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From: smb@mhb5b.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.flame,net.politics
Subject: Re: racism and hi-tech
Message-ID: <442@mhb5b.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 13-Jun-83 10:14:48 EDT
Article-I.D.: mhb5b.442
Posted: Mon Jun 13 10:14:48 1983
Date-Received: Wed, 15-Jun-83 03:03:18 EDT
Lines: 37


	I don't necessarily agree that all of what mhb5b!smb calls
	"statistical discrimination patterns" are really discrimination
	or that they need to be remedied.  It is possible that some
	form of affirmative action is needed to insure promotion of
	deserving women and minorities.  However, if more men than
	women want to be police officers and more women want to be
	dress designers, what compelling reason is there to try to
	change such "societal patterns"?  I don't believe that we have
	to force the composition of every workplace to reflect the
	composition of society in order to solve the problem of
	discrimination.

I never advocated matching the composition of every workplace to that of
society; I'm fully aware of restrictions (such as interest and qualifications)
that would make such a goal impractical even if I felt it desirable.  But
one of the studies I had in mind when I wrote my note was about promotion
and pay patterns among women scientists.  *After* correcting for age,
experience, specialty, etc., the researchers found that women were promoted
less often, and even at comparable ranks received salaries that were 80% of
what their male colleagues received.  (This study was conducted by the U.S.
Department of Labor, and mentioned in Science News a few years ago.  I can
dig up the precise reference if anyone is interested.)

	Because affirmative action programs provide little incentive
	for giving full education and training to minorities, minority
	unemployment continues to be high; this allows minorities to
	allege that racism is rampant and allows bigots to allege that
	minorities are lazy and stupid.  I believe that the best
	solution to problems of discrimination is to give various
	elements of society a positive incentive to help *all* people
	those whose abilities are going to waste because of a lack of
	education and/or training.

On the contrary -- affirmative action provides plenty of incentive to supply
education and training; if you're going to hire someone anyway, wouldn't you
prefer that they were able to do the work?