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0 pointsjerf16y ago0 comments

"They go somewhere, and they are instantly assumed to be less competent."

So, why are "they" the majority of the workforce, a clear majority of college graduates, and trending up in both cases?

At some point it's time to stop arguing about theory and look about you. It's over. The male-WASP free ride is over. Maybe we've hit balance, maybe we haven't, but if we don't want to shoot right past the balance we better start looking around a bit before blindly spouting arguments from the 1960s. At some point you get to active discrimination against male-WASPs. Note how I carefully failed to phrase that as a question. And if it's not time to at least discuss the matter in light of the facts of my first paragraph, when will it be? Give me a concrete criterion for when we know we're finished.

Had I asked that question 20 years ago, one imagines the answer would be "When parity is reached", but since we've shot past that and it's still not enough, apparently that's not the real criterion.

This is a broad problem with politics right now; nobody knows when to say enough! Enough money has been spent on education, enough pension benefits have been given, enough has been spent on the military, enough affirmative action has been done. There has to be enough sometime.

     def enough_done_for(policy, effort):
         return False

is not a policy, it's a recipe for suicide.

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4 comments · 1 top-level

axle16y ago· 3 in thread

Exactly. So you believe your life would be better and easier if you were black or a woman, right? Would you agree to be black if it were possible right now?

jerfOP16y ago

Were you planning on even engaging with my point? I'm not sure why I should try to engage with yours if you're not going to engage with mine and instead fire back trite gotchas.

Apparently as a black woman I'm more likely to get a degree and more likely to get a job, so what was your question again? Deprogram yourself and look around you. You're running old code. If there is still vast reservoirs of systematic racism and sexism floating around they sure don't seem to be very effective!

axle16y ago

That's basically the problem - you don't understand. You don't understand that black men can't just go into the clubs that white people can, you don't understand that when white people meet black people, their faces are slightly less relaxed.

Take a trip as a white guy to Asia or Africa or somewhere. You are the pinnacle of society.

And we're not even talking Barack Obama mixed race, try being a real black person for a while. The systematic racism and discrimination is still there.

And when it comes to women - how many of your elected officials are women. That's democracy - the people choose the men.

If the world were equal, I would happily say all form of positive discimination should be abolished. But it's not equal - it's still a terribly unjust place.

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Retric16y ago

As a WM I would have no problem becoming a BM. At 30 it's less of an issue, but at 18 it would have been very helpful.

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