Conference quark::human_relations-v1

    When I do not get a job because the position is open to meet a "quota"
    
    When a person does not get a job because that "quota" is filled.
                                      
                                                  Safe answers.

I encountered a form of discrimination when I was in college.  I
had just been assigned to distribute communion to the homebound 
in Lowell.  There were a number of people on a waiting list
who wanted this service.  

The two people I was assigned to were elderly men.  So, I called
them up to let them know that I would be dropping by once a week
to provide communion.  As soon as they heard my voice, they knew
I was a woman.  One man stammered a bit and said that he would 
rather just get communion from a priest.  The other man let his
son-in-law explain that they didn't want communion at home.  
(Funny, they were on a waiting list!)  

Another eucharist minister (a male) was assigned to distribute communion to
those men.  He encountered no problems.  

Kathy

    
    
    Something that happened quite recently!
    
    I was asked to prepare a report for an individual who didn't have
    time to assemble the information himself.  I took a great deal of
    trouble gathering the information, summarizing it into a memo and
    making sure it was presented in a readable format.
    
    When I asked the individual whether he had received the information
    and whether he found it helpful, his response was, "Oh, yeah, I
    did--thanks, babe."
    
    I let the reader draw his/her own conclusions!
    
    

I'm discriminated on every year in regards to my auto insurance.  I'm in the
highest risk group, and hence pay the most EVEN THOUGH I've never been "at
fault" in an accident.  NH is the worst around, I think; Mass was much fairer,
at least there they discriminated on the basis of years you'd been driving.
Seems reasonable to me.

I know of women who have approximately the same coverages and stuff as I do,
and pay about four times less.  Arg!


Brian

    re.4
    I too have recieved the holy shaft of the insurance company for
    being male. I recieved 1 ticket(speeding) between learning to drive
    at 15 and 23 during that time I paid dearly for insurance because
    I was under 25 and single. The average yearly rate was $1200-1600.
    I became married at 23 and the rates went up again! They told me
    young married men tended to have a higher accident rate and they
    would go down when I hit 25. Well at 25 I divorced and guess which
    way they went again UP!!!!
    
    Now this wouldent have bothered me but a woman I have known since
    grade school that has had several accidents/speeding tickets,ect
    has yet to pay even close to the same rates as I do. 
    I'm not saying this is the normal situation but it bugs me that
    I pay higher rates on the basis I'm a male -vs-my driving record.
    I'm 28 now and have been told that in 6 months I should see a drastic
    decrease. I wont hold my breath!
    
    -j
          
    

    RE: .0
    
    When a group of people out together suddenly loses all its female
    members to a sub-group engaged in 'women talk'.
    
    Kak

    Discrimination has always been in existence and always will.
    It exist inside all of us.  Each and every one, and in some
    cases, oddly enough, it can offer, "positive" rather than
    "negative" results, although, it can be a hindrance as we all 
    know.  But it keeps us all "individuals" as well.  Show me a 
    man or woman that boast that they have none, and I'll show you
    a liar.
    
    We have all run into it.  I have.  You have.  What's new?  It's
    all a matter of different viewpoints, and that's healthy too.
    It allows us all to climb up on our soapbox once in a while.
    We could fill up a whole disk on this subject, maybe even a 
    vax, possibly a small cluster!!!  8^)
                                  
    Don't get the wrong idea!  I'm all for fighting for justice, truth,
    and the American way!  But.... "what is an injustice to one person,
    is justice to another."  Who is right?  Who is wrong?  How important
    is it, really?
    
    Maybe we would have become a stagnant society if we all felt the
    same.  Maybe we were meant to fight, struggle, claw, every inch
    of the way...maybe it is essential for growth.
    
    "That's just the way it is...
    
                     Some things will never change....
    
                                      That's just the way it is..."
           
    -Dwight

    Discrimination? It's a question running through my mind even as
    we speak...I'm trying to obtain a job that right now is being
    held by someone who was given the job to find him a place. It's
    a Distribution Analyst and a postion he hates and has no real
    background for.  It's also a wage class 4 job.  I'm a two, but
    have been with the company for six years, and this positon I 
    hold now for four years.  This is a logical step in my career
    path, but have been told I probably will not be given it as 
    a wage class 4, or with any title or pay hike.
    
    They said that perhaps when my next reveiw comes (May 88) they
    can see if maybe they can do *something* for me.  Am going to
    look very closely at their reasoning.  I thought Digital 
    encouraged promotion??!!!!  This matter is yet to be settled.
    

    While I myself have not been discriminated against a good friend
    of mine has. At the time his wife was pregnant with thier second
    child and he had just lost his job so he went down to the welfare
    office to see if he could get any financial help for the medical
    costs of having a child and was told that he could not get any help
    because he was a young white male. The welfare officer actually
    told him that if he had been of a minority race he would have had
    money thrown at him by the thousands of dollars. To me this seems
    totally wrong. What's a poor white boy with no rythym supposed to
    do?
    
    						Geoff

    
    Well, since people are telling "war stories" .... here is just
    one that I'll share....
    
    When I got out of the Air Force, I thought about a job with civil
    service, so, I went to the personnel department to apply, and I
    was asked if I was a "preferred veteran."  I said, "I am a vet."
    They looked at my paperwork and said, "yes, but you are not a 
    preferred vet, that is, a vietnam vet, that I had served in peace
    time."  So... they wouldn't even give me an application!
    
    What was I suppose to do?  Go start a war in El Salvador???
    
    Another story similar to the last note....
    I had a supervisor here at DEC that was hiring and said he interviewed
    a guy, (white), that he really felt was well qualified, but that
    personnel told him he "had" to hire a woman, and preferably, a black
    or hispanic one at that.                  
    
    I could go on....
    
    -Dwight

    A college professor of mine (he was a physics professor; I worked
    as a programmer for the physics department half time for several
    semesters) told me I should change my major from computer science
    to physics, since I could easily get a job in that field (doing
    who-knows-what...) since there are/were so few women graduates with
    degrees in physics (maybe this wouldn't be true anymore - I got
    my BS in 1974).  I said "No, thanks!" - how would you feel if you
    KNEW that you got your job only because of your
    race/sex/religion/whatever?  YCCH!  Anyhow, I didn't really want
    to work in that area anyways.  I still wonder sometimes if I got
    interviews because of my sex, but at least there are enough women
    in programming that I don't feel like I was ever hired anyplace
    ONLY to fill up some department's EEO requirements!

    A woman manager at DEC during a discussion on the open req's in
    the department.
    
       "We do not have to consider minorities as we have filled our
       qouta"
    
    Another bit of wisdom on the open positions in the department by
    the same woman.
    
       "We should be hiring Americans...we have enough people from 
       other countries in this department"

    who is the minority anyway?  these days it seems that the white 
man is :-)

     
    noone has mentioned the fact of people getting hired *just* 
because they *are* a minority!  i know a couple of people who had that 
feeling, but how do you know?  it seems like a pretty sad situation to 
think that you got a job *just* because you were a minority and 
nothing of your backround!  maybe just as sad as *not* getting the 
job!

                     tlr

>>>        noone has mentioned the fact of people getting hired *just* 
>>>because they *are* a minority!  i know a couple of people who had that 
>>>feeling, but how do you know?  

    I saw the job spec for the position that I was interviewing for
    when I got to my old site for the plant trip.  Someone up high had
    written in pen on it, "Hire minority"...and on the other spec, "Hire
    female or minority".
    
    Of course, Chinese usually have not been considered minorities in
    some situations, such as the Boston Public School system, but I
    sure hope that my credentials got me my job and not my race.

    B.
    

>	Equal Employment Opportunity, by it's _definition_ is
>	contradictory to minority hiring quotas.

Affirmative Action Programs, by their _definition_ require minority
hiring quotas.

-- Ron

    Consider for a moment, folks:  EEO/AA has been around for 15 years now,
    which means that everyone under about 35 has been touched one way or
    another by it, right?  So if it is nothing more than a legal excuse to
    hire a lot of underqualified women, blacks, and other "second-rate"
    people over the heads of better qualified white men, how is it that
    white men still hold the majority of well-paying jobs?  Is it that
    they can't find enough underqualified women and people of color
    to go around? ;'}
    
    						=maggie

    
    RE:  .19
    
    >Is it that they can't find enough underqualified women and people
    >of color to go around?  ;'}
    
    No.

        Regarding Maggie Tarbet's "EEO/AA has been around for 15 years
        now ... so ... how is it that white men still hold the majority
        of well-paying jobs?" I would hazard a guess that some of the
        explanation can be found in Joyce Lamotte's 439.13:
        
            A woman manager at DEC during a discussion on the open req's
            in the department. 
    
                "We do not have to consider minorities as we have filled
                our qouta" 
    
                "We should be hiring Americans...we have enough people
                from other countries in this department"
                
        Affirmative Action Programs, since they are a form of enforced
        descrimination (intended to reverse a history of descrimination)
        act to reinforce the notion of "justifiable" discrimination and
        the stereotype that minoriteies can't get their jobs except
        through stacking the cards in their favor, that is that on there
        own they are incompetant. 
        
        During the same 15 years, there haven't been anywhere nearly as
        many job-training and other educational programs as EEOs and
        AAPs. Beyond that, the work force is on the whole about 30 to 35
        years old, meaning that a really solid education program to
        correct the disadvantages that many minorities have suffered
        would have had to start before JFK was elected. Remedial
        programs to help patch over a poor education and a lifetime of
        disadvantage just doesn't stand up to a full lifetime of
        education and experience. 
        
        As a result of this, we've aggrevated many of the biases and
        tensions with our EEO ann AAPs, and not really prepared the
        minorities to fully compete in the marketplace. This keeps the
        percentage of qualified minority candidates below the percentage
        that the minority represents in the populace. Thus many of the
        quotas can not be realistically met, or can only be met by
        moving the same body around to fill one quota after another.
        
        Nothing will really work to solve the white male dominance in
        the market place until the educational inequities from
        kindergarten on have been solved for something like three
        decades. Since the system is still out of whack, that 30 clock
        hasn't even really started ticking.
        
        So long as the middle class is better educated and better
        prepared for the high paying careers than denizens of the inner
        cities and the inner cities are filled with non-whites while the
        middle class is predominantly white, whites will be over-
        represented and non-whites under-represented in good careers. 
        
        Women, at least middle class white women, have it much easier.
        The educational system is starting to turn out a hire proportion
        of women with equal education and ambitions to their male
        counterparts. They're not up to 50% across the boards coming out
        of college, but the numbers are begining to go the right way.
        Give them a decade or two to work their way through the system,
        and women will be pretty well represented. That'll be long
        before the other minorities achieve anything comparable.
        
        JimB. 

    My point, of course, was that the folks who piss and moan about
    AA make it sound as though white males have become an endangered
    species in the world of work, whereas in point of fact they are
    still firmly in control and continue to get the vast majority of
    well-paying jobs still almost by default.  We can see any number
    of white men unqualified for their positions and often positive
    menaces to the people around them...but nobody screams "Unfair!"
    that *they* got in.  Let one woman or non-white man get in over
    the head of some white man, however, and unless that person's
    credentials are overwhelmingly better there will be any number of
    people ...most but not all of them white men... who will immediately
    clutch at their throats and begin staggering about in circles
    whimpering about how tough it is.
    
    JimB, your argument might be entirely correct in a technical sense and
    yet remain a bad reason for not attempting to remedy injustice *today*,
    even though the remedies may sometimes prove imperfect. We're not
    talking about some abstract problem, Jim.  We are real people suffering
    real discrimination every day.  To say that the pro-white-male
    discrimination started n years ago and thus it should continue until
    society somehow manages to even the score in the nursery does
    absolutely nothing for any of the women or people of color who are
    alive *now*.  
    
    I'll have a good deal more sympathy for the white men crying "foul"
    when there are as many incompetent women and people of color around in
    high places as there are incompetent white men.  If I've not died of
    old age first, that is.
    
    						=maggie 

        Personally, I doubt anyone has ever heard me advocate that we
        ignore the plight of those who are treated unfairly. In point of
        fact, I have always pushed very hard to make sure that everyone
        who contributes to a success, including support people who
        contribute indirectly and are often over-looked, be creditted
        with the success. I remain very strongly committed to the idea
        that everyone should be entitled to an opportunity, and that
        one should not be judged by preconceptions.
        
        I therefore do not take very well to the implication that my
        argument was a rationalization for suppression or to the
        implication that I advocate keeping pro-white-male
        discrimination in place because it stared first. Nor am I
        talking about some abstract problem. I'm talking about the roots
        of discrimination and prejudice. I'm talking about how real
        people are affected and how their views are shaped by what they
        see as just or unjust actions.
        
        So long as we say that its all right to discriminate against
        anyone because of his or her sex or heritage or the other
        accidents of their birth, then we reinforce discrimination and
        prejudice. If we say that it's all right to discrimnate against
        white males, we give them the moral precedant for defending
        their discrimination. If we divide up and take sides women
        against men, blacks against whites, then we reinforce the idea
        that there are sides. And if we do so, it shouldn't surprise us
        that those with a serious advantage come out on top again.
        
        Worse than that, a lot of the actions that have been taken not
        only aggrevate the biases and the tensions, but by focusing on
        them we have often failed to do things that will really help.
        The AAPs and EEO programs have often taken the resources either
        of finances or just of commitment that should have gone into
        job training and educational programs. It doesn't do nearly as
        much good to just open industry's or college's doors to the
        underprivileged as it would if we had also prepared them for it.
        Yet we act as if just opening the doors is all we have to do.
        
        And by acting as if merely opening the doors was sufficient we
        not only fail to help as much as we could, but we increase
        frustration when the results are underwhelming, and we help to
        fuel notions that the underprivileged can't cut it on their own. 
        
        It may be painful to admit, but white males do have an advantage
        in this society and are quite often much better prepared for
        succes and better equipped. If we're going to get to a society
        that has true *equal opportunity*, it is only going to happen
        with the active support of the white males who hold a very great
        proportion of the power.
        
        If we claim that there is such a thing as "justifiable
        discrimination", by which we mean discrimination that serves our
        ends, what is to keep them from attempting to justify a bit of
        discrimination here and there that serves their needs. No! We
        must always stand against discrimination. 
        
        If we enact systems of reverse discrimination, then we make many
        of those who are discriminated against "for the common good",
        the enemies of equal opportunity and of the underprivileged. We
        turn potential powerful allies into powerful opponents. No! We
        need to make everyone see that discrimination diminishes us all.
        
        In the end, what we need are more programs that really prepare
        people to compete, more programs that teach the valuing of
        differences and tear down the artifical lines between us. We
        need more dreams and strong ideals to be devoted to. We need to
        get men and women, blacks and whites, suburbanites and inner
        city folk working together.
        
        I've made this statement in WomanNotes, but I'll repeat it here.
        If you put forth the notion that all men (or whites, or middle
        class, or yuppies, or heterosexuals or whoever) are victimizers,
        then the victimizers will hide behind the excuse they are just
        doing what comes naturally, that they are no different from
        everyone else. Instead of this, we have to all stand up together
        and say that victimization is wrong, and that we won't stand for
        it. The bad guys want us to believe that it's men angainst women
        or blacks against whites, or straights against gays. But it's
        not. It is good against bad, right against wrong.
        
        White males have the advantage, and thus for a long time they
        will be on top. The only way that we can change that is to
        correct all the factors that hold back those who are
        disadvantaged. This means profound changes in education and
        opportunity, and not just small patches to employment policies
        or college admissions. Properly done these things may help some,
        but we can not expect them to make major changes, nor can we let
        them be all we do. We must value the small victories they bring
        us, but we must still work for the long term major improvements.
        And we must each do in our own lives the small things that we
        can for each other. 
        
        JimB.

    <--(.24)
    
    I didn't think I was generalising, Bob.  Would you point out the
    passage?
    
    More unqualified white males?  Certainly in absolute terms there must
    be.  I dunno about proportionately.  I know of half a dozen men in
    senior engineering management grades who are widely regarded by their
    subordinates and in some cases their peers as being unfit to manage an
    organisation.  I know of only one woman so regarded.  On the other
    hand, there are only about half a dozen women at those grades in the
    whole company, so is she really unfit or just imperfect?  
    
    <--(.25)
    
    Jim, maybe I misunderstood what you said, then.  I thought you were
    saying that AA is a bad idea because it "legitimises discrimination",
    and that the right way to fix things is not to do AA but rather let the
    best qualified have the jobs regardless of the fact that it would be
    mostly white men who would get them at present, and work very hard
    meanwhile to make sure women and people of color get job training and
    education so that in future equality of opportunity would occur
    naturally.
    
    Did I misunderstand something?
               
    						=maggie

    re .26  Maggie, since white males have historically had a better
    chance of getting into the hierarchy to begin with, it's inevitable
    that more of them have reached their level of incompetence. See
    Peter, Lawrence J. (The Peter Principle). I believe that the end
    result of AA and EEO will be a demographically fair proportion
    of races and sexes at their individual levels of incompetence.
    
    Dana
    
    :-)/2

        Excuse me, but there's a small difference between thinking that
        AAPs do more harm than good and are an ineffective way to solve
        the very real problems of discrimination, prejudice and inequal
        opportunity and saying that "the pro-white-male discrimination
        started n years ago and thus it should continue". 
        
        My actual position acknowledges the problem and wants to do
        something about it--training and educating people at all levels,
        and making sure that everyone has access to jobs for which they
        are qualified--but at the same time deploring anything that
        really constitutes reverse discrimination and warning that even
        the impression that reverse discrimination can be harmful in
        that it legitimizes discrimination and alienates people with
        power from the cause you are trying to advance. This is not very
        far from your characterization of my views in 439.26, but is
        quite far from your earlier characterization in .23. 
        
        I do not advocate maintaining the advantage of white males. On
        the other hand I don't think that we should be very surprised
        that that advantage remains after 30 years of ineffectual EEO
        programs and AAPS, in the absence of solid programs of
        educational reform, job training, and the like. 
        
        In our own profession, for instance, the percentage of college
        graduates with computer science degrees is about half the
        percentage blacks represent in the population as a whole. This
        means that there's no way at present for blacks to acheive
        parity in the software engineering profession. It therefore
        doesn't take any approval of the status quo to not be surprised
        by it. 
        
        That being said, qualified blacks damned well better have
        equality of of opportunity in getting S/W engineering jobs and
        the top S/W engineering positions. Moreover they better have
        equal access to the colleges, and in order to be prepared not
        only to get into the colleges but to succeed while they are
        there, they'd better have decent primary and seciondary school
        educations, and that may mean economic support to keep them from
        being pressured into the work force too early.
        
        As a society we do an enormous amount of stuff to hold back
        the underprivileged and then we hope that by giving them
        preferential access to the work place we've made up for it.
        Nonsense! If we haven't prepared them to succeed in the work
        place access to it does them no good at all.
        
        And preparation to succeed isn't just decent education. It's
        also a question of expectations and self-image. How many
        underpriveleged kids set their career sights as high as the
        average upper-middle class suburbanite? 
        
        No, I don't believe that AAPs will make a signifigant dent in
        the problem. If you want to fix the problem you have to
        eliminate discrimination in hiring, college admissions, and the
        like. Beyond that you have to provide equal quality in the
        primary and secondary schools. But quality education isn't going
        to help if the people can't afford to attend. That means not
        only scholarships to higher education, but also in many cases
        some sort of economic assistance at the junior and senior high
        school levels. Folk at the low end of the economic spectrum
        often can't afford to postpone full-time work until they are 18,
        let alone 22. And once it's there and can be afforded, you still
        haven't solved the problem if you've been sending them the
        message that they can never aspire to the same success as their
        "betters".
        
        Some of the above has been done in the last 30 years, but
        realistically, we weren't even making a dent in the problem
        until 5, 10, or 15 years ago, and in fact we're not doing half
        of it even today. Given that I'm not surprised that we still
        don't see anything resembling equal representation amongst
        professionals.
        
        More than that, by propagating the notion that simple quotas
        *could* solve the problem, we encourage people to believe that
        they've done enough by having quotas. We also make people who
        have massive advantages feel threatened by folk who are in
        reality aren't properly prepared to compete. Wonderful! That
        disposes the powerful to try to hold back the less powerful. 
        Just what we wanted, right?
        
        In view of all of that and more, I maintain that quotas and
        reverse discrimination do more harm than good. In so much as EEO
        is implimented by AAPs that rely on (or are viewed as) quotas or
        reverse discrimination then I think that they are part of the
        problem. That doesn't mean EEO is a bad goal or that all
        affirmative action is bad, but a large portion of what I've seen
        suffers from these problems. 
        
        (The "more" I mentioned above includes questions like "Should we
        discriminate against people of Chinese ancestry in our
        profession because they are over represented or just WASPs?
        Why?") 
        
        I'm perfectly willing to criticize EEOs an AAPs, but not because
        I think pro-white-male discrimination should be venerated
        because of its age or because I don't want to see social
        justice. I merely think that they do more harm than good and
        don't address the roots of the problem. 
        
        JimB.

    <--(.27)
    
    Simply put, Dana: YES!  The pay is much better up there.  :-|
    
    <--(.28)
    
    Jim, I certainly don't dispute your contention that training and
    support are Good Things.  They certainly are.  And everyone should
    have equal access to them.
    
    However...
    
    The problem is real *today*.  How do you deal with the people who
    aren't getting a fair shake *today*?
    
    I'm not sure whether you meant to write what I think you wrote about
    black CSci grads.  Did you really mean to imply that 50% of all blacks
    have CSci degrees?  Unless I misread what you wrote, I would have to
    challenge that statement as incorrect on its face.  The only thing I
    can imagine you might mean is that the percentage of black CSci grads
    is about half what one would expect, i.e., that if there are 10% of
    whites with CSci degrees we might reasonably expect 10% of blacks to
    hold them but in fact only 5% do.  Is that what you meant? I'll presume
    it is for argument's sake, and ask:  how are they represented in the
    profession itself?  That is, given say 90% of white CSci grads are
    appropriately employed, are 90% of their black classmates *also*
    appropriately employed?  I don't have figures, but my eyeball
    measurement says No.  Blacks represent about 10% of the population.  My
    interpretation of your "half" figure says that I should be able to look
    around me and see at least one black engineer in 20.  I've been
    practicing this profession for 12 years now, industry and academia,
    large organisations and small, and I can state positively that I have
    seen no such representation.  Not even close.  One in 50 maybe, not
    more. 
    
    Where are they?  How do we get them into the workforce *today*?
    
    (Jim, as I hope I've made clear over the past couple years, I have the
    highest possible respect for your integrity and humanity.  Please don't
    get shirty and start believing that I think less of you because I find
    your reasoning on some issues flawed by your background.) 
    
    						=maggie

    <--(.30)
    
    Mike, I would be willing to bet that you are a caucasian male.  Am I
    right? 
    
    Jim argues that preparation is the answer.  I respond:  where are those
    who *are* prepared?  They're not in the workforce.  If simple
    preparation is The Answer, why aren't *they* getting a fair shake? 
               
    It's always easier to argue that the "real problem" should be addressed
    rather than the "symptoms", but as is well known in medicine, treating
    the symptoms at worst provides *some* relief to the victim!  And if the
    symptoms are the only thing you know how to treat at least for God's
    sake you're not just sitting on your hands while the victim suffers
    uselessly. 
             
    						=maggie

    re .29:
    
    I hate to jump in on this, but JimB said in .28, "the percentage of
    college graduates with computer science degrees is about half the
    percentage blacks represent in the population as a whole." To me, this
    reads as saying that if 10% of the population is black, then half of
    that (5%) of the people with CS degrees are black, not that 50% of
    blacks have CS degrees. 
    
    	Jon

    <--(.32)
    
    Good Heavens!  Jon, I really feel embarrassed.  I tried at least
    ten times to read what Jim wrote and it kept coming out the same,
    which is why I confessed such puzzlement.  You've made it clear
    that I was mis-reading it the same way each time.
    
    <--(.33)
    
    Mike, I'm not suggesting that you're a prejudiced caucasian male;
    I haven't any good idea whether you are or not.  What I'm suggesting
    is that you're a *complacent* caucasian male:  it ain't your ox
    that's being gored.
    
    The balance of your argument is a utopian one, in that it argues
    that somehow a perfect solution can be put in place over the objections
    of the very bigots you don't want to irritate with AA.  I would
    respond that (a) there are no perfect solutions and (b) the problem
    will not go away because the objections are not rational ones, they
    are rationalisations of very human fears.
    
    						=maggie

    <--(.32)
    
    I almost hate to ask this in light of the hash I made reading Jim's
    note, but no fool like an old fool, so...
    
    If I'm reading what *you* wrote correctly, Jon, your conclusion
    is identical to mine:  that 1 in 20 CS grads (5%) is black.  Which
    means (a) I'm confused twice; (b) you and I are both confused; or
    (c) I garbled the reading but came to the right conclusion.  I'm
    no longer willing to assert which is the case and I think it was
    very bad of Jim to word it as he did ;')
    
    						=maggie

        The reason for the confusing wording was I didn't (and don't)
        have the figures at hand and didn't want to quot real numbers
        and get them wrong. My memory is that blacks represent about 6%
        to 7% of the CS population and about twice that (12-14%) of the
        general population. My point was that given that they are only
        about 6% of the CS population they *can't* be represented at the
        same level in the s/w engineering and programming worlds as they
        are in the general population.
        
        Also, I'm not sure, but I believe that figure, low as it is
        represents not the s/w engineering "cream of the crop"
        population, but the whole CS population, including the less
        rigorously educated. 
        
        I am fairly sure that the 6 or 7% figure is the percentage of
        the recently graduated population--the last two years. This
        means that unless there is a serious over-supply of applicants
        (and there isn't), only about 6% of the *new*hires* are at all
        likely to be black. Given the much lower past percentages you
        can't expect the population of DEC s/w engineers to be anywhere
        near 6%, especially given the rising median age of engineers at
        DEC and many other big companies.
        
        Low percentage numbers are unavoidable in our profession. There
        isn't a large enough base of qualified applicants, and base is
        much larger now than it was when the average engineer was hired.
        It is improving, but at a very slow rate, and that rate is slow
        because we aren't doing enough to prepare them. It isn't high
        enough because "easy fixes" like AAps have lulled us into
        complacency. Remember the quotes that got me started on this:
        
                "We don't need to hire more minorities--we've
                met our quotas." 
        
        and
        
                "We need to hire more Americans--we've got too
                many foreigners" 
        
        or whatever they were. And both quotes were from someone who is
        a member of a target group for EEO!
        
        We talk about AAPs, quotas and reverse discrimination as if they
        were cures for the disease and not merely treatments of the
        symptons. And all the while, I maintain, they are making the
        disease worse rather than better. They are setting up an "us vs.
        them" mindset, where white males are assumed to be complacent at
        best and prejudiced at worst, on the one side or where women and
        minorities are seen as a threat, both by white males and by
        women and minorities who've already made it.
        
        No, I don't think that reverse discrimination and quotas are a
        reasonable treatment of even the symptoms. I think they are both
        divisive and lead to complacency. I think they have become not
        the minimum we can do to solve the problem, but the most we are
        willing to do, and that just isn't enough.
        
        EEO is a very reasonable and important goal. Some AAPs actually
        even contribute to its realization, but many--in so much as they
        are just quotas and reverse discrimination--are a bad thing
        doing serious long term harm in the name of a short term benefit
        that isn't actually realized.
        
        JimB. 

    Warning: I am going to discuss matters of great emotional impact
    	     in a detached manner.
        
    I am reluctant to say anything, but there is a side not heard from
    here, and it is perhaps important for it to be expressed.  I do
    not want to be held up as an evil person--I am not--but understand
    that readers may feel me to be one.
    
    I am opposed to EEO, AA and all that.
    
    Now, I am opposed because my political philosophy is libertarian.
    That philosophy holds that personal freedom is the most valuable
    thing, and that "the public good" is not sufficient reason to
    coerce people.  Another tenant is that employment is a matter of
    contract between employer and employee (and only those two).
    No one owes anyone a job.
    
    If an employer (one who owns the business) is prejudiced, then it
    is prefectly reasonable for them to hire who they want, and exclude
    who they want.  Furthermore, a restauranteur may refuse service or
    a landlord refuse housing for any reason.  The fact that the Supreme
    Court disagrees with me on this does not change my mind.  They've
    been wrong before.

    An employer which is a public stock corporation must reflect the
    desires of its stock-holders, not the management.  But if the
    stock-holders all support some form of discriminative hiring, then
    that too is ok from a libertarian point of view.
    
    Further, to take private means via taxes from one set of individuals
    and provide supplementary eduation for another is an immoral act.
    The "stricter" libertarians are opposed to public education, so
    Jim's solution is out as well as AA.
    
    Now, I work for DEC.  As an employee, I follow its rules and practices,
    and see nothing wrong with so doing: my opposition is to the legal,
    coercive nature of the current EEO and AA programs.  I further suspect
    that, under a libertarian system, DEC would have such programs as
    part of its stock-holder-chosen goals.
    
    But that does not change the crucial fact here: there are people
    who are strongly opposed to these programs and equally strongly opposed
    to other well-meaning "solutions", solutions to what those people
    may not consider to be a problem at all.  Understand that these
    people are not all red-neck Klu Klux Klannners whose pretensions at
    moral argument may be dismissed out of hand.
    
    I stopped writing or reading SOAPBOX because I quicky got tired
    of argument which provided only heat and not light.  I don't want
    to start an argument on libertarianism or politics or ethics here,
    merely to point out why some people might be opposed and still not
    be evil.

    					-John Bishop

                 <another Libertarian voice>
    
    
    Quite bold of you, John, to publicly take such an unpopular
    stand!!  I admire you for stating your principles at the
    risk of great criticism!
    
                              Deb
    
     

I'm _real_ hesitant to speak up on this one, but what the heck -- it won't
be the first time I've jumped with both feet in and both eyes closed!

I've gotta agree with JimB on this one; discrimination, no matter _what_ the
reason, is wrong.  You just can't say, "This kind of discrimination is wrong,
but that type is ok".  Either it's ALL wrong, or none of it is.  Any kind of
middle ground, such as the "reverse discrimination", will simply foster the
very philosophical mind-set you're trying to get rid of!

I think one thing people _may_ be missing in their need to get things turned
around NOW is that the human race is by nature evolutionary.  That is, it's
possible to change an individual's mind about things fairly quickly, but
people as a whole take much longer.  Further, even when their mind has been
changed it will take a bit longer for them to start implementing what they
know is right.  It's aggravating, it's slow, it takes patience and time but
it's the way we are!

I just don't see an easy, quick way out.  I think it's going to take a lot
of hard work and time, probably for generations to come.


Brian

>< Note 439.41 by PARSEC::THOMPSON "Steven Dana DTN 247-2191" >
>                     -< Discrimination CAN BE Positive ! >-

    I'm a Read-Mostly noter who can't constrain himself anymore.  This topic
    really p*sses me off so here is my input.  

    I don't really know what Mr. Eagle is trying to say with his 'positive'
    definition of discrimination so I'll make no comment on that.  However,
    since we're into posting parts of the dictionary, I've chosen a few
    definitions for discrimination that sum up my feelings on the topic.
    
    Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary
    -------------------------------------------
        
    	to make a difference in treatment or favor on a basis other than
        individual merit
    
    The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
    --------------------------------------------------------
        
    	to act on the basis of prejudice
    
    And just for the record, here's prejudice from the American Heritage:
    
    	an adverse judgement or opinion formed beforehand or without
        knowledge or examination of the facts

    Going back to Read-Mostly mode:
    
    Mark Sawyer

>    	However the point is that to discriminate is to choose
>    among alternatives and in a work context one has to "hire"
>    based on what can be observed first-hand and what can be
>    guessed at from a very few facts at hand.  With a cap on
>    head-count and budgets for everything we must choose and
>    then we must "live with" the results for typically > 2 years!


	No.  That's the word, "discriminating", which means to be "fastidiously
selective".  There's no doubt in my mind that that is a good thing to be, but
I believe it's a far cry from what the discussion is about.


	I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, that we're talking about the
word "discriminate", which means "to act on the basis of prejudice".  That
is the key point, "prejudice".  I think it's commonly acknowledged that
prejudice is an irrational like/dislike of something; that is, you like or
dislike something without a reason which could be considered "good" in the
context provided.  For example, to say you don't wish to hire a woman because
she's not as strong as a man is ludicrous if you're looking for a software
engineer.  Her strength won't have any bearing on how well she performs her
job.  On the other hand, if you're looking for a bouncer, then you probably
wouldn't want to hire the average female ( or the average male, for that
matter! ), as strength is the main quality you're looking for.


	It's this "irrational" prejudice that I'm against.


Brian

    
    
    Excuse me.  Since I entered the original note...would anyone
    like to know what moved me to answer this question in the first
    place (I'm afraid my answer might cause WWIII but I'm willing to
    risk it)...not that I'm not enjoying reading these replies.
    
                        Deborah
    

    RE: .46
    
    Deborah, yes, *I* would like to know.
    
      Alan

    
    
    Well....recent discussions in other conferences have alluded
    to discrimination, specifically against women.  And I started
    thinking about ways that I have been discriminated against,
    specifically because I am a female.  And frankly, I could not
    think of many examples....the few times that someone spoke or
    acted towards me in a ...condescending perhaps....manner, I
    simply addressed the issue in an assertive manner.  
    
    So...I started wondering if perhaps I was incredibly naive,
    or incredibly lucky.  
    
    I'm not sure the replies have given me the answer I was seeking.
    
    
                       Deb
    
    

    Deb, I don't think that you are either naive or lucky! I think
    that you are *average*. My gut feel is that the average (member
    of any group), doesn't really experience wide-spread discrimination
    based on their membership in that group, today. SOME members of
    those groups DO experience that discrimination constantly. But,
    I think there are other reasons besides their membership in that
    group. Of course, there are those folks that 'can't possibly
    conceive' of any reason for something happening to them, OTHER
    than discrimination against the group that they belong to.
    
    Bob Mc

    I think your examples sum up the meaning of the quote "Don't
    attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity" very
    well. Some folks are still sure that lions, tigers and dragons
    are hiding under the bed. 8-)
    
    Bob Mc
    (Most managers can't understand the code because they've been
     away from for too long 8-).)

    Maybe stupidity, but maybe malice:  why should her supervisor's boss
    have had to understand her work?  It's her supervisor's job to evaluate
    that, and absent a valid countervail (e.g., distrust of her supe's
    judgement; knowledge that her work is poor) he [and I use that pronoun
    advisedly] should have kept out of it.
    
    						=maggie

    I've seen every man get a higher raise than any woman in a DEC group
    too.  I've processed their raises.
    
    I'm of the same mind as some others who say discrimination s*cks
    no matter what.  Giving someone a job BECAUSE they are a minority
    is the same thing as NOT giving them a job because of it.  It still
    focuses on gender or race as a factor.
    
    I can understand that EEO wants to tip the scales in the underdog's 
    favor for a little while to make up for lost time and hopefully
    balance things out and that's commendable.  But reverse discrimination 
    only furthers the idea of assessing a candidate based on race or
    gender.   And worse, it serves to aggravate white males who, by
    the way, still hold the purse strings.  We, the "underdogs" cannot 
    afford to alienate white men in our quest for equality.  Sure it's
    a fine line trying to get what we want/need/deserve without them
    feeling their perceived superiority threatened but we've walked it 
    before.  
    
    EEO quotas may soon contribute to our downfall.  Many males are
    already stewing about it.  If they choose to muster their considerable 
    forces against us we will lose everything.  If EEO quotas make anyone
    angry, particularly those who have the money and the jobs we want,
    that's another good reason to try a different approach.
    
    What I perceive as a good solution would take too much time and
    money.  But what's "too much"?  Too much to whom?  Who's money is it?  
    
    "Too much" is decided by those holding the money, (and we know who
    9 times out of 10 that is), when they feel that the benefit doesn't 
    at least match the expenditure.  But who gets to define "benefit"?
    The one holding the money again.  Is the idea of equal opportunity
    perceived as a benefit to the white male?  I don't think so.  Sounds 
    like then even $5 might be considered "too much".  Why would white 
    males want to spend their money on fortifying their competition for 
    the good jobs?  But they get to decide the expenditure and they
    get to evaluate the "benefits" realized because it's their money.
    
    I'd like to see EEO representatives involved in every single hiring
    situation for the next couple of years at least.  I'd like to let them 
    see every resume the hiring mgr receives and meet with every candidate
    the manager interviews.  I'd like every hiring mgr to have freedom
    in their hiring process but with justification when EEO calls for
    it.   I think this would make the need for "quotas" obsolete and
    discrimination difficult to engage in.  If a white male is the most
    qualified, so be it.  But if a minority is most qualified, he/she
    has a better chance at getting the job than otherwise.  In either
    case, the best qualified candidate will most likely get the job
    and isn't that our goal?  Shouldn't it be??
    
    The quality of the workforce can only improve when hiring managers
    have TWO barrels from which to skim the cream instead of always
    digging deeper into the white male barrel.  Equal opportunity is simply
    in DEC's best interest.  Discrimination has to have an awfully strong
    foothold in American culture for companies to willingly limit their 
    resource pool to individuals of a certain genetic strain and
    consciously assemble a workforce of lower quality than is possible.
    
    That's just one woman's opinion.

    re .53 and many others like it..
    
    Right on!  Our company and our products and our work environments
    are diminished by hiring or promoting anyone less qualified than
    the best available.  
    
    I suppose that people whose skills or motivation is mediocre
    have some reasons to be insecure when faced with quality in
    their fellow workers.  Prejudice simply serves as a cheap
    excuse to reduce the number of competitors.  Those who engage
    in such discrimination probably don't understand the real
    meaning of cooperation.
    
    As a white male in an advanced engineering environment,
    I welcome the presence of every person who is well-qualified
    or is sufficiently smart and hard-working to get there.
    It's fine by me if this results in working with lots of people
    who are better than I am at some things.  In that case, I'll
    be working with the best team in the world and benefitting 
    from it almost as much as the company.  
                           
    John in engineering paradise
    

    The only problem with always hiring "the best" is the creativity
    with which "the best" can be defined.  I know very well that I'm
    not the only one to have seen requirements changed on the fly to
    suit or exclude some candidate.  And it always sounds so rational
    on the surface.
    
    						=maggie

    re -1:
    
    Hi Maggie - the presence of EEO reps during the hiring process
    would help to eliminate "requirements changed on the fly to suit
    or exclude some candidate".  
    
    Yes, "the best" is subject to interpretation and that's the whole 
    problem.  A mediocre white male is often perceived as better than 
    a more qualified minority.  If managers can't get their prejudices 
    out of the way, (and the current situation in this country with white 
    males clustered at the top and females and minorities clustered at the 
    bottom proves they can't), then we need to do something about it.  
    
    I advocate giving them a little "help" in the hiring process rather
    than giving them a rule, (an EEO quota), and then leaving them alone
    to deal with it.  There's a lot of room for creativity around the EEO 
    quota, too.  If the motivation isn't there, (and it isn't), then
    leaving hiring managers to their own devices isn't a good idea,
    no matter how many rules we give them.

RE: .50

"The average person could see negative comments being directed against that
person as an individual, even when they are really directed against that person
as the member of a group."

Good Point.

RE: .53

Why do I get the feeling that dispite your words you *are* trying to aggravate
women with men?

I tend to agree as Jim B. suggests; women are paid less in part because they are
still less qualified.  The discrimination happens before the job interviews.

"If they choose to muster their considerable forces against us we will lose
everything."

Why?  Do you (general) have an inferiority complex?

Women as good as men should be able to hold their own.

""Too much" is decided by those holding the money, (and we know who 9 times out
of 10 that is),"

No, "we" don't know.  Who are you refering to?

"Is the idea of equal opportunity perceived as a benefit to the white male?  I
don't think so.  Sounds like then even $5 might be considered "too much".  Why
would white males want to spend their money on fortifying their competition for
the good jobs?"

I percieve it as a benefit.  It sounds like *you* would consider $5 to be too
much.

Men would do it for the same reason the US helped Germany and Japan rebuild
after WWII.

"Equal opportunity is simply in DEC's best interest."

Why do you pretend that men don't know this? (see above)

Jim.

    Although I have not experienced discrimination myself (except possibly
    by benefiting from someone else doing it) I have had see a lot of
    it as I was growing up.
    
    From eight grade on I lived in the city of Pontiac Michigan and went
    to the Pontiac public schools.  The ratio in my high school was about
    60% black and 40% white.  I got to see first hand how blacks were
    treated differently.
    
    I believe in the positive influence of EEO and AAP programs.  I
    also agree with the negative aspects of these programs.  I think
    that many of the positive aspects of these programs are missed
    when they are examined by people who have no experience or understanding
    of being on the bottom and have no awareness of the advantages they
    got that helped them to the top.
    
    I was born the son of a man with a BS in mechanical engineering
    and an MS in business administration.  My mother has a BS in math.
    Their experience and knowledge surely helped me when I chose to get
    a BS in electrical engineering.  Even as a small child I had the
    advantage that any technical question that I asked of my father
    would get a correct and complete answer.
    
    My classmates in Pontiac had no such advantage.  There is almost
    no chance that a black child, every bit as intelligent as I, could
    compete with my advantage of my parents education.
    
    Without EEO and AAP the only minorities that could compete with
    me on a purely qualification basis must be more intelligent and
    gifted than I.  Really bright people are rare.  The goal of EEO
    and AAP is to try to hire some mediocre minority people instead
    of just mediocre white males.
    
    The true benefit of AAP might not show up until the next generation.
    By that time the child of a minority engineer might have a much
    better chance of competing with the child of a white male engineer.
    The children don't just need education, they also need role models.
    
    Re .53,.57
    >> ""Too much" is decided by those holding the money, (and we know who 9 
    >> times out of 10 that is),"

    > No, "we" don't know.  Who are you referring to?
    
    Sandy,
    	"those holding the money" seems to imply a view of the world
    were there are a group of men at the top who have an unlimited amount
    of money and they proceed to pass it out to the rest of us as some
    form of charity.  The reality is that a business is more like a
    standard heat engine.  It takes in heat (customers money).  A portion
    of that heat is necessarily lost (cost of product, salaries, taxs)
    to some source of cold and the output is work (profit).  The business
    exploits both the source of heat and the source of cold to create
    profit.  You can think of AAP as a kind of tax, the company pays
    the same money to help develop a less qualified person, instead of
    getting a fully qualified person.  A heat engine with a poor source
    of cold will stop running as will a business that pays too much
    in taxes.

    Jim,
    > No, "we" don't know.  Who are you referring to?
    
    I'm getting tired of reading this kind of reply.  If you don't agree
    with Sandy would you please at least try to make the opposite case?
    
    Re: resistance to AAP, equal housing, school integration etc...
    
    When people resist these types of programs it is usually assumed
    that it is because they are bigoted.
    
    We must recognize that when you change a system, the people who
    will be most hurt by that change are the people who live through
    the change.  They are no more guilty than the people who lived
    100 years before, but it is only they who will pay the price.  Keep
    in mind that they are paying much more than their share.  A couple
    of examples:
    
    In Yonkers NY there is a court order in place to integrate both the
    schools and the neighborhoods.  Low income housing must be located within
    current middle class neighborhoods. The people who own the houses next to
    the new low income housing will be the only ones to lose property
    value in all of the history of the neighborhood, past and future.  Why
    must only they pay so out of proportion with their guilt?
    
    In San Francisco, the fire department imposes quotas to hire female
    fire fighters.  The son of a current firefighter has spent his whole
    life preparing to be a firefighter and only a firefighter.  He and
    his father had no reason to believe the rules would be changed.
    When he is passed over in favor of a woman, he must start over from
    scratch and plan a new career.  If he had been born 100 years later
    he may have planned alternatives or prepared himself to compete
    under the (now old) new rules.  Why did he alone deserve to loose
    so much?
    
    We must realize that change itself will create victims.  Victims
    that do not deserve to suffer, as individuals, for all the sins
    of their forefathers.

    					MJC O->

RE: .58

"and we know who 9 >> times out of 10 that is"

I do not believe that men have ten times the money that women have.  Or even
that the median man has ten times the money that the median women has. 

Jim. 

    Jim,
    
    You do not seem to understand how money works.  Let us pretend that
    the average is the only truth, and that therefore for each dollar
    every woman earns, each man earns a dollar and forty-five cents.
    If it costs a dollar to live, a woman spends all her money just
    to live, while a man has an extra forty-five cents to invest.
    
    Now, the Average is not the Only, but the above should serve to
    demonstrate that income and investment money are not identical,
    and that those with more money have more investment influence,
    perhaps disproportionately so.  (In the above example, women got
    69% of the money the men got, but 0% of the investment influence,
    so things can get rather strange.)
    
    Of *privately* held investments, over 50% are held by men, and of
    the *corporately* held investments, the vast majority are controlled
    and voted by men.  (There is an entertaining discussion of voting
    and controlling stock in _Citizen_of_the_Galaxy_ by Robert A.
    Heinlein.  I actually started to understand it on my second re-reading.
    I recommend the work in general.)  So, try to understand that ~nine
    out of ten times~ is not what you thought it was, but a claim that
    the policy of ninety percent of the companies in this country is
    set by male humans who control them.
    
    							Ann B.
    

RE: .60

Ann, I see your point.

However, I don't agree that a person who 'spends all their money just to live'
necessarily loses the power that that money provides.  Consumer boycotts *can*
be very effective.  'You' may choose to give up that power, and most people may
not realize that they do not have to give up that power, but there is still
power with that money.

Also, I have a question about how you are counting ecomonic power.  Say a
widow has pension plan from her husband.  She invests the pension plan with
a 'male' investment company.  How do you count the power here?  Who has the
power of the money?  Even if you hold that the males have the power, it is
only because the woman gives it up.  It is her choice.

How can you blame men for the choices women make?  Even if the woman is not able
to find a female investment company, she could invest it herself, but chooses
not to. 

The only way I can see that you can come up with 90% male control is if you
point to the one male in every link in the chain of investment, and arbitrarily
say he controls it. 

Jim.

    In 1981, the majority of privately held stocks that trade on the
    NYSE were held by women.
    
    Why?  Most of them are older women - widows of men who got wealthy and
    powerful, and died young (type A behaviour).  Their widows still have
    control over much of the wealth. 
    
    Elizabeth

    Elizabeth,
    
    Ah. My information comes only from the early 1970's.  Someone
    (reported by Susan Brownmiller, I *think*) actually checked into
    the long-held belief that women -- for the reasons you gave --
    owned more of the privately held stocks than men.  It was found
    that the belief (then) was fallacious; men-as-individuals held a
    bare majority.
    
    Do you remember your source?  (I've seen too many urban folk tales
    trotted out in new clothes to accept the source of your source
    without some attempt at verification.)
    
    							Ann B.

    Ann,
    
    I heard that during an investing class that I took in about 1981.
    
    Elizabeth