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From: andrews@ubc-cs.UUCP (James H. Andrews)
Newsgroups: can.politics,net.women
Subject: Re: Discrimination against x
Message-ID: <1133@ubc-cs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 3-Jul-85 13:34:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: ubc-cs.1133
Posted: Wed Jul  3 13:34:29 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 3-Jul-85 15:38:47 EDT
References: <893@mnetor.UUCP> <5642@utzoo.UUCP> <896@mnetor.UUCP> <15520@watmath.UUCP>
Reply-To: andrews@ubc-cs.UUCP (James H. Andrews)
Organization: UBC Department of Computer Science, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Lines: 36
Summary: 

In article <15520@watmath.UUCP> bstempleton@watmath.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes:
>While one might claim that it is an important social gools [sic] to ensure that
>"black female plumbers are paid as much as white male plumbers", ...

     I *do* claim this -- don't you?

>... it is
>also a very important social goal that superior plumbers are paid more
>than inferior plumbers....
>         ...  If somebody criticizes a hiring decision as sexist, and
>the employer responds that they think those [sic] chose the superior applicant,
>the government is required to set down standards to decide who is the
>superior applicant.
>Thank you, but no damn way I want this to happen....

     Employment policies will be independent of race and sex iff we have a
totally non-racist, non-sexist society.  We most assuredly do not have such
a society right now, and it would take several generations for such a society
to come about, if it does at all.  In the meantime, while the bigots get
educated and/or die off, it is important that we try to move towards equality
amongst races and sexes.  If an imposed solution is the only way, so be it.
We owe it to all our people.
     By the way, I am basically an optimist when it comes to the potential of
humans to move away from racial intolerance.  Skin tone and hair colour must
have been factors of discrimination in, say, 10th or 11th-century Britain,
indicating as they would racial origin (Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian,
Norman, etc.).  Obviously those racial distinctions have all but disappeared
in the genetic mix which now characterizes most English-speaking countries.
More recently, up until a few decades ago there was great prejudice against
Irish North Americans, which has by now dissolved into, at most, fairly mild
stereotypes.
     So racial tolerance can happen, but it happens on the individual level,
and cannot really be legislated, much as we would like it to be.  But we can
legislate against the effects of racial intolerance, such as different wages
for different races.  So let's do it as much as possible!
                --Jamie.