Affirmitive Action...

Blockhead

Who's for this? Why are you for this?
In my opinion it is reverse discrimination...
Why isn't their a 50/50 balance between blacks and whites in the NBA? Sure, white guys can't jump but we should still be equally represented in the NBA.
Maybe its because the NBA is a BUSINESS and the NBA is based upon TALENT not your race.
Shouldn't that be the same for all BUSINESSES???
Lets hear your thoughts.

maj4e

This is total nit picking and really it isn't even directed towards you per se. But there's no such thing as reverse discrimination or reverse racism. There's only discrimination and racism. Now I realize that has nothing to do with your question but I think mentioning the NBA where teams only have 12 players at a time is a bit frivolous. It would be better to look at companies with thousands of employees and those who accept public funds either directly or indirectly.

markin ball

It evens out with the NHL.

Boxes&Books

markin ball wrote:

It evens out with the NHL.

matabele

South Africa brought in affirmative action 16 years ago when apartheid was brought to an end and it has been a disaster. Their way of implementing it was to replace a skilled white person with a black person regardless of experience or skill when the white person retired or resigned. While in many occupations replacing an experienced person with a inexperienced one will cause havoc, in engineering it causes deaths, there have been many instances of transformers blowing up, trains derailing and such things. Perhaps the worst thing is that people will never get trained properly because the experienced people are ignored due to the colour of their skin. It is reverse racism, is stupid as hell, sucks big time and will take a country back into the dark ages.

Chip McFlennigan

Who cares about skill and safety when peoples' FEELINGS are at stake?

Dirtie_Frank

In the 50's and 60's I think Affirmative Action had a place. Now I think it should not be valid. I believe any job should go to the best candidate regardless of skin color, religion, or sex.

youngster

Dirtie_Frank wrote:

In the 50's and 60's I think Affirmative Action had a place. Now I think it should not be valid. I believe any job should go to the best candidate regardless of skin color, religion, or sex.

Exactly.

justam

Affirmative Action was a way to force employers to be more fair. It's kind of like a parent teaching their children to share their toys or food equally instead of allowing the bigger, more popular kids to get more.

If you look around in offices and other settings, you'll see that it has helped if you compare the diversity we see NOW to what workplaces and schools were like in the past. It's easy for people who were born later to dismiss affirmative action as unnecessary but it WAS a good thing when it started because it allowed more people to get in the doors that were previously closed to them.

Godfather.

Affirmitive Action...two words BULL..SHIT !!!

Godfather.

Jason P

I'm trying to think of how AA has actually affected me and the only thing I can think of is the 10% contractor clause for Minority and Women owned businesses (required for government contracts). I mainly work in the private sector but there was one hard-bid public job I was on where it was required. Unfortunately, most of the subcontractors out there that registered usually counted the owner's wife and were trying to gain an unfair advantage (Note: 80% of general contractors working public jobs have very unethical business practices).

The ironic thing is that I think the unions are holding back minorities way more then the owners of construction companies. The unions either don't want minorities in the union halls are they don't put effort into recruiting them. I've worked all along the west coast and in the mid-west and your higher-skilled unions (ironworkers, carpenters, electricians, HVAC, etc) are 95% white guys. I only see minorities in some of the less skilled trades (painting, landscaping, concrete work, insulation).

These are just the observations my eyeballs have made while working in this industry for the last 15 years.

Godfather.

Jason P wrote:

I'm trying to think of how AA has actually affected me and the only thing I can think of is the 10% contractor clause for Minority and Women owned businesses (required for government contracts). I mainly work in the private sector but there was one hard-bid public job I was on where it was required. Unfortunately, most of the subcontractors out there that registered usually counted the owner's wife and were trying to gain an unfair advantage (Note: 80% of general contractors working public jobs have very unethical business practices).

The ironic thing is that I think the unions are holding back minorities way more then the owners of construction companies. The unions either don't want minorities in the union halls are they don't put effort into recruiting them. I've worked all along the west coast and in the mid-west and your higher-skilled unions (ironworkers, carpenters, electricians, HVAC, etc) are 95% white guys. I only see minorities in some of the less skilled trades (painting, landscaping, concrete work, insulation).

These are just the observations my eyeballs have made while working in this industry for the last 15 years.

I'm in the aerospace workers union and it's very diverse where I'm at but when I tried to get into the operating engineers back in 1994 I was told "we can't put you in unless your a minority or a woman or better yet a minority woman", the only way for me to get in was to be certified in a classification no one else had and two years later I was in "Alamac Hydraulic Hoist Specialist Factory Trained" and as far as I know I am still the only person to hold that classification and my certificate only cost $10.......... I created my own affirmative action.



Godfather.