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I disagree. Take a hypothetical, but concrete, situation : blue people are less "bulky" than green humans, and thus can't carry as heavy loads. Then, if the s

by waps 12y ago

I disagree. Take a hypothetical, but concrete, situation : blue people are less "bulky" than green humans, and thus can't carry as heavy loads. Then, if the situation is a fire department hiring, there's 2 ways to go about this : 1) you don't invite blue humans, only green ones -> discrimination. 2) you invite both, test them, and all the blue applicants happen to get disqualified during some test, this is not racism (the odds are very good this will happen if you try it, sadly, but that's not the fault of any fire department. Nor are the resulting ethnic imbalances in companies indications of racism) Then there are the difficult cases. Like for a fireman interview not inviting anyone under 70 kg because it's just not going to happen ... (This is the current European legal standard for discrimination. Where racial/sexual/religious/ethnic/... differences directly conflict with tasks to be carried out, like in the case of a fire department it is OK to refuse based on those criteria, provided you give individuals a chance. E.g. there was a European-level case of a muslim who was refused as a fireman because he refused to carry women, that was not considered discrimination. They actually hired a muslim doctor, and then fired him because he refused to operate on a woman, while he was on call, at 3am. That too was considered not discrimination, nor was a certain reluctance to hire this guy (any doctor would of course have been fired for refusing to operate on anyone))

seanflyon 12y ago
I think we agree on what we mean by discrimination in this context, but perhaps not what we mean by "rooted in facts". I think that not inviting blue people because you know that they are less likely to meet your criteria is "rooted in fact". We both agree that this is discrimination. Let me give an example where I think this kind of discrimination rooted in fact is acceptable. A company trying to hire a software engineer might only interview people with CS degrees. There is a factual basis that people with CS degrees are more likely to be qualified for the job, although there certainly are qualified people without degrees. Refusing to test those degree-less candidates is discrimination based on education.

by waps 12y ago

seanflyon 12y ago

I think we agree on what we mean by discrimination in this context, but perhaps not what we mean by "rooted in facts". I think that not inviting blue people because you know that they are less likely to meet your criteria is "rooted in fact". We both agree that this is discrimination. Let me give an example where I think this kind of discrimination rooted in fact is acceptable. A company trying to hire a software engineer might only interview people with CS degrees. There is a factual basis that people with CS degrees are more likely to be qualified for the job, although there certainly are qualified people without degrees. Refusing to test those degree-less candidates is discrimination based on education.