RE: Employment discrimination is alive and well

[Greg Peisert <gpeisert@jamesgregory.com>]

Laura, Margaret;

  You know what I find interesting about discrimination...it is 
fundamentally counter-productive to the very people who are doing it. When 
a company engages in that kind of behavior, they eliminate their 
opportunity to take full advantage of the talent pool that is out there. 
The more they discriminate, the more they cut off their own potential. It 
boggles the mind that the idiots who engage in these practices can't seem 
to see that.

  Again, however, I'm torn with respect to the solution. On the one hand, I 
would like to see the "remedy" for the problem addressed by the competitors 
of these discriminatory businesses. By taking advantage of the full talent 
pool available to them, companies that do not engage in discriminatory 
practices should be able to attract a more diverse, more flexible, and more 
capable workforce. They should be able to get the discriminators where it 
hurts them the most...in the pocketbook, and put them out of business. But, 
that's a slow, uncertain process, and often there are no effective 
competitors in a given market.

  On the other hand, affirmative action carries with it a multitude of 
problems, as a number of thoughtful black leaders have articulated.

  My guess is that the solution lies somewhere in the middle. One of the 
problems with cultural change is that it is a damnably slow process. You 
can pass laws, and you can try to enforce them, and that is necessary. But 
changing the way people really think and function is a far more difficult 
and time-consuming process. And that's what it takes. It takes a change in 
mindset and culture. As long as people cling to their blind prejudices and 
fears, they will find ways to subvert the process.

  So...I wonder...are there some innovative ways to approach changing 
mindset and culture that we have not yet explored? I've often wondered what 
would happen if we took about $30 billion a year out of things like tobacco 
subsidies, farm subsidies (yes, I think farms should be subject to the free 
market like every other business), the IRS (via a vastly simpler tax 
system), and by closing about 400 other non-value-added government 
departments, and used it to set up a network of counseling services that 
would help educate people in family systems, work with young parents and 
teach them how to deal with practical problems of raising children...in 
short, provide a framework for helping address the "normal neuroses" that 
permeate American life.

  What would happen if thousands or hundreds of thousands of troubled and 
dysfunctional families took a big step toward emotional health? What would 
happen if we could, on a fairly large scale, make real progress in 
self-growth, self-actualization (in the sense of healthy psychological 
autonomy), healthy self-esteem and emotional "connectedness" (including, by 
the way, the integration of the male and female parts of 
ourselves...something with which I am very familiar). What would happen if 
people, on a large scale, learned how to work through their terrible inner 
pain? What if they began to get past the ineffective childhood defense 
mechanisms they needed early in life but which are now inappropriate for an 
adult? [Yes, Laura...I'm very familiar with psychotherapy. I'll have to 
tell you about my 'former life' sometime, when I was seriously considering 
going into that field, took many hours of clinical training, and worked at 
a counseling center. ;-)] What if people, on a large scale, took a step 
toward being "whole"? I know...I sound ridiculous...Like John Lennon in 
"Just Imagine." But, I wonder...  What kind of difference would it make? It 
would be interesting to take a city or a whole state and try it for a few 
years, and see what happens.

  By the way, Laura, thanks for relating the information on WOW. Now THAT 
is the kind of an organization that I could get really enthusiastic about 
supporting! Are they spreading out "chapters" to other cities?

--Greg