Re: Employment discrimination is alive and well

[Margaret Tarbet <tarbet@swaa.com>]

Laura wrote:
>Initially -- from its inception -- affirmative action was never meant to be
>a "quota" system.  I have written on this subject, as well as worked for
>years dealing with issues like this.  One of the things that happened along
>the way is that corporate executives -- who didn't want anybody telling them
>they had to interview/consider/hire qualified minorities and women -- turned
>affirmative action on its head; they are the ones who turned it into a
>"quota" system; they are the ones who fueled the rancor of white males, by
>lowering the bar, so-to-speak.  I find it fascinating the lengths to which
>corporations have gone to twist and abuse affirmative action into something
>it was NEVER intended to be.
>
>Affirmative action, in writ, was and is about "establishing goals and
>timetables" for training, hiring and promoting minorities and women into
>jobs FOR WHICH THEY QUALIFY but which they would other-wise be kept out.
>This is, in a nutshell, the language of affirmative action.  Yet over the
>years, as I said, it has been twisted, reworded, abused in order to get rid
>of it.

As a matter of fact, i have copies of the original guiding
documents, and of course you are absolutely correct, Laura.

Quotas -- the bogey of the far right -- were imposed on businesses
by the courts rather infrequently -- my memory says fewer than a
dozen times.  In each case, the imposition was due to the
organisation egregiously 'playing dumb' and claiming they couldn't
find qualified minority/women applicants.    A certain cotton mill
in SC (Stevens?) was the most stunning example of that, as I recall.

Many organizations imposed quotas _on themselves_ when it was clear
that lower-level staff were avoiding doing the right thing, but the
courts hardly ever went so far.

And of course those who complain about quotas typically ignore
history, when the unacknowledged quotas was 100% white male for any
prestigious, well-paid job.  

AA merely says that organisations must take some kind of actual
steps ('affirmative action') to ensure their staff demographics
reflect the demographics of the surrounding population.   They could
do it however they liked, as long as they did it in an effective
way, or demonstrated why in their situation it's impossible.   Hard
for anyone of good will to complain about that.