General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: do men, who do not believe in white male privilege/entitlement oppose affirmative action? [View all]mzteris
(16,232 posts)people "like themselves".
The more commonality, the greater the chance of being picked. Same sex, same race, same school, same sport (do you play golf?), same fraternity, same home town/state, same likes/dislikes, same religion, same political stance/views, etc. . .
It's been studied and proven over and over in the HR field. That's why HR should always be involved in the hiring process. (Well, a well-trained HR anyway.)
Used to have a plant manager who wouldn't even consider someone with a "foreign sounding name" because they might "talk funny", etc... We finally had to strip down the resumes to nothing but experience/education to keep him from automatically discarding a candidate for anyone to speak with about a job. Even then, after a person proved their expertise and ability to do the job, he would block hiring - even if they DIDN'T "talk funny". Finally had to fire the guy for "poor job performance".
Anyone who doesn't believe racism and discrimination doesn't occur every damn day is delusional. The "best person for the job" is often overlooked or passed over or not even considered BECAUSE of who they are. We HAVE to make a very concerted EFFORT to have those who have been traditionally discriminated against even CONSIDERED for a job.
People don't understand Affirmative Action, how it works, the intention. None of it. The person still has to be QUALIFIED to DO the job. But yeah, if you have an "all white male" department, and the minority and/or woman is at least as EQUALLY QUALIFIED, then - well you do hire them. Diversity improves a company's performance and then improves the probability of increased diversity. Besides, all those other "white male" candidates not hired there, have an exponentially higher chance of being hired at almost any job for which they apply. Why? Because most managers, CEO's, etc - are all white males. Who play golf.
BTW -tell your son that they used to think "blacks" weren't smart enough to be a quarterback, much less a coach (unfortunately, it's not even "used to" - there's a whole damn lot of people who still think that.) And there was a time, AA's weren't even allowed to PLAY on the same team as white folks in any sport!!! Does he really believe there wasn't a QUALIFIED African American or other minority coach out there - Anywhere? Really? Especially considering the percentage of AA who even play the damn game is considerably higher than non-African Americans. And how many minorities OWN a sports team?