There’s two different ways to read the previous poster’s point:
That any kind of quotas system (no mater whose “born with certain genetic traits” group it favours) is generally bad and causes more problem than it solves. From what I’ve observed in my one and only time working in a place with such quotas, that’s what I saw, with both very incompetent people from the favored group who clearly only got the job due to quotas and at the same time with competent members of that group having trouble being taken seriously because they were assumed to be incompetent and having only got the position due to having the genetics that made them be a member of said favored group (they were de facto seen as second class), so in general I would agree that priviledging in hiring anybody due to the genetics they were born with is wrong (not to be confused with systems that try and make sure nobody is discriminated against due to the genetics they were born with, systems I totally agree with: basically I disagree with people being given different treatment when it comes to selection for a professinal occupation due their genetics).
That women and non-straight men are a problem in that profession. If that’s the take, I not only totally disagree with it but find it apalling and unnacceptable. Again, experience tells me that in IT women and non-straight men are neither less nor more competent than straight men: from what I’ve observed gender and sexual orientation are, as expected, entirelly irrelevant when it comes to professional competent in that domain. One needs to have no clue whatsoever about that domain and be an abnormal simpleton to think gender or sexual orientation is what makes somebody a good or bad professional in any of the various areas of the Industry.
The problem both of your opinions have is they ignore the baseline improved treatment straight white dudes like myself get. We get better treatment and preferential hiring just by existing. I’m not afraid to talk to anyone in the tiny sithole towns I go to for work. I’ve have so many people walk past my boss and talk to me because he wears a turban, or my other boss getting talked over because she is a women. These examples aren’t directly related to hiring, but you are blind if you don’t see the obvious advantages we have.
I suggest you read the system described by the poster from feddit.nl just below, which just removes the kind of professionally irrelevant information (including gender, race and so on) from being in the candidate selection process.
Such systems are meant to removed descrimination (even subconscious one) rather than discriminating in the opposite direction. “Discriminating but the other way around” just preserves a mindset that people should be seen and treated differently depending on gender or sexual orientation and, as I’ve observed first hand, that kind of system yields environments which are even more sexist.
Having lived in both Britain (which apes a lot of things from the US) and The Netherlands, I can tell you that the latter country is way much more naturally equalitarian (gender-wise and even more so when it comes to sexual orientation) than the former.
(Not perfect, mind you, but way better than average)
The knee-jerk “this must be sexism” reaction to criticism of the “let’s keep treating people differently depending on the genetics they were born with” of the “anti”-descrimination systems in the Anglo-Saxon countries, in my view partly explains why in the decade and a half since I’ve left The Netherlands I’ve seen no improvement towards the much more natural gender and sexual-orientation equality of The Netherlands in either Britain or the US, quite the contrary.
I’m sorry but compared with what I’ve seen working in other countries the system you defend is deeply flawed and preserves the very same ideological architecture of judging people on their gender, sexual-orientation or race rather than actual personal knowledge and track record, as the one that underpins Fascists ideologies. (Which is maybe why the Neoliberals just love it)
They actually don’t do a terrible job either, but it’s not a blanket removal of bias.
More pertinent is that they only apply to the initial hiring phase, a lot of jobs have built in probation periods.
In addition, those systems do nothing at all to prevent workplace discrimination once the candidate has started.
As for the rest of your statement, that’s missing quite a few important points.
Your phrasing of “let’s keep treating people differently depending on the genetics they were born with” is itself incredibly misleading in it’s omissions.
Bigotry does exist yes, but most of these systems are supposed to be in place to counteract the inherent conscious and unconscious bias in the system, it’s closer to “Let’s try and lessen some of the harmful treatment people are already facing due to perceived differences”.
The difference between countries your seeing isn’t solely due to the perceived ineffectuality of the systems you are talking about, there is a huge difference in culture, economics, population and history that has a significant impact on how much these systems can help.
Let’s take a completely inoffensive analogy and say that both Britain and the Netherlands are dumpster(skip) fires.
The Netherlands is a very small 30L skip full of paper that is also on fire.
Britain is three of those large skips you get delivered on a truck(lorry) , all piled up on top of each other, filled with wood, doused in accelerant and set alight.
The anti-discrimination system is 3 full buckets of water.
Three buckets on the Netherlands will probably solve the problem.
Three buckets on Britain will do nothing but engender some metaphysical disdain from the fire.
I’m not defending the systems here, i’m saying you are presenting a situation in a way that doesn’t align with reality and then complaining that the results don’t match what you expect.
I’m afraid that fighting oppression and restoring the past oppressed to a level playing field involves finding if actual individuals did indeed suffer from oppression and compensating them for it in some way, a far more difficult task than taking the Fascist’s shortcut of presuming that everybody from a specific race, gender or sexual orientation are equally worthy or unworthy.
What my experience in The Netherlands taught me is that preserving the idea that you can presume things about people (including that they’re “victims” or “discriminated against”) - a.k.a. Prejudice - is a dead-end strategy for fighting discrimination because:
It’s anchored on the very same architecture of presuming things about people based on race, gender or sexual orientation - in other words, Prejudice - as Fascist ideologies are.
Because it is literally Mathematically impossible for such a process to be improved to a point where there is full fairness of treatment for all: that process uses a person’s race/gender/sexual-orientation as an indirect metric to determine something else altogether - if a person has actually suffered due to discrimination - so it has an error rate in the form of people who do belong to a supposedly discriminated against race, gender or sexual orientation but never suffered from discrimination. When such people are helped without deserving it, an injustice is committed, and the more the error rate, the more injustice is being done by helping people who do not deserve that help. The Mathematical impossibility happens because the more that process succeeds at its stated objective of reducing discrimination, the more people of a supposedly discriminated against race, gender or sexual orientation never suffered from discrimination (or in other words, the more the error rate of assuming that race, gender or sexual orientation implies being a victim of discrimination) hence the more injustice that process is committing - the closer the process gets to success the more injustice it is committing, only it’s against people from different races, genders or sexual-orientations.
You can’t Prejudice your way into stopping Prejudiced treatment, not Ideologically and not even Mathematically.
I’m afraid that fighting oppression and restoring the past oppressed to a level playing field involves finding if actual individuals did indeed suffer from oppression and compensating them for it in some way, a far more difficult task than taking the Fascist’s shortcut of presuming that everybody from a specific race, gender or sexual orientation are equally worthy or unworthy.
Wait…so you’re belief system around this is that the only way to address past injustices to a group or demographics is to find out which specific individuals were impacted and help only them ?
That’s delusional, not in an ad hominem kind of way but in a literal “no basis in reality” way.
You don’t seem to understand what fascism means so all the arguments based on a faulty interpretation are going to be faulty.
Real question though
Because it is literally Mathematically impossible for such a process to be improved to a point where there is full fairness of treatment for all
I’d be genuinely interested to see how you got here , because the anecdotal pseudo-explanation isn’t an actual explanation.
There’s so many faulty assumptions in there it’s difficult to take any conclusion you get to seriously.
You’re assuming that prejudice only applies to one side of this argument, If you start off with two groups:
Group A : 20
Group B : 10
Then Taking 5 from A and moving it to B isn’t prejudice against A.
That’s not even a very accurate example because it assumes a closed system with only 2 distinct groups.
It seems your argument is that group B might not all be as affected, ok, so let’s do that one:
Group A1 : 9
Group A2 : 11
Total : 20
Group B1 : 3
Group B2 : 7
Total : 10
Say we do the same thing here and move 5 from Group A to Group B
Group A1 : 8
Group A2 : 7
Total : 15
Group B1 : 6
Group B2 : 9
Total : 15
Do that for any number of sub-groups, down to an individual person.
It seems your understanding of mathematics is about as grounded as your idea of fascism so i don’t think you’re going to see how what you’re saying doesn’t work.
You can’t Prejudice your way into stopping Prejudiced treatment, not Ideologically and not even Mathematically.
You certainly can’t stop prejudice if you don’t understand what it means and when/where it applies.
It’s difficult to see whether or not a mathematical solution can be found if you don’t understand the practical applications of it.
If you can’t even follow the Mathematics of error margins when using one easy to measure characteristic as a stand-in for another harder to measure characteristic which is positively correlated with the former but not by a factor of 1 and whose correlation factor actually changes by the very action you’re justifying, and, even more more sadly, have to resort to calling it “pseudo-explanation”, there is no point in engaging with you using logic because that’s not the level you’re operating at.
Enjoy your quasi-religious relation to your ideological beliefs.
Some people genuinely have huge assumptions about the intellectual capability of women and/or their suitability for certain occupations: for example, the “women are very emotional” used as excuse for not giving them certain responsibilities such as management positions, is far too common, especially in countries were the main brand of sexism is the so-called “Benevolent Sexism” (called that not because it’s actually good but because it’s disguised as being for the protection of women) such as Britain.
Similarly there are prejudices about people with sexual orientations other than heterosexuality in the workplace, usually of the “they’ll make other people uncomfortable” kind.
Sadly, still today, far too many people genuinely think along such lines and some aren’t even aware that they’re doing it because their whole lives they’ve lived around people who do it so for them “it’s how everybody thinks” and the “normal” way of thinking.
There’s two different ways to read the previous poster’s point:
The problem both of your opinions have is they ignore the baseline improved treatment straight white dudes like myself get. We get better treatment and preferential hiring just by existing. I’m not afraid to talk to anyone in the tiny sithole towns I go to for work. I’ve have so many people walk past my boss and talk to me because he wears a turban, or my other boss getting talked over because she is a women. These examples aren’t directly related to hiring, but you are blind if you don’t see the obvious advantages we have.
I suggest you read the system described by the poster from feddit.nl just below, which just removes the kind of professionally irrelevant information (including gender, race and so on) from being in the candidate selection process.
Such systems are meant to removed descrimination (even subconscious one) rather than discriminating in the opposite direction. “Discriminating but the other way around” just preserves a mindset that people should be seen and treated differently depending on gender or sexual orientation and, as I’ve observed first hand, that kind of system yields environments which are even more sexist.
Having lived in both Britain (which apes a lot of things from the US) and The Netherlands, I can tell you that the latter country is way much more naturally equalitarian (gender-wise and even more so when it comes to sexual orientation) than the former.
(Not perfect, mind you, but way better than average)
The knee-jerk “this must be sexism” reaction to criticism of the “let’s keep treating people differently depending on the genetics they were born with” of the “anti”-descrimination systems in the Anglo-Saxon countries, in my view partly explains why in the decade and a half since I’ve left The Netherlands I’ve seen no improvement towards the much more natural gender and sexual-orientation equality of The Netherlands in either Britain or the US, quite the contrary.
I’m sorry but compared with what I’ve seen working in other countries the system you defend is deeply flawed and preserves the very same ideological architecture of judging people on their gender, sexual-orientation or race rather than actual personal knowledge and track record, as the one that underpins Fascists ideologies. (Which is maybe why the Neoliberals just love it)
emphasis mine.
They actually don’t do a terrible job either, but it’s not a blanket removal of bias.
More pertinent is that they only apply to the initial hiring phase, a lot of jobs have built in probation periods.
In addition, those systems do nothing at all to prevent workplace discrimination once the candidate has started.
As for the rest of your statement, that’s missing quite a few important points.
Your phrasing of “let’s keep treating people differently depending on the genetics they were born with” is itself incredibly misleading in it’s omissions.
Bigotry does exist yes, but most of these systems are supposed to be in place to counteract the inherent conscious and unconscious bias in the system, it’s closer to “Let’s try and lessen some of the harmful treatment people are already facing due to perceived differences”.
The difference between countries your seeing isn’t solely due to the perceived ineffectuality of the systems you are talking about, there is a huge difference in culture, economics, population and history that has a significant impact on how much these systems can help.
Let’s take a completely inoffensive analogy and say that both Britain and the Netherlands are dumpster(skip) fires.
The Netherlands is a very small 30L skip full of paper that is also on fire.
Britain is three of those large skips you get delivered on a truck(lorry) , all piled up on top of each other, filled with wood, doused in accelerant and set alight.
The anti-discrimination system is 3 full buckets of water.
Three buckets on the Netherlands will probably solve the problem.
Three buckets on Britain will do nothing but engender some metaphysical disdain from the fire.
I’m not defending the systems here, i’m saying you are presenting a situation in a way that doesn’t align with reality and then complaining that the results don’t match what you expect.
I’m afraid that fighting oppression and restoring the past oppressed to a level playing field involves finding if actual individuals did indeed suffer from oppression and compensating them for it in some way, a far more difficult task than taking the Fascist’s shortcut of presuming that everybody from a specific race, gender or sexual orientation are equally worthy or unworthy.
What my experience in The Netherlands taught me is that preserving the idea that you can presume things about people (including that they’re “victims” or “discriminated against”) - a.k.a. Prejudice - is a dead-end strategy for fighting discrimination because:
You can’t Prejudice your way into stopping Prejudiced treatment, not Ideologically and not even Mathematically.
Wait…so you’re belief system around this is that the only way to address past injustices to a group or demographics is to find out which specific individuals were impacted and help only them ?
That’s delusional, not in an ad hominem kind of way but in a literal “no basis in reality” way.
You don’t seem to understand what fascism means so all the arguments based on a faulty interpretation are going to be faulty.
Real question though
I’d be genuinely interested to see how you got here , because the anecdotal pseudo-explanation isn’t an actual explanation.
There’s so many faulty assumptions in there it’s difficult to take any conclusion you get to seriously.
You’re assuming that prejudice only applies to one side of this argument, If you start off with two groups:
Group A : 20
Group B : 10
Then Taking 5 from A and moving it to B isn’t prejudice against A.
That’s not even a very accurate example because it assumes a closed system with only 2 distinct groups.
It seems your argument is that group B might not all be as affected, ok, so let’s do that one:
Say we do the same thing here and move 5 from Group A to Group B
Do that for any number of sub-groups, down to an individual person.
It seems your understanding of mathematics is about as grounded as your idea of fascism so i don’t think you’re going to see how what you’re saying doesn’t work.
You certainly can’t stop prejudice if you don’t understand what it means and when/where it applies.
It’s difficult to see whether or not a mathematical solution can be found if you don’t understand the practical applications of it.
If you can’t even follow the Mathematics of error margins when using one easy to measure characteristic as a stand-in for another harder to measure characteristic which is positively correlated with the former but not by a factor of 1 and whose correlation factor actually changes by the very action you’re justifying, and, even more more sadly, have to resort to calling it “pseudo-explanation”, there is no point in engaging with you using logic because that’s not the level you’re operating at.
Enjoy your quasi-religious relation to your ideological beliefs.
I provided you with a very basic example in which your “mathematical impossibility” breaks down.
So far you’ve stated that there were only two possible interpretations of a statement and then followed up with “mathematical impossibility”.
You are correct though, you can’t reason with someone who didn’t use reason to get to their conclusions.
Saves me some time, good luck.
idk how someone can read it the second way
Some people genuinely have huge assumptions about the intellectual capability of women and/or their suitability for certain occupations: for example, the “women are very emotional” used as excuse for not giving them certain responsibilities such as management positions, is far too common, especially in countries were the main brand of sexism is the so-called “Benevolent Sexism” (called that not because it’s actually good but because it’s disguised as being for the protection of women) such as Britain.
Similarly there are prejudices about people with sexual orientations other than heterosexuality in the workplace, usually of the “they’ll make other people uncomfortable” kind.
Sadly, still today, far too many people genuinely think along such lines and some aren’t even aware that they’re doing it because their whole lives they’ve lived around people who do it so for them “it’s how everybody thinks” and the “normal” way of thinking.