Asperger Syndrome and affirmative action

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Affirmative action makes it possible for the workforce to reflect statistical information. Instead of a company being made up almost entirely of white males with a few female secretaries, AA encourages the hiring of minorities and women so the workplace looks more like the society surrounding it instead of just one race or gender in particular. AA is not about replacing all white males with minorities and women.

AA needs to go. if you cant get a job because some other guy is smarter than you, oh well!
Life isnt fair, and once you try to regulate everything the government wont stop. next, they'll be telling you a sucker with a tequilla worm in it is a hazard to your health and ban them Lol.

ACTUALLY, the numbers are deceptive. There tend to be more boys born, but more die due to a 23rd chromosome defect. More get injured, etc... and women tend to live longer.

CIAAFACTBOOK:
Age structure:
0-14 years: 20.2% (male 31,639,127/female 30,305,704)
15-64 years: 67% (male 102,665,043/female 103,129,321)
65 years and over: 12.8% (male 16,901,232/female 22,571,696) (2010 est.)

Median age:
total: 36.8 years
male: 35.5 years
female: 38.1 years (2010 est.)

I agree that the most qualified person should get the job. But if 100% of the women were hired, unless a LOT of men became stay at home dads or whatever, there would be a LOT of latch key kids!

I've known Supervisors that hired women strictly for their looks and also known Supervisors that wouldn't hire a women considered to be very attractive with extremely high qualifications because they felt threatened.

If there was a law against discriminating against unattractive women, it seems like attractiveness would be a hard thing to measure in terms of where the cut-off line is between beauty and non-beauty. I wouldn't want to be the one to have to judge this, and I don't think I could because attitude and personality play a huge part in what is considered beautiful or attractive; a bad attitude and a bad personality can destroy beauty, whereas the opposite can create it.

And that is the inherent evil.

A workplace has no business reflecting the statistical makeup of the community.

A workplace exists to produce a product. The employer should be free to hire the best qualified people he can afford to pay to do the work.

Granted, there is something nice-sounding about giving an "equally qualified" black man a job over a white man to help make the workplace more diverse, but in practice, this hardly ever happens. It's about having enough black men working to represent the percentage of black males in the community. The employer's demand for workers who are THE BEST for the job is made a secondary concern.

For over a generation, AA has produced many places where workplace quality went down because the workers were not the best, but hiring them avoided potential litigation. Costing the employer and the end consumer. It is only in recent years that employers have found effective ways to "weed out" any minority who can not make the grade (can't call it discrimination when you failed to pass a color-blind screening stage). They have also had more success terminating useless workers on the basis of incompetence and making it stick.

Growing up, I saw a lot of minorities (especially in government jobs) who were lazy and useless. Now, I see a lot more professionals working, and even they are developing disdain for the "old school" minorities who learned to work the system to keep their jobs rather than work hard like everyone else.

If you want diversity in the workforce, it's more effective to promote social change in the community and have minorities work hard to be as good as anyone else going for the job. Even today I see minorities who play the "victim" role and think it should allow them to gain things with less work. I don't buy it. Color of skin has nothing to do with intelligence, and if you live someplace that has white poverty, you can't tell me that a minority is more disadvantaged than a white person living in the same environment who manages to get better grades and do better in hiring screenings.

My understanding is that the way affirmative action works is that if 30% of the population is African American, then your workforce should also be about 30% African American, allowing a few points for statistical variation. If aspies ASD are 10% (it's not that high, I realize) of the population, and an employer had 1000 employees and no aspies (10% would be 100) then that employer would get sued. It would also force employers to accommodate some of our different needs and find jobs more suited for us so they could meet their "quota".

Perhaps that's selfish of me, but I've been told "suck it up" and "deal with it" many many times by people who have no clue what it's like to have a mental illness, I'm not above a little personal selfishness. A lot of those people are just being selfish themselves, protecting their own superior position, and not wanting to have to do anything "extra" to accommodate anyone that's different. NTs have no ethical hangups about using their social networking abilities to their advantage at every possible occasion. Therefore I have no ethical hangups asking for or receiving governmental or other charitable assistance to even the odds.

Because our legal protections aren't as strong as ethnic minorities, many employers still will refuse to hire the "disabled". I've been told by career counselors who specialize in finding jobs for disabled persons that unless you're applying for a job with the government or an employer who has some specific mandate to hire disabled persons, you're better off not to disclose a disability. You would never hear anyone say you shouldn't disclose that you're African American or Jewish. Personally, I think that's sad.

I think ultimately we should consider this issue within the broader context of people with mental illness or disabilities in general. There simply aren't enough aspies, percentage wise, to make any political difference. If we want to get into that fight, it will take a larger movement.

Evil is an awfully loaded term to be using in politics. I can declare your point of view evil just as easily as you can declare someone else's. Do you not want people to have jobs? If your argument is that it's more efficient to let employers do what they want and have a robust system of welfare and social services for those who don't meet whatever businesses happen to be looking for, I can see some merit in that argument. If that is your position, there's no need to use a loaded word like evil against those that disagree. You might instead more tactfully state your belief that there is a more efficient solution than affirmative action for those who face discrimination.

If your argument is that people should just "suck it up" or "deal with it", then all you're doing is rephrasing social Darwinism in less unpleasant sounding words, and all you're really interested in is keeping what is rightfully "yours", and to hell with everyone else. The problem with "survival of the fittest" is that not everyone is the fittest and not everyone survives. That's how it is in nature. I can't speak for others, but I'd like to believe humanity can progress beyond being apes with automobiles and iPhones. If people can't get jobs because they're disabled, or African American, or have brown hair, or green eyes, or w/e else, what then? If not affirmative action and other programs that encourage everyone to work and find employment, then what? What solution is better? What happens to those who aren't able to get jobs when employers are given free reign to do what they want?

EDIT: And what is the fascination with the word "lazy". Why is it people assume that everyone that gets a job because of affirmative action is "lazy". I have been unemployed or only employed part time for 5 of the 6 years I've been out of college. I have YET to be called "lazy" by any employer before or since. Even the employer who fired me said that my attitude and attendance were great, I just couldn't do as much work as fast as the other workers.

Last edited by Zur-Darkstar on 18 Jan 2011, 12:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't think a company should be sued because of lack of Ethnic Minorities, Women, Homosexuals, or the Disabled as many of these groups tend not to go into certain fields. But if there is evidence of a strong history of discrimination against these group than they would be fair game.

Yes. Too few Aspies are employed, it's a shame and a waste of talent.

Well, I see "evil" as being a bad thing. So, when I say something is an "inherent evil," I'm calling it an inherently bad thing.

When a law forces a quota system that does more harm than good, I think that qualifies.



Well, the meat behind Affirmative Action is that it wound up with a lot of people who were barely qualified (often unqualified, but standards were lower so the minorities could be hired by passing the minimums) getting jobs over people who were more qualified...often because they worked harder for the opportunity. It really wasn't mandating opportunity for all by saying, "be fair and look at what a person has to offer, not just the color of their skin," but it imposed a de facto quota system and actually created resentment in that qualified people were passed over for inferior candidates out of fear of litigation all because of not matching the quota.

It's the same problem we have in government running welfare management. Most all welfare programs have the most fundamental of qualifications. Easily exploited by dishonest people, but those who deserve help can be turned away for making $1 more than where the line is drawn. When government runs stuff with taxpayer money, they must keep things very "objective" so that nobody can be accused of "discrimination" but then the program arbitrarily fails to help people who "earn too much" to be eligible and gives benefits to lazy people who will gladly lie and cheat to get something they should not be qualified for. Private charities can judge on a case-by-case basis and nobody has a right to receive benefits, so if an applicant comes across as a con man, they don't get anything and those who are normally well-off but hit hard times can find some assistance.



Probably because, as a matter of history, AA has enabled a lot of minorities to get hired over much more qualified and accomplished applicants out of fear of the employer being accused of discrimination. Likewise, in many government agencies, AA has resulted in unfit candidates being promoted over more proven candidates out of the fear of being accused of discrimination. When an inferior candidate expects to be hired/promoted over superior choices because of a policy and/or the color of his/her skin...that's being lazy.

Thankfully, to some extent, that trend is ending, but it still goes on.

It's more accurate to say that many of these groups are discouraged from participating in certain fields. It's not simply a matter of passive choice but active resistance, even hostility. Also, stereotype threat.

Verdandi
I don't think a public relations firm should get in trouble because there are no Aspies or a construction company should be sued because there is a shortage of women.

Okay?

I don't think anyone will get sued for a shortage of X unless they're demonstrated to have discriminatory hiring practices.

My point is that there's a lot of sexism in several fields (say mathematics, science, technology to be specific) that makes women feel unwelcome and often discriminated against. In situations like that, it's not just because women don't want to go into those fields, but because there's active hostility.

"My point is that there's a lot of sexism in several fields (say mathematics, science, technology to be specific) that makes women feel unwelcome and often discriminated against. In situations like that, it's not just because women don't want to go into those fields, but because there's active hostility."

I also felt more comfortable among techie, scientific nerdy types than any other kind of men.

Oh, so do I. I'm not saying it's universal, but it is a much discussed problem. The blog "Geek Feminism" talks about it a lot:

http://geekfeminism.org/

As does Restructure!

http://restructure.wordpress.com/

These days I find a lot of (NT) male geek culture to actively grate on my nerves, even though my primary interests are firmly in the same camp.

A workplace is a human construct existing in the human community, therefore it has an obligation to it's surroundings, ie: not to pollute, to hire the people in the community, whenever qualified, regardless of gender or appearance. It has certain moral obligations. It should promote the welfare of the community in which it exists, first and foremost. Then, it has earned the right to make a product.


The employer has an obligation to the community, like it or not. Businesses do not exist in vacuums and shouldn't be treated like they do. They have to protect the environment, their employees, and the space around the business. That's just good business ethics.
If a business doesn't want to do all that, maybe it shouldn't exist?

Not just anyone can get any job. You do have to meet a minimal of qualifications regardless of gender, appearance, and race, unless it's a job like Mcdonald's or some other type of unskilled labor.


I grew up in a mostly white, by "mostly" I mean 98%, and there were plenty of lazy loafers in my community. There were white teachers at my school who didn't make their classes do school work. There were slackers and people who sat around smoking weed or drinking. That's everywhere. There's always going to be people who don't work as hard and most the time they either get laid off or stay in the same position for years.


I disagree. I think you should hire around eight to ten percent blacks, more if you are located in a black neighborhood, and a certain percentage of hispanics, depending on how many applies. If you are in the middle of a community that is nearly 100% white and hardly any blacks ever apply, you of course, are not obligated to hire. If qualified blacks start applying, it is your moral obligation to hire them.