7 ms·

> If there are legal issues with a quota (I'm legitimately not sure whether there are), then the law ought to be changed. That would be quite literally destroy

> If there are legal issues with a quota (I'm legitimately not sure whether there are), then the law ought to be changed. That would be quite literally destroying the anti-discrimination laws which safeguard the exact thing that you think you're arguing in favour of. Quotas implemented the way you describe are the antithesis of equal opportunity. That 'instinctual negative reaction' you come across is people seeing the complete logical reversal going on in your claim.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago
I don't think we need to have the same rules for well-represented and underrepresented groups. A reasonable person is fully capable of determining which is which. "Reverse racism" is not a real phenomenon in 99% of cases.
- BubRoss 7y ago
  You are making decisions based on arbitrary labels and demographics, not on the person. It is the definition of descrimination. Not only that, but it's blatantly hypocritical since you don't spend your money based on the demographics of a company, you spend it based on performance.
  - joshuamorton 7y ago
    It's discrimination, yes, but in what sense is a quota bigotry?
    - tomp 7y ago
      It can result in hiring of person B instead of more capable person A, just because person B satisfies some arbitrary immutable characteristics (skin color, sex, etc.) and person A does not. Texbook discrimination.
      - joshuamorton 7y ago
        GP has since edited their post, it originally used the word "bigotry" where it now says "discrimination". Edit: This leads to a much more interesting line of discussion that can be summed up as "discrimination (and similarly bias) isn't always bad". They're useful tools and we should be careful about practicing them, but the idea that because discrimination is sometimes bad it is always bad doesn't follow. (or an alternative way of looking at this is that discrimination often includes the qualifier "unjust". Bias in favor of some group in the pursuit of greater justice therefore isn't discrimination).
        missosoup 7y ago
        Discrimination is discrimination. Whether it's 'good' or 'bad' depends entirely on who you ask. I think most people making a case for 'good' discrimination don't realize that the existing 'bad' discrimination originated exactly the same way. We need to strive to eliminate discrimination, not perpetuate the swing of the pendulum that's been going back and forth for hundreds of years. Pushing down on some demographics to uplift others is not going to solve anything, it's just a no-op perpetuation of what's already going on.
        joshuamorton 7y ago
        That's not at all true. The historical discrimination did not originate from people saying "yes discriminate against me in the interests of general equality". In fact, to return to the start of this thread: historically much discrimination was the result of bigotry. It's very unlikely that hiring quotas (or similar) are the result of bigotry. Your conclusion also doesn't follow at all, at least not without some argumentative work that you haven't presented. Suffice to say that I believe that the best way to, in the long term, eliminate discrimination is to allow some specific forms now, with the intent of undoing past discrimination. You haven't presented even a shadow of an argument as to why that isn't reasonable.
        missosoup 7y ago
        You're conflating hiring discrimination with a broad and nebulous notion of inequality. Everyone agrees that equality is a good idea, but it doesn't map to your notion of how to address hiring discrimination, if such a thing exists. You're proposing deliberate and harmful inequality in the name of fixing some perceived other inequality. It doesn't work. The way to create equality is to manipulate on levers that individuals can control, e.g. taxation brackets, education incentives, government investment into particular industries. Passing up the best candidate for a job because they didn't have some inherent unchangeable attributes that you're arbitrarily favouring is the opposite of creating equality.
- missosoup 7y ago
  What is the definition of representation? Who is the arbiter of what groups are over and under represented? What does fair representation mean if not equal opportunity? This is a subject of entire books and hours long debates, but we can skip to the reductio ad absurdum with your line of reasoning: 99% of underwater welders are male. Trying to 'represent' females in that occupation and push the gender ratio to 50/50 would harm all parties involved and result in a measurable number of deaths. Protected attributes are not uniformly distributed in terms of fit for job, and trying to hit a uniform quota across those attributes is naively idealistic, at best. A less generous interpretation is that you are actually totally cool with discrimination as long as it's in the 'right direction', whatever that personally means for you. In which case you are exactly the force that you claim to be fighting against.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  "Reverse racism" is a term that was created to redefine "racism" so that people engaging in racism could say they're not engaging in it, because their kind of racism is not racism.
  - missosoup 7y ago
    It's worse. It's not just 'wrong kind of racism', it's 'if you were born with attributes XYZ you should never be called racist, even if without those attributes your actions would be labelled as racist'. The notion of reverse racism is something that requires religion-like amounts of self delusion and selective consumption of facts. The flaws of the notion are just too glaring for any rational individual to overlook even at first examination.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago

I don't think we need to have the same rules for well-represented and underrepresented groups. A reasonable person is fully capable of determining which is which. "Reverse racism" is not a real phenomenon in 99% of cases.

BubRoss 7y ago
You are making decisions based on arbitrary labels and demographics, not on the person. It is the definition of descrimination. Not only that, but it's blatantly hypocritical since you don't spend your money based on the demographics of a company, you spend it based on performance.
- joshuamorton 7y ago
  It's discrimination, yes, but in what sense is a quota bigotry?
  - tomp 7y ago
    It can result in hiring of person B instead of more capable person A, just because person B satisfies some arbitrary immutable characteristics (skin color, sex, etc.) and person A does not. Texbook discrimination.
    - joshuamorton 7y ago
      GP has since edited their post, it originally used the word "bigotry" where it now says "discrimination". Edit: This leads to a much more interesting line of discussion that can be summed up as "discrimination (and similarly bias) isn't always bad". They're useful tools and we should be careful about practicing them, but the idea that because discrimination is sometimes bad it is always bad doesn't follow. (or an alternative way of looking at this is that discrimination often includes the qualifier "unjust". Bias in favor of some group in the pursuit of greater justice therefore isn't discrimination).
      - missosoup 7y ago
        Discrimination is discrimination. Whether it's 'good' or 'bad' depends entirely on who you ask. I think most people making a case for 'good' discrimination don't realize that the existing 'bad' discrimination originated exactly the same way. We need to strive to eliminate discrimination, not perpetuate the swing of the pendulum that's been going back and forth for hundreds of years. Pushing down on some demographics to uplift others is not going to solve anything, it's just a no-op perpetuation of what's already going on.
        joshuamorton 7y ago
        That's not at all true. The historical discrimination did not originate from people saying "yes discriminate against me in the interests of general equality". In fact, to return to the start of this thread: historically much discrimination was the result of bigotry. It's very unlikely that hiring quotas (or similar) are the result of bigotry. Your conclusion also doesn't follow at all, at least not without some argumentative work that you haven't presented. Suffice to say that I believe that the best way to, in the long term, eliminate discrimination is to allow some specific forms now, with the intent of undoing past discrimination. You haven't presented even a shadow of an argument as to why that isn't reasonable.
        missosoup 7y ago
        You're conflating hiring discrimination with a broad and nebulous notion of inequality. Everyone agrees that equality is a good idea, but it doesn't map to your notion of how to address hiring discrimination, if such a thing exists. You're proposing deliberate and harmful inequality in the name of fixing some perceived other inequality. It doesn't work. The way to create equality is to manipulate on levers that individuals can control, e.g. taxation brackets, education incentives, government investment into particular industries. Passing up the best candidate for a job because they didn't have some inherent unchangeable attributes that you're arbitrarily favouring is the opposite of creating equality.
missosoup 7y ago
What is the definition of representation? Who is the arbiter of what groups are over and under represented? What does fair representation mean if not equal opportunity? This is a subject of entire books and hours long debates, but we can skip to the reductio ad absurdum with your line of reasoning: 99% of underwater welders are male. Trying to 'represent' females in that occupation and push the gender ratio to 50/50 would harm all parties involved and result in a measurable number of deaths. Protected attributes are not uniformly distributed in terms of fit for job, and trying to hit a uniform quota across those attributes is naively idealistic, at best. A less generous interpretation is that you are actually totally cool with discrimination as long as it's in the 'right direction', whatever that personally means for you. In which case you are exactly the force that you claim to be fighting against.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
"Reverse racism" is a term that was created to redefine "racism" so that people engaging in racism could say they're not engaging in it, because their kind of racism is not racism.
- missosoup 7y ago
  It's worse. It's not just 'wrong kind of racism', it's 'if you were born with attributes XYZ you should never be called racist, even if without those attributes your actions would be labelled as racist'. The notion of reverse racism is something that requires religion-like amounts of self delusion and selective consumption of facts. The flaws of the notion are just too glaring for any rational individual to overlook even at first examination.