Unitended racism

I'm sorry for the strong language that I'm about to use.The you-should-be-hired-and-promoted-based-on-your-qualifications argument is pure bullshit.First of all, there is no real accurate way to measure a person's qualifications. Each person has his own experiences. There is no such thing as "2 equally qualified people" as bullshitters so often bring up. Is there some kind of magical scale that I'm not aware of?The fact of the matter is you are a lot less likely to be hired if you have a minority-sounding name. It's sad, but this is why so many people of minority descent change their legal names. The fact of the matter is minorities continue to receive lesser wages doing the exact same stuff as their white counterparts. The fact of the matter is minorities continue to get promoted less than their white counterparts.Again, unless you have 2 identical resumes, there is simply no way to determine whether the two candidates have the same qualifications or not.But let us suppose employers actually hire people based on qualifications alone. Why the hell do studies continue to show that identical resumes with different ethnic names always yield the same result, that white sounding names are 50% more likely to get responses from employers even though those resumes were identical to the resumes with black sounding names and Asian names?Hyroglyphx, sorry for the strong language. The argument you used has been shown to be a bullshit argument for years now, and for some reason people continue to thise this argument against affirmative action.That said, I am against affirmative action, but for different reasons.

You've missunderstood my point. I was talking about the argument that candidates with similar backgrounds and almost equal qualifications should be hired based on their qualifications. This is a bullshit argument because (1) there is no real objective way to measure qualifications and (2) two bosses may have two different opinions on qualifications. And I haven't suggested that they aren't doing the best they can.The days of jim crow may be over, but racism hasn't gone away. I'm not talking about the in-your-face, hang-them-on-a-tree-and-light-them-on-fire obvious form of racism. I'm talking about the the more subtle form of racism where bosses subconsciously overlook a candidate's qualifications because the candidate has a foreign sounding name. And it may be the case that minorities are somehow less qualified than white men. Then of course the same argument was also used (in much less subtle ways) back in the 50's.The problem with today's form of racism is trying to pin it down is like trying to pin jello onto a wall.I was talking to my asian friends and they all told me the same thing about the subtle form of racism they encounter on a daily basis but they can't really say anything about it. For example, it is a stereotype that asian men are sexually incompetent. Hollywood does a wonderful job at reinforcing this stereotype by almost completely excluding asian male actors out of the sex symbol parts. They asked me if I could think of any movie made in the states with an asian hero who gets the girl at the end. I thought about it for days and I still couldn't come up with a movie where the asian hero actually gets the girl at the end. Sure, we have plenty of kungfu jackie chan type movies. But circus-like movies featuring asian male actors are about the best thing hollywood could come up with for asian men.Is that racism our society has toward asian men? Most definitely! Can we nail it in court? Absolutely not! It's too damn subtle to be nailed down.It goes much deeper than that, but I'll leave it for another post.Racism isn't always easy to pin down. We as a society has associated racism with evil enough that nobody wants to be branded a racist. Even KKK members don't want to admit they are racists. And if you ask employers and bosses if they are racists, you will most definitely get a big NO. And yet statistics and studies continue to show that people with white-male sounding names are more likely to get responses than everyone else even though the same resumes were sent to those employers but with other ethnic sounding names.I am not advocating for artificially making job distributions based solely on race... or even 1% based on race. You implicate that I advocate we hire a high school drop-out black person rather than hire a college graduate white person simply because we needed to meet the quota. Sure, you could say that you never said such a thing, and indeed you didn't. But the way you said it makes one wonder if that's what I was advocating.Then of course it also is a habit of politicians to cariaturizing their opponents. John Kerry got the worst of it, I think.What I am advocating for is we deal with the issue of subtle racism rather than deny that it exists at all.

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Sometimes, I have to wonder if this is true or not. I've been looking into more subtle forms of racism. It's not a pretty story!

What are you talking about? The only point I wanted to convey in that statement is unless you 2 identical resumes (went to the same school, got the same jobs, etc.) there is no such thing as 2 equally qualifying candidates.The statement I made was a criticism that affirmative action gives an unfair advantage to 2 equally qualifying candidates. The simple answer is no, I don't have a suggestion for a better system. The suggestion that I have, however, is we raise awareness of the new form of subtle racism that is (I would describe) rampant in our society today.As I said before, the problem with tackling today's racism is it's transformed from the bleeding obvious to the almost invisible. And I'm not even sure if the people who are performing these subtle racist acts are doing them consciously. Because it's so hard to pin down, minority groups can't really publically say anything about it.In my line of work, I often have to rely on the totality of the circumstance to make a decision. This is why I don't like to testify in court. It takes forever to explain to the judge or jury why I did what I did. Most people are naive enough to expect me to explain in a sentence or two. This is why I can relate to what minority groups are going through in today's society. Every single racist thing they've experienced has an alternate explanation. Only when you step back and look at the whole thing do you see that racism is still very much alive today, and acknowledging its existence in its new subtle form is the first step toward tackling it. Agreed.

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I guess I need to be a little clearer.The reason I brought this point up is because when two candidates are close to the same qualifications but not completely equal, there is no way in hell one can prove that the decision to hire the white candidate as oppose to the black candidate is not a result of qualifications. And if this happens a few times, then we can simply dismiess this as coincidence. But when we step back and look at the overall picture of circumstances when candidates with very similar qualifications resulting in white candidates getting responses, hired, or promoted 50% more than minority candidates, do we continue to see this as just pure coincidence or do we see a pattern of subtle racism?Do you want me to explain this further?

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You are certainly very persistent at misreading what I wrote.

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You almost made me cry out of sheer joy. Most people just want to deny outright that this is a form of racism or this even exists at all. I have to admit that I was one of most people before my asian friends talked to me in detail about this problem.The asexualization of asian actors has had at least one very dire consequence. As a direct result of this racist movement by the cinema, our collective consciousness has be altered to view asian men as undesirable. At this point, some numb nut usually comes in and points out that asian actresses are doing pretty well in hollywood. This numb nut, of course, is a racist bastard that is grasping a straws to deny his racism. Why? Because I'm talking about asian men, you dumbass!My asian friends also pointed out to me something that I noticed while in college but never really paid attention to until now. You don't actually see that many asian guys with girl friends (white or asian). You do, however, see a lot of asian females with white boy friends. It was one of those light bulb lighting up above the head kinda moment for me when this was pointed out to me. All of this has been explained to me. I have a friend who's a gay asian state trooper. He told me that he gets a lot of crap for being such. When I first heard about it, a lawsuit came to mind right away. I thought it had millions written all over it. But after he explained to me about the crap that he gets, I'd have to agree with him that there's nothing he could do in court. People aren't stupid enough to make their prejudice obvious enough to be brought to court. Besides, it's a homophobic institution.Good news is he's looking into other career choices.

Wow, of all the misreading in the world, I think you've topped it all.Ideally speaking, hiring based solely on qualifications is the way to do it. But we don't live in an ideal world. We live in a world where people have prejudices.In our world, hiring based solely on qualifications is bullshit because that's not going to happen with most people out there. Seriously, are you being sarcastic? I was talking in general terms, you (insert name calling here). Bringing in an exception won't change anything. Ideally speaking, yes. But again, if we step back and look at the big picture, minorities continue to have a problem with statistics (according to ratio that is).Someone else brought this up. Recently, orchestras are beginning to have more of a diverse player composition after they implimented auditions where the judges couldn't see who's playing. Before that, everyone denied being racists and everyone claimed to want social progress, but for some reason the orchestras were made almost entirely of white men. But after the new policy, suddenly they began to have women, blacks, and other minorities in their orchestras. Call it a coincidence if you want. I thought this was common knowledge. They only talked about it for the last few years on the news. But here is a link to an article for a starter.http://findarticles.com/...cles/mi_m3495/is_2_48/ai_97873146In regard to what could replace affirmative action, I don't have an answer for now.

*Yawns*Looks to me like you're not really taking this seriously. Tell me when you're ready and we'll talk some more.