Penn State recently hosted a debate on affirmative action between Reginald Jones, a conservative black radio talk show host, and George Curry, editor in chief of the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service.
I was particularly struck by two comments from Mr. Curry:
He said that because of affirmative action, 5 million people had received jobs who otherwise would not have gotten them….
….
Curry said that affirmative action was needed to decrease the dominance of white men in upper management.
I wonder where that 5 million figure came from, and how Mr. Curry knows that none of them would have been hired without affirmative action. And isn’t affirmative action a woefully inefficient, indirect way “to decrease the dominance of white men in upper management”?
Why not simply fire them?
It’s like politicians who claim to have “created” jobs. Politicians don’t create jobs, at best they create a positive business environment for entrepreneurs to create them.
“He said that because of affirmative action, 5 million people had received jobs who otherwise would not have gotten them….”
Which, of course, means that 5 million people were denied employment because they were the “wrong” color and/or gender.
I’m skeptical of the 5 million too, and I’m really skeptical that those 5 million were “created”, unless were talking about diversity counselors, diversity consultants, etc., and even then that money could have been used to create real jobs…
But here is my question: if those supposed 5 million jobs weren’t created, doesn’t that just mean 5 million people were displaced who shouldn’t have been, presumably the white men Curry doesn’t like?
As for firing those white men in upper management; never going to happen. They’re the ones instituting affirmative action, so of course they’re not going cut themselves.
Geraldine writes:
>>>”But here is my question: if those supposed 5 million jobs weren’t created, doesn’t that just mean 5 million people were displaced who shouldn’t have been, presumably the white men Curry doesn’t like?”
Not neccessarily. That would only be true if you believe that ALL 5 million allegedly white men were qualified to hold those positions in the first place.
Those who simply assume those alleged white men were qualified simply because…well… they’re “white men” are the people who need the most “outreach” and “diversity” training in their lives, IMHO.
–Cobra
The “5 million” number is particularly ridiculous. As per the census bureau, there are about 36 million blacks in the U.S.
About 12 million of those are under 18, and another 2.5 are over 65. Eliminate those, and we’re talking about a working-age population of 22 million, give or take. So, according to him, about 1-in-4 black adults would be unemployed without AA.
Let’s look at it another way. The census bureau says that there are about 15 million black workers in the U.S. According to him, 1 of 3 of them owe their jobs to AA.
Perhaps this professor should be in an innumeracy debate rather than an AA debate.
“Not neccessarily.”
No, I’m assuming that affirmative action over that period of time is what it has generally has been proven to be–giving someone a job over a white person who is more qualified.
Now, if this guy is talking about affirmative action just in the sense of equal opportunity and non-discrimination, that’s different.
And I don’t think all white men are qualified for their jobs. I think a lot of the executives (of any race or gender) are over paid for what they do (think Ken Lay and Skilling).
How pathetic does a commenter have to be to claim that a “fully qualified” (as AA supporters argue) black applicant needs skin color quotas to beat out an unqualified white applicant?
Mikem writes:
>>>”How pathetic does a commenter have to be to claim that a “fully qualified” (as AA supporters argue) black applicant needs skin color quotas to beat out an unqualified white applicant?”
First of all, who’s talking about “skin color quotas”?
“Pathetic” is a word I would use to describe a CURRENT situation regarding race and hiring where whites ex-felons have better odds of being hired than blacks with no criminal records.
http://www.princeton.edu/~pager/race_at_work.pdf
“Pathetic” is a word I would use to describe a CURRENT situation regarding race and hiring where whites ex-felons have better odds of being hired than blacks with no criminal records.
Of course, you don’t talk about the perverse incentives of our current anti-discrimination laws. An employer knows he or she can easily fire an ex-con if he doesn’t work out. But he knows that he risks accusations of discrimination if he fires a minority. The harder it is to fire someone, the more reluctant someone will be to hire that person in the first place.