m not talking about handouts. I am referring to the policies enacted to enable minorities to lift themselves up.
Policies that, at least with government contracts, require some involvement of minorities.

Even the ‘quotas’ aren’t representative of the population. City contracts here require between 15% minority participation in a City populated over 50% by minorities. (which of course doesn’t make them minorities, but still discriminated against) And still the large white-male, fifth generation companies complain that they can’t find qualified minority contractors to do that 15% of the work. It isn’t because minorities are in some way inferior, it’s because they don’t have the company ownership due to long existing social injustices. Without government intervention, these injustices could continue in perpetuity.
I am not alleging that there aren’t very successful minority companies out there. I am saying that there should be alot more and if the private sector won’t encourage or allow them to be created, it is the public sector’s responsibility to do so.

40

I don’t presume that a minority contractor should be paid more because they are a minority contractor. Right now it probably happens due to lack of competition amongst minority-owned companies.

Real life example…

My employer’s father, because of the color of his skin, could not get a real estate license in the State of Maryland. His son, my employer, became the President of the same Association that denied him membership. Due to the inequalities of his father’s time, the government that allowed these discriminations to exist has an obligation to right the wrongs that continue to punish my employer. His father could not get into the real estate industry when many of the existing, larger, white-male owned companies could. Now he suffers by having to build a name amongst long existing, larger and wealthier companies.

A great portion of the federal government is social programs whether we like that or not. This is a necessary social reform. Only by empowering people to take care of themselves can you overcome the injustices that exist. You can’t do that just through education. Then you end up with minorities working to make white-male-owned companies larger and wealthier. Minority empowerment and ownership should be priorities of the government in their contracts until such a time as the public is indifferent to minority status. Which, as alleged, may never happen.

It is true that the government cannot legislate against prejudice. However, the government has an obligation to provide opportunities to minority businesses that would not receive these opportunities without government intervention. When you are comparing startup company A with a white male owner to startup company B with a black female owner, agreed that they both have relatively the same chance of success/failure. But it isn’t fair to allow long-existing company C with it’s market domination over the last century to be compared to startup company B above. C was allowed to function when the laws of the government would not allow B to exist.

Not all business in this country is related to the government, but alot of it is. Enough to help some minority enterprises get on their feet and level the playing field. I’m not talking about handouts. I am referring to the policies enacted to enable minorities to lift themselves up.
Policies that, at least with government contracts, require some involvement of minorities.

Even the ‘quotas’ aren’t representative of the population. City contracts here require between 15% minority participation in a City populated over 50% by minorities. (which of course doesn’t make them minorities, but still discriminated against) And still the large white-male, fifth generation companies complain that they can’t find qualified minority contractors to do that 15% of the work. It isn’t because minorities are in some way inferior, it’s because they don’t have the company ownership due to long existing social injustices. Without government intervention, these injustices could continue in perpetuity.
I am not alleging that there aren’t very successful minority companies out there. I am saying that there should be alot more and if the private sector won’t encourage or allow them to be created, it is the public sector’s responsibility to do so.