Affirmative Action

One of my faveorite thing to do is take varrious different issues in society and sometimes in politics, as soceital issues tend to blend in with politics a lot, and give my own thoughts on it, as usually my thoughts differ a bit from the common opinion and a lot of times I feel as if I do not say it then no one else will.

So today the thing I wish to talk about a little bit is Affirmative Action.

For those who are not familler with it, I provide this berif and simple definition

Affirmative action (U.S. English), or positive discrimination (British English), is a policy or a program aimed at increasing the representation of members of groups that have traditionally been discriminated against. This typically focuses on education, employment, government contracting, health care, or social welfare.

Now that that is out of the way I will say that I think that at one point in time Affirmative action was useful and did provide a needed service, about the time in which it was first created it was a good thing which did some good, but I think in this day and age it is really no longer needed, and goes the way as many things, that is, it no longer does what it once does, and is now used as something of a crutch you might say.

Personaly I think that Affimative action should be seen as insulting to the very people whom it is allegedly suppose to be helping. The way I look at it is this, (And I can also say that as a woman Affirmative action does apply to me, yet I am sepaking against it, and not as a complete outsider) if you go in for a job, and after the application and interview and all that you get hired, but are told or find out somehow that you were not hired becasue you were seen as being the one most capaibale for that job, and becasue you impressed your employers over anybody else, but in truth there was someone else who they thought was better, yet, the law states they need to feel a certain quota, and they need more minorties or women in thier office, so the reason you are getting hired is becasue of your race and gender. Is that what you really want? Is that something you can really be proud of? I for one would not want that. I want to be hired on my own merit.

Another aspect of it is this, what if you take occupations like police, fire, medical and so on, ultimately when it comes down to you needing help, would you rather have a woman, hispantic, or African Amercian come and help you, just so that department can have proper diversrty according to the law, or do you want the most qullified person no matter who they are to come and help you?

And I know first hand from people in my family, that they were turned down for a Police job, and told they were the most qullified and would have been hired, but they currently could only take African Amercian women to fill a quota.

The other thing, is that I am tired of people that want to belly ache all the time about rascism and discrimiation and how they want to be treated just the same as everyone else, and how they should be, and yet on that same note, they have no problem with any sort of discrimination that works in thier favor, they have no problem with getting sepcial treatment. As well as I am tired of the sense of intilement that so many minorties seem to feel, nobody is intiled to anything.

2:54 PM - 4/11/2006 - post comment

Couldn't agree more

And what's more... my sister has a boyfriend of North African origin, and he too is very annoyed when he and his fellow Moroccans are put down as pitiful and in need of affirmative action in order to find work, etc. It is a form of discrimination, and not only because it may cost us whites a few jobs. The ones supposedly helped often feel the same.

dutchboy - 4:48 AM - 4/12/2006

you are right

Here in India, we have what we call the reservation policy. certain jobs or a percentage of jobs are kept for the disadvantaged communities. Though it was not meant to be kept till perpetuity, over the years the political parties have found it to be a good way to create "vote banks" of these communities and seek to extend reservations into all sectors, even higher education, including the IITs, respected all over the world for their products--the finest engineers. This creates much heartburn and disaffection among communities, especially these days when no one is bothered by your colour, religion or caste but only how good you are at the job.

nandkumar - 6:51 AM - 4/12/2006

Affirmative Action or Not

I think it is one thing to encourage people to hire in ethnic minorities that may suffer discrimination, and another to have quotas that need to be filled. Quotas mean that you cannot accept the best people for the job, and have to have empty vacancies if you cannot fill them from ethnic minorites.

Encouragement gives you more flexibility, so you can fill vacancies with the best for the job, but still be required to domonstrate that they were, in fact, the best or only recruit available.

At the end of the day racism has to be battled, and sometimes you have no choice but to batter down the walls with quotas, but they should never be treated as 'in perpetuity' laws.

Dabbler - 3:47 AM - 4/18/2006

Quote of the Week: Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted ~ Italian Proverb

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