I agree. Freedom of action for both prospective employers and workers will allow competition to arrive at the closest approximation of "fairness." A prospective employer who rejects a good applicant for reasons that have nothing to do with anticipated productivity puts himself at a disadvantage.
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Apple CEO Tim Cook Writes Op-Ed in Support of U.S. Employment Nondiscrimination Act
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I agree. Freedom of action for both prospective employers and workers will allow competition to arrive at the closest approximation of "fairness." A prospective employer who rejects a good applicant for reasons that have nothing to do with anticipated productivity puts himself at a disadvantage.
Yes, please don't. Your whole post was a straw-man argument wrapped in entitlement. The whole thing sounded like "Well, I don't go through these thing so making me think of how others are being mistreated really brings me down and I don't like that. Since people ar putting an effort to help others out, why don't I, too, get singled out help."
Easy, you are not in the same boat. At all.
"The Founders" was not an entity but a collection of people who all had various views of the world. The question of slavery was intensely debated in the Constitutional Convention and many (probably a sizable majority) were opposed to it. They compromised to get the job done and thought it would go away before long, anyway. On that, they guessed wrong.
Even if the second person speaks fluent Tamil and can do everything better than the first person, he has no shot at the jobs. If some of the customers are blatantly racists (as they will be for any ethnic group), why should the business owner have to alienate them?
What if the gay man can do the job 100% but 20% of your customers are homophobic and will stop doing business with you if you hire him? That's not a problem for Apple but if you're running a small business you just can't afford to take the moral high ground.
An issue that came up in Toronto not too long ago was a Muslim owned barber shop that would only serve male customers. A female customer sued them for discrimination saying she just wanted a normal male haircut, but the business owner said it's against their religion for a man to touch a woman who's not a relative. So should the government force them close their business or give up their religion? Maybe they should hire a female hairdresser even if it means 90% of their customers will stop coming in?
As nice as it would be to live in an ideal world, you can not legislate it into existence.
Sure it is, if 15% of the available qualified labor pool is black.
Therefore hiring anything less than 15% blacks qualifies as "having fewer minorities or women in a particular job group than would reasonably be expected by their availability," and the DOL's regs require the contractor "establish goals to reduce or overcome the under-utilization."
Certainly not when the quality is as low as it has been for quite some time. Those who depend on it to solve their perceived social problems are entering a Devil's bargain and feeding a giant troll. IMHO, intelligent social action, both group and individual, would be more effective and enlightened.
The quality has been higher than anytime in the last 15 years. It's time to redefine the roll of the corporations in the American state. As it stands now corportations have entirely to much free reign, it's time for a leash.
Correct thinking, wrong conclusion ... imho. Capitalism rewards a business for reducing costs... for instance by finding a way to get cheap or free labour. So, capitalism rewarded slavery (free labour) until legislation ended that practice in most parts of the world. In the same way that capitalism supports discrimination because it allows a company to pay some workers less thereby reducing costs. The easy example is, of course, women who earn on average less then men for doing the same work.
It may not be so obvious, but the same mechanism works for LGBT workers. If you can be 'not hired' based on your beliefs then the natural response is to ask for less pay to make you competitive against those people who are not discriminated against. Your lower pay expectations, btw, by extension allows the company to pressure all workers to take less pay.
That is the way capitalism works, and any reading of history will confirm this. Don't get me wrong... I work and believe in a free-market. But I like my free-market managed and overseen by a government to ensure a level playing field.
In the British Empire being the key qualifier, as colonies were treated differently from the homeland.
The general point that I was countering was that slavery was "rampant" in those times, when a look at the information indicates that it was by-and-large out of favor—especially in the countries most responsible for populating the U.S. colonies.
The U.S. lagged behind on the issue of slavery ... much like we lag behind on the issues of healthcare and gun control today. And trying to excuse our practice of it with the incorrect assertion that everyone else was doing it and thought it was okay, is simply not backed by history.
These are exactly the kinds of arguments that came up during the debates over the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It was decided that we would make it work. And you know what? When I visit the South these days, nobody bats an eyelash at white and black people eating at the same restaurant.
You can legislate it into existence. It takes a lot of work, and, it may take 50 years, but, you can.
The DOL regs ask the contractor to put in a self-assessed, "good faith" effort.
That is far less than a quota.
Exactly.
I would add that there has been an increasing tolerance of and acceptance of unregulated or barely-regulated monopolies in the last 20 years. I think the playing field is getting kind of tilted in certain areas. There are enormous barriers to entry in many product areas. I would like to see the government do a lot more to level the playing field to allow new entrants into markets.
As a bisexual person, I'm so glad straight people in this thread are here to tell me what my experiences are like.
Give me a break.
Additionally, affirmative action, as defined by John F. Kennedy, is supposed to be temporary. That hasn't been mentioned in this thread. It's meant to make up for decades of an unlevel playing field. People tend to forget that only 50 years ago it was ok to put a sign on your storefront that said, "Whites only."
Give me a break.
Additionally, affirmative action, as defined by John F. Kennedy, is supposed to be temporary. That hasn't been mentioned in this thread. It's meant to make up for decades of an unlevel playing field. People tend to forget that only 50 years ago it was ok to put a sign on your storefront that said, "Whites only."
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I was just in NYC for my 40th. It was nice to be somewhere so diverse and gay friendly, but most still live in fear and ignorance. I'm male, no piercings, no tattoos, dress well, decent looking, and pass for straight. People treat me differently from others without those qualities. I notice.
Isn't that a sad society? We all need to be a little more gay and pass ENDA.
Isn't that a sad society? We all need to be a little more gay and pass ENDA.
The company offshores jobs, at the expense of America (of which it gets lots of taxpayer-funded entitlements and tax cuts from), so why would making gay people equal in protection any better when the jobs will still be offshored anyway?
And if we're a free market economy or free market society, get corporate lobbying and every corporate entitlement shut down AND all that money refunded to the US taxpayers. Then we can talk about free anarchy economics, which is what will be going on when free taxpayer-subsidized economic destruction finally ceases.
And if we're a free market economy or free market society, get corporate lobbying and every corporate entitlement shut down AND all that money refunded to the US taxpayers. Then we can talk about free anarchy economics, which is what will be going on when free taxpayer-subsidized economic destruction finally ceases.
I understand and agree with your sentiment, for the most part.
Unfortunately, it takes humans to hire "the best person for the job". And these humans bring to that task their bias, judgement, racism, etc. So the idea of hiring the best person for the job is sound. However, the practice is a different matter.
People tend to stay "in their groups". Segregation is still very much in place, even if it is self-imposed, and the criteria is different (no longer limited to race). We naturally do this, based on common/shared values, interests, etc. Take a stroll through your nearest high-school and you'll see what I mean. As such, assuming that all hiring authorities are bias-free is both utopian and unrealistic.
And that is why laws like affirmative action were enacted and still exist (unfortunately). Because we still, in 2013, cannot trust people to be impartial. Many "more-qualified" people that were black, oriental, and native were being ignored over "less-qualified" white applicants because the hiring authorities are white too. It cannot simply be assumed that, just because someone was hired through AA, they were less qualified than other "non-colored" applicants, either.
Is there a better way? Could the law use some modification to limit abuse on both sides? Sure, perhaps. I don't know. Hopefully someday we will not need government intervention in this matter. But as it stands today, I'd leave it until a better idea comes along.
Well they passed a law in '64. To give those who ain't got a little more. But it only goes so far. Because the law don't change another's mind. When all it sees at the hiring time, is the line on the color bar.
That's right, force more unqualified *****s in the workplace for fear of being sued, as if the country had been trashed enough. This is nothing more than another opportunity to see more hard working qualified workers being bypassed because they're not part of some loud mouth group of weirdoes.