magz wrote:
I don't know, I live in a different country. For me, giving additional points on exams for being in some group works exactly the way you describe.
If you claim the programs don't work like that - how do they work?
"Giving additional points" is also not how that works.
The Equal Employment and Opportunity Act, and it's related federal office, states that government agencies, and agencies which have standing contracts with any government agency, are required to maintain a body of cohorts representative of the demographics of the area and / or selection pool, should the pool of qualified applicants be capable of reflecting it. Don't worry, I'll break that down later.
It does NOT mean you have to maintain an arbitrary percentage of diverse employees or students. It does NOT mean you have to give positions to people who are unqualified. It does NOT mean you have to fill seats regardless of whether or not people apply for the position.
What it DOES mean is that if you have 200 equally suitable candidates, and 100 positions, and 1/3 of those 200 people are minorities, then approximately 1/3 of those accepted should also be of minority status. If you fail to do so, you don't get hit with a "quota penalty" or something, you just get lightly investigated, and if they find nothing amiss, nothing happens. If every applicant just happens to be a white male, in a city or town that is 90% white anyways, you are not required to "import" minorities to fill some imaginary quota. If the minority individuals do not met the requirements for that position, they are not required to be given it. If you are asked why you don't have any minorty students, and you show them that all of the applicants were genuinely unqualified, or that none actually even applied, you do *not* get in trouble. They do *not* force you to take in people who do not meet the established standards. They do NOT force you to take in people who have not even applied.
And in case you're wondering, yes, you can in fact get in trouble for the reverse. If an area is split 60 / 40 white to black, and the qualified people applying for a job are also 60 / 40 white black, and everyone working there is black, they can be investigated too. If a school gets 100 equally qualified applicants, 60 / 40 white to black ratio, and the acceptance demographic is 90% black, it can be investigated. If wrongdoing is found, the same penalties apply.
You still have to meet the standards, pass the tests, do the job. You don't get free points or free passes. AT MOST, what a school might do is make small procedural exceptions, like let someone in who hasn't taken a specific pre-requisite class, but still has demonstrated a strong ability in that field, with the caveat that they have to take *and* pass that class first, and if they don't they're out. You don't get a "free win". You get "one shot", based on real evidence.
In the case of women in STEM, in america, girls have often been discouraged from taking maths and sciences in favor of more "practical" skills, like cooking and typing and writing. (/sexism). Or perhaps a young lady became a single mother and had to drop out of highschool. Culturally encouraged to marry young. Whatever. In any case, these individuals discover later in life they have an aptitude and an interest in maths and sciences. So to make it easier for them to enter the field, they're allowed to take those math classes first, as part of their degree program, since they may not have had a chance to take them previously. It's to make up for lost time, not absent ability. "we see you haven't taken calculus, which we require - but we also see you have strong math skills from our entry exam, so we'll let you in, SO YOU CAN TAKE calculus", cos you can't take a class if you don't get into school, and then if you pass calculus, you meet the requirements anyways and you're still in - but if you fail calc, you don't get a "freebie" and passed on anyways, you get kicked back out. You had your shot. Try again later.
The idea that free diplomas are being handed out at the expense of actual deserving students is just a trope to piss off casually racist people who buy into stereotypes, cos it's easier to blame a "free handout program" than to admit that maybe you or your kid isn't as smart as you want to think. "I'd have gotten in if they didn't have to give minorities free spots!" they tell themselves.
It doesn't force diversity. It just makes it harder to stack the deck.
AND
It ONLY applies to government agencies, and entities with standing contracts with the government. It does NOT apply to privately owned companies or businesses who have no association with the federal government. It does NOT apply to private schools who do not take government funds or have government contracts. In the private sector, the rules are a bit different, and even more lax. They get the basic "You can't discriminate based on age sex race nationality religion etc" with no additional requirements.
Some people DO get degrees they don't deserve. But not as often as people think. If colleges handed out diplomas to every random idiot, the diplomas would be worthless, and nobody would want to go there. Schools value their reputation too much to unnecessarily tarnish it by associating with people who haven't earned them. That's not to say it doesn't happen anyways, but not as much as people believe, and usually not for affirmative action reasons. It's far more commonly either rich / powerful parents, or highly profitable athletic ability.
04 Nov 2020, 10:27 am
