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From: trb@floyd.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: A Honky Speaks - (nf)
Message-ID: <1555@floyd.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 2-Jun-83 16:35:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: floyd.1555
Posted: Thu Jun  2 16:35:30 1983
Date-Received: Wed, 8-Jun-83 01:22:22 EDT
References: hpda.408
Lines: 119

Beatriz Infante observes that AA is working because she has noticed
that the quality of recruitable black engineers is much improved over
the past few years.  That's plain for her to see, and that's good in
some sense, but for her to say that that's evidence that AA is working
is avoiding some issues.  If "working" means that it is producing
results, then AA is working.  But if we want results that are
efficient with respect to the resources squandered, can you call that
"working?"  I can probably produce my own light bulbs for some
outrageous capital outlay, does that mean I'm better off not depending
on the store bought variety?

Blacks should certainly have educational opportunities.  I'm just
asking whether the productive ends justify the AA means.

Beatriz brings up an interesting point:

	It takes time for education to affect a whole generation;  you
	can't take a kid in high school and say *zap* you're now
	receiving equal education - the process must start much
	earlier, before elementary school.

Is AA teaching today's generation that they are all receiving an equal
chance?  I think not.  It's teaching some students who yesterday might
have received no chance that today they are receiving preferred
treatment.  It's teaching some students that the squeakiest wheel gets
greased, and if you have a problem involving discrimination, you'd
better belong to a group with a powerful lobby, like blacks, women,
Hispanic surnamed, etc, depending on location.  Is this what we want
to teach?  Is this what's meant by equality?

Is AA (as bvi puts it) educating to affect a whole generation?  I
would think that the desired effect of AA on the whole generation
would be for us to look at all of us as deserving equal opportunity,
but I know that when I think of AA that I think of blacks, women,
minorities, quotas, ridiculous meetings at work, and such, rather than
just lots of equal people.  I think that's the wrong way to lead the
whole generation.


In a previous netnews item, I disagreed with ssc-vax!jobe (the person
who posted the root note of this discussion) and claimed that everyone
has problems like his.  After jobe said that he was the only black
hacker in his vicinity, I mentioned that there were at least five
excellent black hackers I could think of where I went to school.
These two claims generated a bit of heat for me.

When I said that everyone had similar problems, I wasn't trying to
belittle the plight of blacks or to ignore their problems.  I was
trying to suggest that many of us are unsatisfied with our present
situations and often we feel that we are being passed over for
advancement opportunities because we possess some attribute which our
management doesn't fancy.  This could be anything from race to
religion to circle of friends to physical appearance to age.  I don't
see how blackness is any different from fatness or scruffiness when it
comes to not being promoted.  You might say that a person can get thin
or neat but a person can't become white, but I claim that denying your
rights to individuality isn't the solution, so if a black could become
a white, that would be just as unreasonable.

Again, I certainly believe that blacks have trouble advancing in many
companies, and if you look around I think you'll realize that it's not
just blacks but anyone who doesn't fit into an unreasonably strict
mold.

Some people wondered about my standards when I said that there were
five excellent black hackers at my school.  By excellent, I meant that
they have no trouble finding work and that they are successful as
hackers.  They excel in that sense, but I can't that all five of them
are first-rate wizards, though at least one of them is, maybe more.

Anyway, one of the old hacker pals to which I referred called me up
upon reading my netnews and we talked for a while about the how's and
why's of the black hackers where we went to school (Worcester Tech
(Worcester, Mass)).  He noted that back when he started school (early
'70's) blacks were not welcome at fraternity parties, and certainly
not at fraternities.  Attitudes like that kept blacks out of many
social circles, and hackers tended to be liberal-minded.  Hackers were
also outcasts.  In the good old days, Chem-E's made the big bucks and
they were the glory engineers.  Then EE's ME's and down on the bottom
were Civils.  Way below that somewhere came the CS majors, a low life
form known to the WPI engineers as "gweepers."  CS's didn't make as
much money as engineers in those days and they were looked down upon
as nerdy jerks (by engineers!).

I remember that there was more than one engineering student who would
only go to the computer center in the middle of the night for fear of
being seen by her peers.

Times changed, and now the CS majors aren't ridiculed any more, and
the Chem-E's are the ones who get their degrees and then get a job
bagging at the Grand Union.  I've noticed that people don't seem to go
into CS for the love of it like they used to, but that's fodder for
another discussion.

Anyway, it seems that when/where I went to school CS's were outcasts,
and, as such, accepted blacks, who were also outcasts.

In my further discussions with my old pal we discussed the plight of
the black hackers today.  He explained that there was a feeling among
them especially in the suit & tie industries like banking and insurance
that middle and upper management was still a white man's world.  I
suggested that even as a young bright Jew I didn't have much of a
chance in that world because of my image.  He also told me about some
of his own experience as a consultant and I realized that no matter
what a corporate image is, if your company's clients are bigoted
then you won't be able to make it as a black, and if you don't fit
into the mold then you will be stuck because it's pretty impossible to
prove that it's manifest destiny that you should be promoted.

After reading all this stuff I hope you might see why I don't like
ill-conceived broad stroke programs like AA.  They might produce
results, but at some unknown cost in money, effort and anguish.  And
while it's true that they do produce some result, there are still very
real and subtle problems of bigotry and prejudice which slip through
such a broad program.  Also, people rarely talk about the hatred
generated by the inequitable policies of AA and the result that that
hatred generates.

	Andy Tannenbaum   Bell Labs  Whippany, NJ   (201) 386-6491