6 ms·

We have no idea what it means and you can rationalize it all you like. Quota or not they likely fired a white person instead of a another person because of the

We have no idea what it means and you can rationalize it all you like. Quota or not they likely fired a white person instead of a another person because of their skin color. Or it’s just cheap talk and means nothing, those are the only two options.

peter422 4y ago
- djbebs 4y ago
  Thanks for proving his point.
- trention 4y ago
  Given that affirmative action has been a thing in both hiring and college admissions for multiple decades now, that's of course incorrect. Those "innumerable advantages" in today's USA overwhelmingly go to (immigrant) minorities. I'm so glad I live in a country in continental Europe where this shit is unconstitutional and any company that even tried to hint at doing this is going to get sued to oblivion.
  - peter422 4y ago
    The people being laid off likely grew up in America 25-40 years ago. Modern policies are not relevant to the people I'm talking about (though obviously still a very interesting and important discussion).
    - trention 4y ago
      Affirmative action in college admissions and hiring has been a thing at least since the early 90s.
      - peter422 4y ago
        Oh I misread your original post, sorry about that. So your belief is that affirmative action in college admissions is the defining factor in race inequality, even though the vast majority of the structural disadvantages happen much younger? Remember that this is the American society that upon integration decided over and over again they'd rather fill public pools with cement than have them shared between white and black children. You don't believe those same barriers carried over to housing and schools? You just ignore the data and massive, persistent wealth gaps?
        trention 4y ago
        No, there are zero barriers "in front" of minorities in the states, only advantages. There is no institutional discrimination against minorities, only against the now-majority, soon-to-be minority.
        peter422 4y ago
        If we look at a 1 year old black child, and a 1 year old while child, the average household wealth of the white child is around 10x higher. What did the white child do to deserve this? How much better could they possibly be at drooling and crawling to have so much more wealth available to them? So I guess your belief is that household wealth has no impact on children?
        trention 4y ago
        >What did the white child do to deserve this? Ah, the fallacy that everything you receive from your ancestors is undeserved. Will we be doing race-based asset appropriation tomorrow, comrade? I think I'm not interested in discussing this with someone holding such a position which I consider completely deluded.
        peter422 4y ago
  - commandlinefan 4y ago
    > multiple decades now About half a century, in fact. There aren't many people still alive who can remember a time what it wasn't.
- orthecreedence 4y ago
  > And of course that white person had innumerable advantages their entire life This is the problem. You don't know this, and you can't tell this just from the color of someone's skin. A white man can grow up in a trailer park with a drunk, abusive father. A black woman can grow up in a loving, upper middle class family in the suburbs. Skin color is only a fractional indication of someone's experience.
  - peter422 4y ago
    A person can both have advantages in society and yet have specific situations in their life that are much more impactful. You could have used the same arguments in 1860... Not all black people were enslaved, some were quite prosperous in fact! Therefore there was no benefit to being white.
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      And thus the exact problem. It's okay to observe that a whole class of people enjoy a privilege. Where it goes off the rails is when you use that knowledge to discriminate against individuals in an attempt to correct the historical injustice.
      - peter422 4y ago
        And thus we perpetuate the injustice indefinitely! Your essential argument seems to be that once an injustice is over one generation old, it is as if it never happened, no matter if the after effects continue to cascade into modern day. You cannot just magically pretend an individual is not part of a society.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        catiopatio 4y ago
- the_doctah 4y ago
  This is the definition of prejudice.
  - peter422 4y ago
    If you willfully disregard any context about the situation and historical context then I'd agree with you.
- fche 4y ago
  > And of course that white person had innumerable advantages their entire life such as being overtly and illegally dispreferred for college admissions, scholarships, hiring, promotion, and preferred for being fired such privilege much wow
- yibg 4y ago
  How do you know this? You think this is true for every white person? If so that IS racist.
zwkrt 4y ago
> Quota or not they likely fired a white person instead of a another person because of their skin color. Again, that would be racist. 'Anti-racist' is more likely that they made sure the white (or Indian, or whatever) manager didn't just fire all his non-white (or non-Indian, or whatever) reports, without good reason. Getting hurt over people trying to be racially equitable ignores the fact that the default is racial inequity. 11% of the staff had to be fired, why not make sure it is done more fairly/randomly than racially? Because the latter is the default (or at least sadly common) whether you like it or not.
- anonym29 4y ago
  "Trying to be racially equitable" is a loaded, political term. They don't appear to be "trying to", they appear to be actively enforcing racial equity. Equality of opportunity (equality) is good. Equality of outcome (equity) is only possible if you deliberately handicap the most competent and most productive people of the group, because humans are differently abled. I am not mad that the NBA hires a massively disproportionately large number of African Americans, for instance, because small differences in average height (African Americans are taller, on average, than Caucasian Americans) result in much larger discrepancies at the extremes. If you're playing a game where you need extreme height, you'd expect an overrepresentation of African Americans relative to whites. If you're playing a game that benefits players with a different extreme stat that Asian Americans score better in, on average, than Caucasian Americans, you'd expect the highest levels of that game to have an overrepresentation of Asian Americans relative to Caucasian Americans there too. And the result is good. Watching a bunch of pudgy, (comparatively) short Caucasian Americans playing basketball interests me a lot less than a bunch of 6'6"+ African Americans who are objectively superior at the sport playing. I'd rather listen to music made by the world's best band than by the world's most racially equitable band. I'd rather get surgery at the world's best hospital than the world's most racially equitable hospital. This is why we have social hierarchies stratified by competence, rather than by racial equity. We should never be denying anyone the opportunity to try their best at something just because of their skin color, but we shouldn't expect perfect equality of outcome on that front either. Note this also applies to gender. I'm a fat, heavy person, if I'm in a burning building, I want my firefighter to be able to carry 300 pounds. I'd make an educated guess that there are a lot more men than women who can carry 300 pounds. I read a study a while ago that said women are 77% less likely to die in a car accident. By that same logic (and personal anecdote), I much prefer female drivers to male drivers when I am a passenger. That's not to say there aren't women who can carry me, or that there aren't men who drive responsibly, but equity in either of these fields would probably lead to more deaths, because different types of people, on average, are better at different things, and an economy which encourages everyone to do what they are best at brings out the best in all of us. An economy in which the most competent are artificially handicapped and the least competent are artificially boosted is worse for everyone.
weakfish 4y ago
You say yourself we have no idea what it means but make a proposition on the meaning - why is your guess any more valid?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- fullshark 4y ago
  We don't know the implementation details (e.g. quota v not) but the net impact of an "anti-racist" process to ID layoff candidates v. a race-blind best-for-company process is either laying off white people due to their skin color or it's toothless BS.

peter422 4y ago

djbebs 4y ago
Thanks for proving his point.
trention 4y ago
Given that affirmative action has been a thing in both hiring and college admissions for multiple decades now, that's of course incorrect. Those "innumerable advantages" in today's USA overwhelmingly go to (immigrant) minorities. I'm so glad I live in a country in continental Europe where this shit is unconstitutional and any company that even tried to hint at doing this is going to get sued to oblivion.
- peter422 4y ago
  The people being laid off likely grew up in America 25-40 years ago. Modern policies are not relevant to the people I'm talking about (though obviously still a very interesting and important discussion).
  - trention 4y ago
    Affirmative action in college admissions and hiring has been a thing at least since the early 90s.
    - peter422 4y ago
      Oh I misread your original post, sorry about that. So your belief is that affirmative action in college admissions is the defining factor in race inequality, even though the vast majority of the structural disadvantages happen much younger? Remember that this is the American society that upon integration decided over and over again they'd rather fill public pools with cement than have them shared between white and black children. You don't believe those same barriers carried over to housing and schools? You just ignore the data and massive, persistent wealth gaps?
      - trention 4y ago
        No, there are zero barriers "in front" of minorities in the states, only advantages. There is no institutional discrimination against minorities, only against the now-majority, soon-to-be minority.
        peter422 4y ago
        If we look at a 1 year old black child, and a 1 year old while child, the average household wealth of the white child is around 10x higher. What did the white child do to deserve this? How much better could they possibly be at drooling and crawling to have so much more wealth available to them? So I guess your belief is that household wealth has no impact on children?
        trention 4y ago
        >What did the white child do to deserve this? Ah, the fallacy that everything you receive from your ancestors is undeserved. Will we be doing race-based asset appropriation tomorrow, comrade? I think I'm not interested in discussing this with someone holding such a position which I consider completely deluded.
        peter422 4y ago
- commandlinefan 4y ago
  > multiple decades now About half a century, in fact. There aren't many people still alive who can remember a time what it wasn't.
orthecreedence 4y ago
> And of course that white person had innumerable advantages their entire life This is the problem. You don't know this, and you can't tell this just from the color of someone's skin. A white man can grow up in a trailer park with a drunk, abusive father. A black woman can grow up in a loving, upper middle class family in the suburbs. Skin color is only a fractional indication of someone's experience.
- peter422 4y ago
  A person can both have advantages in society and yet have specific situations in their life that are much more impactful. You could have used the same arguments in 1860... Not all black people were enslaved, some were quite prosperous in fact! Therefore there was no benefit to being white.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    And thus the exact problem. It's okay to observe that a whole class of people enjoy a privilege. Where it goes off the rails is when you use that knowledge to discriminate against individuals in an attempt to correct the historical injustice.
    - peter422 4y ago
      And thus we perpetuate the injustice indefinitely! Your essential argument seems to be that once an injustice is over one generation old, it is as if it never happened, no matter if the after effects continue to cascade into modern day. You cannot just magically pretend an individual is not part of a society.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - catiopatio 4y ago
the_doctah 4y ago
This is the definition of prejudice.
- peter422 4y ago
  If you willfully disregard any context about the situation and historical context then I'd agree with you.
fche 4y ago
> And of course that white person had innumerable advantages their entire life such as being overtly and illegally dispreferred for college admissions, scholarships, hiring, promotion, and preferred for being fired such privilege much wow
yibg 4y ago
How do you know this? You think this is true for every white person? If so that IS racist.

zwkrt 4y ago

> Quota or not they likely fired a white person instead of a another person because of their skin color. Again, that would be racist. 'Anti-racist' is more likely that they made sure the white (or Indian, or whatever) manager didn't just fire all his non-white (or non-Indian, or whatever) reports, without good reason. Getting hurt over people trying to be racially equitable ignores the fact that the default is racial inequity. 11% of the staff had to be fired, why not make sure it is done more fairly/randomly than racially? Because the latter is the default (or at least sadly common) whether you like it or not.

anonym29 4y ago
"Trying to be racially equitable" is a loaded, political term. They don't appear to be "trying to", they appear to be actively enforcing racial equity. Equality of opportunity (equality) is good. Equality of outcome (equity) is only possible if you deliberately handicap the most competent and most productive people of the group, because humans are differently abled. I am not mad that the NBA hires a massively disproportionately large number of African Americans, for instance, because small differences in average height (African Americans are taller, on average, than Caucasian Americans) result in much larger discrepancies at the extremes. If you're playing a game where you need extreme height, you'd expect an overrepresentation of African Americans relative to whites. If you're playing a game that benefits players with a different extreme stat that Asian Americans score better in, on average, than Caucasian Americans, you'd expect the highest levels of that game to have an overrepresentation of Asian Americans relative to Caucasian Americans there too. And the result is good. Watching a bunch of pudgy, (comparatively) short Caucasian Americans playing basketball interests me a lot less than a bunch of 6'6"+ African Americans who are objectively superior at the sport playing. I'd rather listen to music made by the world's best band than by the world's most racially equitable band. I'd rather get surgery at the world's best hospital than the world's most racially equitable hospital. This is why we have social hierarchies stratified by competence, rather than by racial equity. We should never be denying anyone the opportunity to try their best at something just because of their skin color, but we shouldn't expect perfect equality of outcome on that front either. Note this also applies to gender. I'm a fat, heavy person, if I'm in a burning building, I want my firefighter to be able to carry 300 pounds. I'd make an educated guess that there are a lot more men than women who can carry 300 pounds. I read a study a while ago that said women are 77% less likely to die in a car accident. By that same logic (and personal anecdote), I much prefer female drivers to male drivers when I am a passenger. That's not to say there aren't women who can carry me, or that there aren't men who drive responsibly, but equity in either of these fields would probably lead to more deaths, because different types of people, on average, are better at different things, and an economy which encourages everyone to do what they are best at brings out the best in all of us. An economy in which the most competent are artificially handicapped and the least competent are artificially boosted is worse for everyone.

weakfish 4y ago

You say yourself we have no idea what it means but make a proposition on the meaning - why is your guess any more valid?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
fullshark 4y ago
We don't know the implementation details (e.g. quota v not) but the net impact of an "anti-racist" process to ID layoff candidates v. a race-blind best-for-company process is either laying off white people due to their skin color or it's toothless BS.