Hacker News Reader

Comment by trention | Hacker News Reader

I am extremely glad I live in a country in continental Europe where this shit is unconstitutional and will be stricken down by the courts immediately (as will be any sort of preferential treatment of any minority in hiring or admissions). Hope it stays that way.

View on HN

Interestingly, in my EU country we have explicit laws in constitution which forbid any kind of preferential treatment or discrimination based on gender, race and etc. However, there are agencies and courts who allow affirmative action policies to exist. For example, a public grant for entrepreneurs where women are officially awarded extra points for their gender. So basically constitution is ignored and no one cares.

In Switzerland it's illegal to make a difference between genders...however since a very short time woman's had to work not as long as men, now some woman cry it's unfair and blablabla, and there is still one or more thing, woman's don't have to go to military-service OR pay money for not going.

But if you say that, some of them will tell you that they would do that if they earn the same as men, but that is already in law...if you ask them for proof they never have any...

It actually is legal in Switzerland to discriminate based on gender, if the administrative class decides that it's just:

> Appropriate measures aimed at achieving true equality are not regarded as discriminatory.

https://www.fedlex.admin.ch/eli/cc/1996/1498_1498_1498/de#ar...

>>Appropriate measures aimed at achieving true equality are not regarded as discriminatory.

So since Men have a shorter lifespan (even in country's where alcohol and drugs are a nogo...if someone want to come with that argument) Men should not work as long as Woman's ;) excellent!!

BTW: What are Appropriate measures?....that's a typical Swiss law, it just say's nothing..and everything ;)

> Interestingly, in my EU country we have explicit laws in constitution which forbid any kind of preferential treatment or discrimination based on gender, race and etc. However, there are agencies and courts who allow affirmative action policies to exist. For example, a public grant for entrepreneurs where women are officially awarded extra points for their gender.

This is also the case in the United States.

Yes it sure is. Interesting, in California in 2020, there was an attempt (Proposition 16) to overturn Proposition 209. It went down in flames, almost 60% against / 40% for.

Prop 209, passed in 1996, "amended the state constitution to prohibit government institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity, specifically in the areas of public employment, public contracting, and public education."

If Prop 16 had passed, it would have allowed government agencies to deliberately and explicitly discriminate against people based on immutable characteristics.

The wording from Prop 16's advocates seems to embrace Kendi's punitive stance on using active discrimination to reach some kind of equity goal:

"Despite living in the most diverse state in the nation, white men are still overrepresented in positions of wealth and power in California. Although women, and especially women of color, are on the front lines of the COVID-19 response, they are not rewarded for their sacrifices. Women should have the same chance of success as men.

Today, nearly all public contracts, and the jobs that go with them, go to large companies run by older white men. White women make 80¢ on the dollar. The wage disparity is even worse for women of color and single moms. As a result, an elite few are able to hoard wealth instead of investing it back into communities. Prop. 16 opens up contracting opportunities for women and people of color. "

In 2020 I tried to find data and studies backing the laundry list of assertions but came up empty-handed. The wording seemed very slanted... "older white men"... "single moms"... Certainly there are disparities in society, but we must always consider, objectively, what are the root causes.

Where does it end? Does anybody want an NBA where the makeup of the teams is based on the racial percentages in society, or do people want the best players playing? Do you want the best surgeon or pilot? Absolutely I bet 99% of people on HN want everyone to have equal opportunity; in my experience, in the vast majority of American tech companies (I don't work in healthcare of finanace, etc. so I can't speak to them), if you had 2 equally qualified candidates, and one was a white man and one was a woman or a racial minority or perhaps even not-straight, the white man will usually be the one not getting the job.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_16

I think there is a burgeoning push back on quotas and such as well. I think the woke crowd pushed their luck a bit too hard. This is coming from a very progressive person (me) but who also feels egalitarianism and personal responsibility should always be the goal and not an afterthought.

I'm not getting that impression. For what it's worth, "woke left" has always been a minority, yet it hasn't lost momentum as much as it continually rotates in direction. Specifically, we're seeing more and more non-NA countries adopt these rhetorics from both the US and CA.

Politics is becoming more and more extremist too, with the extreme left lashing out and calling anyone who even questions the status quo an extreme rightist bigot, and the extreme right doing the equivalent. And the two are fueled by both one another, as well as increasing tensions due to national issues.

The extreme left and right do fuel each other. I think Trump's rise in 2015 was somewhat related to the rise of wokeness in 2012. A large slice of right wing media today is outrage at wokeness. It's animating them. The fascists in Japan and Germany were partly motivated out of a fear of Bolsheviks.

This is my main gripe with wokeness. Yes I dislike the illiberalism of quotas and the collectivist nature of its moral system (collective guilt and inherited guilt). But my main concern is the right wing backlash and the consequences of that on democracy and freedom.

Aren't egalitarianism and personal responsibility kind of incompatible with each other? You can't maximise them both at the same time.

In less that two years, this will be common over here as well.

There aren't a lot of fully private academic education institutions in Europe, compared to the US.

But I wonder if they could do that sort of thing based of their existing limitations for academic freedom. If an institution funded by Volkswagen wants the professors to work on car related stuff to advance technological goals, couldn't they also require them to work towards social or political goals?

autonomy of "private" institutions partially died with the mechanism of tying title ix compliance to any federal dollars. i think there are 2 colleges in America that take 0 federal aid (pell grants etc.) so don't have to comply.

tbh i always found it contradictory we don't use those federal $ to require compliance with all constitutional rights, e.g. 1 and 2a.

Unlikely, I don't know what "continental Europe" means here, but DE&I is gaining a lot of traction in Western/Central Europe. In countries whose history is completely different from the US' and where it makes literally no sense to think of race this way.

What do you think the writers of the constitution were aiming for when they made 'that shit unconstitutional'?

Were they trying to advance equity, inclusion, and anti-racism?

They were trying to make sure the country I live in (which has more than 1 significant "traditional" minority) does not partition along ethnic lines by instituting differentiated treatment on the basis of ethnicity.

But thanks for bringing your bullshit, unapplicable anglo concepts to the entire world. We really appreciate it every time.

But can't they still demand people to make this kind of political statements? (With no actual preferential treatment rules.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com