You Shouldn’t Hire Someone Based on Their Race Or Gender? Affirmative!!

According to dictionary definition (as in dictionary.com) affirmative action is the encouragement of increased representation of women and minority-group members, especially in employment. This definition is all well and good. However….

As far as I see it, I don’t think these things should be highly prioritized as something to look at when hiring. I mean, I certainly support equality in the workplace, in education (college acceptance) and in the world in general. However, the system of affirmative action is fundamentally flawed. By forcing workplaces—or at least encouraging them—to hire based at least in part by the sheer fact that the applicant is or isn’t a woman, is or isn’t black or Asian or Hispanic or Caucasian, to me, goes against equality in its essence.

I think that people should be hired or not, accepted or not, based on their credentials, their merit as a person, rather than on the basis of filling a quota. Sorry Sam Bernstein, we know you scored better on the SATs, had better grades, and volunteered at a soup kitchen for six years, but the University regrets to inform you that we just needed a female Asian student, and since you are African American, you didn’t make the cut. We are accepting Betsay Mae instead, even though her main accomplishment was blowing up a volcano at the science fair convention last year.

To set a certain disclaimer, I don’t think people who have blown up a science fair volcano shouldn’t get into college or that Asian people only get into college because they are filling a quota.

But come on. If I interviewed for a super-awesome job, got hired, and found out I was hired over someone else because I’m a woman, I would quit. That’s bull****. I don’t want to be hired because of my sex. I want to be hired because I’m qualified!

The aim of affirmative action, of course, is to prevent people from hiring only white people or only black people or only males and being racist, sexist, and the like, but what it is doing is preventing employers from hiring based on merit. No employer wants to be called a racist because their staff has a whatever majority, even if that just happened to be the race of the most qualified candidates.

Race shouldn’t even be an option on a college application.Universities shouldn’t be yelling about how they have more diversity because they sectioned off a certain number of student’s that were black, white, female, male, Asian, etc. They should say, “we have the most qualified students!” Not “we have 6% black and 6% Asian and 6% blah blah blah.
Granted, some minority groups are more likely to grow up in poverty. Thus, they don’t have access to the same education and same preparation for college. People who fall into these categories should be looked at with that in mind—if you lived in a place where it was uncommon for your math teacher to show up more than once a week (and this DOES HAPPEN), you should get a little slack when you’re in a race with the kid with math teachers and tutors and college camps on his or her resume. That’s a different issue altogether.

Basically, what I am saying is that people should be judged on their merit, not on things (like race, gender, and socioeconomic upbringing) that they can’t control. It’s as simple as that. And though that’s what affirmative actions aim is, it’s not what it is doing.

We Don’t See Racism Until It’s Directed At Us.

Why are we so willing to believe the worst when it isn’t about us?

I feel like this post is going to be far less effective than had it been written directly subsequent to the accident (my best friend and I had a good shouting match about it for hours afterwards, in the way only best friends can, shouting agreement and restatements and furthering opinion in an excited frenzy of crazed outrage), but I will do my upmost to convey the amount of OH MY DARCY YOU ARE STUPID that was spewing out of my head and making the air heavy as all ****.

“The Situation” happened in my psychology recitation, which was taught by a non-white graduate student at URI. Mind you, the only reason I cite her race is that it is somewhat relevant to the story.

We were talking about the idea of white privilege, and we eventually got around to racism, which was APPARENTLY defined as when a majority treats a minority as inferior (Specifically white people treating minority groups such as African American or Hispanic people unkindly).

I’m sorry, but I was under the impression that racism is when someone is judged merely based on their race (“good” or “bad”). I didn’t realize that minorities couldn’t be racist.

Maybe I misunderstood. So I asked, to clarify. She explained. “White people are the majority, so they have the power, so they can be racist and inflict…”

WOAH WOAH WOAH. Let’s hit this with some logic. Thank faith in humanity, other people spoke up.

“So, the Hispanic population is higher than whites in Texas. Does that mean only Hispanics can be racist in Texas?”

“Well, uh, no, because they have to be in a position of power.”

“Angel Taveras is the Governor of Rhode Island.”

“Our President is half black.”

The T.A. was getting uncomfortable now. Somehow, because it did not directly relate to her, the idea that only white people could be racist was never questioned or thought to be illogical and WRONG until now.

The class ended. But I was still fuming. It got me thinking about three things:

–>Reverse Racism

–>Scholarship Aid

–>Affirmative Action

So most applicable to this situation, the idea of “Reverse racism.” When used, people generally are talking about non-white individuals judging white people on their race. Others use it when someone is stereotyped to be good at something because of their race (all black people can play basketball, all Asians are smart, all men know technology or auto repair etc)

Reverse: the opposite of

Racism: judging someone not on the content of their character but purely on their race, whether that judgement is “good” or “bad” (i.e. black people are good at basketball, white men can’t jump, etc).

So…reverse racism is just not being racist at all. Reverse racism, by definition, is defining a person by who they are and not their race.

Racism of Asians against black people or white people against Asians or Indians against Mexicans is just that-racism. There is nothing reverse about it. White people can be racist. But so can everyone else.

Next time: Affirmative Action

Six Post Topics

Okay, so I’m not sure how I’m supposed to describe six different posts (I ended up coming up with seven) in one sentence, but here we go; The posts will include, separately but with reference to each other: affirmative action, “reverse” racism, the LGBT Community: High School, College, scholarships based on skin color or ethnicity, gender in the classroom, anti-prejudice campaigns in schools, and extracurricular activities and prejudice involved there.