Discussion on Affirmative Action

ErasmusMRA · 2012-10-29T23:47:48+00:00

If equality of outcome is the goal, why don't we have affirmative action to force women into fishing, logging, farming, and garbage pickup jobs? They're almost exclusively male too.

EpicJ · 2012-10-29T23:53:48+00:00

I think they're bad because instead of fixing the "problem" ie people thinking women can't do the job, they are doing a quick fix that in the long term doesn't help.

srasmus4 · 2012-10-29T23:55:27+00:00

AA is flawed because you're instituting mandatory sexism to battle non-institutional, non-mandatory sexism.

Equality of outcome is not a worthy goal. Equality of opportunity is the way to go, and we already have it.

BuncyTheFrog · 2012-10-29T23:46:49+00:00

Personally, I don't like Affirmative Action; I may have some biases in my day-to-day, but I know that when I put my business/leader hat on, I am to my best effort neutral and unbiased. In that frame of mind, I look at AA as an effort to work toward a potentially hollow goal at the cost of productivity or quality. If I have to choose between person A and B, and person A is better, I will choose person A. If I'm forced to choose person B for any reason, I have acted fraudulently in my mind.

Men and women, more so than any other way to divide adults, will tend to make different decisions regarding careers and education. If that means that there will be "male" industries and "female" industries, so be it. I'd rather hire a team of people who all earned their positions by being the best, rather than being the best compromise.

rightsbot · 2012-10-29T23:24:19+00:00

Post text automatically copied here. (Why?) (Report a problem.)

Aaod · 2012-10-30T05:38:07+00:00

Affirmative action to me is completely flawed. To attempt to compensate for flaws and problems it stacks more weight on one side of the scale which in turn just makes it unbalanced in the other direction and makes everyone angry. How it should work is everyone from birth has a equal opportunity but what they make of that opportunity and their choices is their own doing. Due to massive wealth inequality and sociological affects this will never happen in most countries. Their is no point in attempting to weigh something with a scale when it is internally unbalanced from the start meaning if it reads 5 pounds one way at the start it is pointless to use that scale until it is fixed. But because it makes idiots happy and because it is a easy bandaid fix which both the public and our leaders happy it is what we use.

actanonverba8 · 2012-10-30T06:17:56+00:00

I liken affirmative action to feminists' attempts (successful in some jurisdictions) to lower the standard of evidence in sexual assault cases so that only the word of the the accuser is enough to convict. In both cases, there most certainly will be some deserving people that get helped that otherwise would have been out of luck. However, in both cases the price is too high due to a) wrongful punishment of innocents and b) fraud. In sexual assault cases, the wrongful punishment will be in the form of innocent men going to prison. In the case of affirmative action, innocent people that don't meet the AA descriptive criteria but are otherwise deserving (sometimes more so) will be punished. Fraud in sexual assault cases is easy to understand and take the form of lying (which could be for many reasons from spite to mistaken identity to capitulating to family or prosecutor pressure). Fraud in affirmative action comes many forms. First and most importantly, is the problem of Marxist-type misinformation and generalizations about who is "oppressed" or "disadvantaged" and who is not. Sorry, but the truth is that in no sane person's mind is an upper middle class white female more "disadvantaged" getting into a university's computer science program than is a working class white male. Other examples of fraud in AA including distorting ancestry or financial means. Affirmative Action is wrong in principle alone but, beyond that, bigger government is almost never the solution for society's unfairness (especially outside of the local level) because it just creates new hierarchies and opportunities for corruption (and taxes to boot).

AndIMustScream · 2012-11-01T03:09:44+00:00

Is affirmative action fundamentally flawed?

yes. Basically the reasoning behind AA is this: "Certain 'minority' groups have been disadvantaged by bigots in the past, therefore we must forcefully give them an advantage."

The problem with this is that nowadays bigotry is much less prevalent, but the advantages given remain.

Its a touchy subject. Its also a subject that is extremely divisive.

TracyMorganFreeman · 2012-11-01T04:01:50+00:00

Affirmative action is well intended by deeply flawed ethically and functionally. It creates situations where someone may get a job based on sex or race, even over a better qualified candidate. In it's effort to create an environment where sex/race doesn't matter, it *makes it matter, by putting an artificial value on it.

It forces companies to potentially take on lesser qualified candidates. it forces men to compete with everyone but women only themselves in many cases(or at least not with as many men); it's rather insulting to women that they need help to compete with men, and implies they weren't good enough on their own. This increases scrutiny of women even well qualified ones, and when a lower qualified woman is hired via AA, it only serves to reinforce sexist employers' perceptions of women.

Some claim "diversity is a good thing", which is only half true. Diversity of all kinds is not economically valuable or productive-unless we punish people for not doing so, then it would be a self fulfilling notion-diversity of talent does. There is nothing unique about women individually or as a group that makes them so valuable as to warrant special treatment. Women are valuable in the workforce for the same reason men are: When they are productive and talented, not because they're men or women.

AA is hypocritical, and more importantly infringes on individual liberty and is counterproductive. You don't fix the problem(assuming we grant underrepresentation of women is inherently a problem) by addressing the symptom.

Title	Discussion on Affirmative Action
Author	srasmus4
Upvotes	4
Comments	16
Date	October 29, 2012 11:23 PM UTC (13 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/12b0s0/discussion_on_affirmative_action/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/discussion-on-affirmative-action.1010276 https://theredarchive.com/post/1010276

Comments