Comment on Par for the course
pahlimur@lemmy.world 2 weeks agoThe problem both of your opinions have is they ignore the baseline improved treatment straight white dudes like myself get. We get better treatment and preferential hiring just by existing. I’m not afraid to talk to anyone in the tiny sithole towns I go to for work. I’ve have so many people walk past my boss and talk to me because he wears a turban, or my other boss getting talked over because she is a women. These examples aren’t directly related to hiring, but you are blind if you don’t see the obvious advantages we have.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
I suggest you read the system described by the poster from feddit.nl just below, which just removes the kind of professionally irrelevant information (including gender, race and so on) from being in the candidate selection process.
Such systems are meant to removed descrimination (even subconscious one) rather than discriminating in the opposite direction. “Discriminating but the other way around” just preservs a mindset that people should be seen differently depending on gender or sexual orientation and, as I’ve observed first hand, yields environments which are even more sexist.
Having lived in both Britain (which apes a lot of things from the US) and The Netherlands, I can tell you that the latter country is way much more naturally equalitarian (gender-wise and even more so when it comes to sexual orientation) than the former.
The knee-jerk “this must be sexism” reaction to criticism of the “let’s keep treating people differently depending on the genetics they were born with” of the “anti-descrimination” systems in the Anglo-Saxon countries, in my view partly explains why in the decade and a half since I’ve left The Netherlands I’ve seen no improvement towards the much more natural gender and sexual-orientation equality of The Netherlands in either Britain or the US, quite the contrary.
I’m sorry but compared with what I’ve seen working in other countries the system you defend is deeply flawed and preserves the very architecture of judging people on their gender, sexual-orientation or race rather than actual personal knowledge and track record that the Fascists have.
Senal@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
emphasis mine.
They actually don’t do a terrible job either, but it’s not a blanket removal of bias.
More pertinent is that they only apply to the initial hiring phase, a lot of jobs have built in probation periods.
In addition, those systems do nothing at all to prevent workplace discrimination once the candidate has started.
As for the rest of your statement, that’s missing quite a few important points.
Your phrasing of “let’s keep treating people differently depending on the genetics they were born with” is itself incredibly misleading in it’s omissions.
Bigotry does exist yes, but most of these systems are supposed to be in place to counteract the inherent conscious and unconscious bias in the system, it’s closer to “Let’s try and lessen some of the harmful treatment people are already facing due to perceived differences”.
The difference between countries your seeing isn’t solely due to the perceived ineffectuality of the systems you are talking about, there is a huge difference in culture, economics, population and history that has a significant impact on how much these systems can help.
Let’s take a completely inoffensive analogy and say that both Britain and the Netherlands are dumpster(skip) fires.
The Netherlands is a very small 30L skip full of paper that is also on fire.
Britain is three of those large skips you get delivered on a lorry , all piled up on top of each other, filled with wood, doused in accelerant and set alight.
The anti-discrimination system is 3 full buckets of water.
Three buckets on the Netherlands will probably solve the problem.
Three buckets on Britain will do nothing but engender some metaphysical disdain from the fire.
I’m not defending the systems here, i’m saying you are presenting a situation in a way that doesn’t align with reality and then complaining that the results don’t match what you expect.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
I’m afraid that fighting oppression and restoring the past oppressed to a level playing field involves finding if actual individuals did indeed suffer from oppression and compensating them for it in some way, a far more difficult task than taking the Fascist’s shortcut of presuming that everybody from a specific race, gender or sexual orientation are equally worthy or unworthy.
What my experience in The Netherlands taught me is that preserving the idea that you can presume things about people (including that they’re “victims” or “discriminated against”) - a.k.a. Prejudice - is a dead-end strategy for fighting discrimination because:
You can’t Prejudice your way into stopping Prejudiced treatment, not Ideologically and not even Mathematically.
Senal@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
Wait…so you’re belief system around this is that the only way to address past injustices to a group or demographics is to find out which specific individuals were impacted and help only them ?
That’s delusional, not in an ad hominem kind of way but in a literal “no basis in reality” way.
You don’t seem to understand what fascism means so all the arguments based on a faulty interpretation are going to be faulty.
Real question though
I’d be genuinely interested to see how you got here , because the anecdotal pseudo-explanation isn’t an actual explanation.
There’s so many faulty assumptions in there it’s difficult to take any conclusion you get to seriously.
You’re assuming that prejudice only applies to one side of this argument, If you start off with two groups:
Group A : 20
Group B : 10
Then Taking 5 from A and moving it to B isn’t prejudice against A.
That’s not even a very accurate example because it assumes a closed system with only 2 distinct groups.
It seems your argument is that group B might not all be as affected, ok, so let’s do that one:
Group A1 : 9 Group A2 : 11 Total : 20
Group B1 : 3 Group B2 : 7 Total : 10
Say we do the same thing here and move 5 from Group A to Group B
Group A1 : 8 Group A2 : 7 Total : 15
Group B1 : 6 Group B2 : 9 Total : 15
Do that for any number of sub-groups, down to an individual person.
It seems your understanding of mathematics is about as grounded as your idea of fascism so i don’t think you’re going to see how what you’re saying doesn’t work.
You certainly can’t stop prejudice if you don’t understand what it means and when/where it applies.
It’s difficult to see whether or not a mathematical solution can be found if you don’t understand the practical applications of it.