In a very weird way, anti-discriminative behaviour itself needs to be discriminative, because it needs to support minorities. And rightfully so, there needs to be a positive bias for minorities who were historically disenfranchised. Otherwise the historical disadvantage will propagate itself further. But then when you look at firings like this, it becomes very hard to distinguish whether it's discrimination or rightful. These two are members of minority groups. Their firing is, rightfully, examined to fine detail. But that same magnification lens has that chilling effect for the decision of hiring minority members.
It's really a have-your-cake-and-eat-it problem. It f_cking sucks. And I don't know how to do better. I absolutely think we need affirmative action to relieve historic deficits, but at the same time this affirmative support is in itself discriminatory and can have negative effects. What to do? :(
Even if a PoC / woman is actually talented, people will subconsciously perceive them as diversity hires.
There were plenty of instances of people telling on this forum that they don't want to be seen as diversity person, but actual engineer.
>I absolutely think we need affirmative action to relieve historic deficits, but at the same time this affirmative support is in itself discriminatory and can have negative effects. What to do?
Quit affirmative action at anything above the high school level and poor resources into fixing the issues before high school. Personally I reject the framing that we need it and fully agree with you about the negative effects. The long term effects of people "being given" jobs or school placement I think are more negative than positive and you are seeing that. The Irish, Italian, Jews, Chinese, and Koreans were all able to get to parity or better without affirmative action.
This of course assumes that genetic (racial) differences in intellectual (and physical, for that matter) ability do not exist. This has never been proven to be the case [1], and never will.
We all know dog breeds have different intellectual and physical characteristics. Why are humans supposedly immune from this? Because it is a morbid reality that throws a wrench in the "all men are created equal" liberal lie.
This is not me advocating for gross eugenics or even discrimination. I just want to point out something frequently missing from these conversations.
"The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal." – Aristotle
Dr. Adam Rutherford is a great pop science presence for debunking, or at the very least, addressing the claims that intelligence tracks with race on a genetic basis if you're truly interested in this topic.
Out of curiosity, of the groups of people that are impacted by affirmative action, which groups remind you of which breeds and why? For example, are women border collies? Or some other breed?
When it comes to humans, it's just "purely socioeconomic factors" causing intelligence differences between races. The alternative is simply too morbid for our "nice" liberal society to accept.
I would argue denial of reality always causes more suffering than it purportedly "prevents."
Considering that it appears as though you’ve accepted this concept as being true, can you please give me an example of an actual category of people that you feel is analogous to a category of dog? I don’t see how that would be difficult.
I understand your desire to make the point about things that may be hard for squares to swallow, but what exactly is this truth that you’re privy to? So far this point seems a bit like gesticulating without actually committing enough to make a statement of substance.
"The current scientific consensus is that there is no evidence for a genetic component behind IQ differences between racial groups."
Even James Watson saw the same fate.
Oh, how far we have strayed.
I mean, there are enough people on this very board whose response to Black diversity initiatives in particular, is that they're too low IQ on average and therefore will be disruptive to team productivity and cohesion, despite people like Naseem Taleb going after IQ measurements.