Positive discrimination

[guerrillaradio]

Personally, I think it's contrary to the ideal of racial equal opportunity and it paves the way for resentment between races, but my opinions on this are not set in stone, so let's talk this shit out guys.

[monkeydust]

I'm not the greatest supporter of positive discrimination, but I feel that it's got a lot more criticism than it deserves.

As you rightly state, most of our laws "ensure" equality of opportunity, competing for a job there's no clause in the law saying "don't employ disabled people" or "don't employ women. Nor is there any clause in law stating that "women shouldn't be given political office" etc etc. I could go on here. My point is that clearly we have equality in law, in other words formal equality.

There's nothing wrong with this, but myself I don't feel that it always necessarily goes far enough. Obviously the law can't achieve exactly what it sets out to do in ay case realistically. More so in the case of equality of opportunity than with many other issues. Whilst the law can stop any blatant discrimination, it cannot supress any thoughts or feelings that people have against certain groups.

Let's take an example. A certain employer of company X may consider himself to be fair and objective in employing people suited for the job. He believes is the concept of a meritocracy, that the person best suited to the job should get the job. This job placement may not need a great deal of verbal communication. Suppose someone disabled applies for the job, suppose they're in a wheelchair and have speech difficulties for example. I would argue that some employers would immediately consider this kind of person to be incapable, even if they actually are perfectly suited to do the job. Is it so bad really, to set some kind of quotas for disabled workers?

Another, more clear cut example is an employer who has racist tendencies, even if he doesn't publically express them. The law states that Blacks should be considered on an equal footing to all others, but in reality there's nothing stopping an employer from having the discretion not to employ certain people.

What I would like to achieve is substantive equality, I feel that some small levels of quotas should be emplaced to try and avert discrimination. I do however, acknowledge your concern over resentment due to 'positive discrimination'.

There are two other areas where I'd support what you call 'positive discrimination'. The first is in our representative 'democracies'. As long as these stay in place, I would personally like to see a minimun number of women and people from different ethnic beckground, guaranteed parliamentary representation. At the moment, the majority of our parliamentary democracies, are dominated by white middle class men, I would like to see this end.

Secondly I feel that to an extent, whilst women have achieved equal pay to men when they share the same occupation. Traditionally female professions are still valued less than those of males. I would argue that perhaps some measures should be taken to increase pay in jobs where women work equally hard as men in other jobs, yet receive far less pay as a result.