Why is positive discrimination ok?

because we let them brow beat us into believeing your the worse thing in the world if your a white man so its easy to shame you into believeing such nonsense is just fine

Im sure that will coast along just fine for ever you know with no problems

Ilik Urgee wrote: »

Could only imagine the feminazis view on such a venture.

Their bare-breasted protests would only serve to delight my already happy customers.

DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: »

There's also the Society of Black Lawyers in London. If we tried starting a white equivalent we'd be exposed as Klan members. :pac:

But wouldn't that have had 100% of all lawyers at one stage?

(and don't be silly. Clan members wear big pointy hats, not wigs)

Ah, nothing quite like a context-free rant from someone who thinks being white is just about the hardest thing in the world to be. To be serious for a moment, though - the black police officer's association in England represents a definable subset of officers who have issues in common (the fact that there seems to be a pronounced discrimination in favour of white candidates for senior positions being one), while being a white police officer isn't the same thing at all: there's no commonality of cause for specifically white officers, unless you count the aforesaid racial bias in senior appointments - and if you form a white workers' union with the express aim of getting more than black workers, then you deserve to be called racist jerks.

Someone who isn't a straight white male will almost certainly have experienced treatment as an inferior by dint of their race, sexuality or gender; someone who is a straight white male is vanishingly unlikely to have experienced the same. As a result, representative organisations for minority groups exist to deal with real and substantive issues facing their members on the basis of their identity, while being a straight white male brings with it virtually zero issues and thus a representative organisation would have nothing constructive to do.

(I should point out that there is a small number of fields in which I could see the point of a representative organisation for men, but they're extremely specific and limited in range, and it would be unfair and illogical to use the example of, say, a tendency to rule in favour of the mother in family law cases to claim that minority representatives are therefore somehow less legitimate.)

The BMAs or black movie awards, can you imagine the outrage if we had the WMAs where only white people were allowed win awards!

On the subject of positive discrimination specifically: there are a small number of uncontroversial points which should start off the discussion.

1. There is a difference in life outcomes between members of different races in most countries.
2. This is not a consequence of inherent inferiority on the part of the members of races which find themselves underrepresented at the higher levels.
3. The only other explanation is that the system as currently constructed has a preexisting bias in favour of some groups and against others.

Got that? Good. We're agreed that if you're born black in America, you're less likely to go to college and have a white collar job and more likely to go to prison and die violently than someone born white, and it's not because you're inherently inferior.

The decision we then have to make is whether we're going to do something about that bias, and what that something will be. Really, there are three options:
1. Do nothing about it.
2. Fix the structures that lead to these biases.
3. Attempt to compensate in limited and defensible ways to lower the barriers preventing minority candidates from advancing.

Option one isn't really acceptable, unless you're a horrible person. Option two is the best option, but has two drawbacks: it's almost completely impossible, and it will take decades at least. Option three, therefore, presents itself. If you have a white candidate from the suburbs who scores 87% in your entrance exam, and a black candidate from the projects who scores 85%, then you take into account the results both would have been expected to get and see who did better. If suburban white kid comes from a school where the average score is 80%, then he or she is 7% ahead of the average for people with their background and resources. If black kid from the projects comes from a school where the average score is 50%, he or she is 35% clear of the average for people in the same situation. The white kid has nominally outperformed the black kid, but in terms of academic ability you're far more likely to see the black kid finish college with a first than see the white kid do the same - because they didn't start on a level playing field.

One last thing: I have absolutely zero time for the attitude that the beneficiaries of positive discrimination shouldn't be so treated and that they didn't get there on merit. Either you think that the way things are is perfectly normal, which means you think black people are inferior, or you want the existing gross inequalities to continue favouring white candidates ahead of black, which means you think white people deserve to be treated better. It's bigoted garbage disguised as high-minded "real" equality, stripped of any social or political context and shamelessly couching deeply racist arguments in anti-racist rhetoric.