I'm tempted to list a range of statistics to counter this, but I'm not sure angry numbers work as an argument against this. I think what they are probably feeling is a reduction in privileges as preferential treatment can no longer be assumed and a sense of entitlement is being eroded. So relatively, individually, they are worse off than they might have expected (although society is better-off), but, generally, probably still better off than a lot of groups.
What do you think?
7 comments:
It comes down to the question of what is meant by equal rights. If from now on everyone should be treated as equal regardless of age, race, gender or sexuality then that is fine.
However when groups are put together for the exclusive membership of any group, regardless of whether they've previously been discriminated against, still counts as discrimination even if it is set up with the noblest of intentions.
The question that should be asked is whether anyone in these specialist groups would feel ok by being excluded by those that they are currently excluding.
This is something that annoys me at times, and yes, I'm a young white male.
What sort of groups are you thinking of?
They're hoodies. So yeah, i do think actually that there is a bit of discrimination.
Think I agree with you generally Sarah.
What is perceived as discrimination, is often more accurately an enforced/unwilling giving up of power, influence and privalege.
Trouble is all of that felt like the status quo to those in whichever privaleged group, so its loss can be easily perceived as being unjust.
My level of sympathy is often directly proposrtional to the degree of support they gave to the previously unpreferred group/s.
For example, a colleague who left South Africa, because his consultancy business struggled in recent years to win public contracts because they didn't meet the employment diversity criteria that had been introduced. This apparently was completely outrageous and racist/political correctness-gone-mad etc etc and he didn't want his son growing up in a society in which he would face this sort of discrimination etc etc.
Of course surely the real question is why his business (of a reasonable size) didn't employ a single non-white face in the first place?
I think what c-and-b is talking about is positive action. We'll be talking about this in university in the next few weeks so I'll have a bit more of an idea about it then. I feel uncomfortable about the idea because it feels like positive discrimination, but currently I think it is necessary - when we have equality, then let's stop and treat everyone equally. But at the moment, the unrepresentativeness found at senior management level and on boards acts as a barrier in itself.
Positive discrimination is still discrimination. There are arguments as to whether it's justified or not.
I don't see things like the lack of women in boardrooms as entirely down discrimination as such (there have been a number of successful female businesswomen), although it clearly exists. You can only strive create equality of opportunity... how people react to that opportunity and the age/sex/race breakdown that comes out of that is affected by many other things as well, such as cultural background. If you want to address the imbalance the answer is to find the causes, not merely stack the deck in favour of one group.
As I said, positive action is different to positive discrimination. Positive discrimination is illegal. Positive action involves looking at where certain groups (men, women, ethnic minorities) are under-represented and then taking action to address this by helping them to overcome barriers. This might involved targeted recruitment or additional training or work experience. They then compete for jobs on merit, equally with everyone else, but have had some help to get to a position where the playing field is more level.
Post a Comment