"How do you know that? How do you know he's not hiring based on merit (Spanish speaking, good looking)? You can't know that."
Okay Catherine, this is getting silly now. This conversation isn't worth taking up days more of either of our time. Yes, sure. The hypothetical man who "only hires hot Latina chicas" *for his IT company* might not actually be racist or sexist. Maybe he's hiring purely on merit. Jesus, what a stupid argument to try to defend.
You're not for not discriminating, you're for an imaginary world where people who discriminate will magically change their ways of their own accord just as quickly as if there was some external pressure to stop being bigots. Meanwhile, all the people who suffer because of their bigotry are supposed to wait patiently and hope it works out. Again, you're laser focused on the bigot's right to be a bigot and seemingly blind to the people who are being discriminated against. This is not being "all for not discriminating". It's being "all for bigotry".
And lastly, you example like most of your others, is badly thought out. First, slavic people are the best programmers in the world? You can't just assert things like this. In what programming language? By what criteria? Where is your evidence?
But let's assume that you're correct. If there are atomic bombs placed all over the earth, I want the best programmers, ***NOT BY RACE BUT BY ABILITY!!!!!!!*** to disarm them. I'm not going to shout, "Get me a Slav! Catherine says they're the best programmers!!!" I'm going to ask who the best person is for this job (or more sensibly who the best few peopler so they can confer) and I don't care, not even a little bit, what colour their skin is or what they have between their legs. This is not the same as working for a random IT company.
Again, you're throwing arguments in front of me that have nothing to do with me and it's infuriating. I've never once spoken about equality of outcome. I've never once argued in favour of it. But you've obviously argued with somebody else about it and so you're wasting my time asking me to defend something I'm against.
Anything I can say in response will just be retreating old ground so I'm signing off here. I think we've spent more than enough time presenting our points of view on this. If nothing I"ve said has convinced you, I don't think anything will.
Ugh. Okay, I'm only replying because I can't have you leaving this discussion thinking that this argument actually has any merit. I answered this point in my second reply to you. Again, the source of my frustration is...well, that your arguments are racist and poorly researched. But also that you keep making me repeat myself:
"I am against any hiring practice where people are discriminated against for things that don't affect their practical ability to do the job."
I guess you could make the case, in your gross and sexist carwash, that not being good-looking affected your ability to do the job. Though even there you'd be on shaky ground. Strip clubs hire fat women and women who aren't traditionally good looking and obviously there's a market for them. So it's still discrimination. But I don't see anybody going to court over it.
However, you can't argue that being white or being a "hot Latina" makes you better at IT (and please don't make some disingenuous argument about "WhAt If ThEy NeEd To Be SpAnIsH sPeAkInG?? if that had been your original point, you would have mentioned that in your original argument. Don't try moving the goalposts because you're wrong).
If an IT company, hiring on merit, legitimately finds that the top 100 applicants all happen to be white males, there's no problem with that. That would be equality of opportunity in action.
But as IT is a learned skill, you'd have to believe that there's something inherent to white people, that makes them so superior to all other people, that in a fair application process, not one person of any other colour made the grade.
And don't get me wrong, back in the sixties, that was the case. But it wasn't that black people and women were inferior or incapable. It was that black people and women weren't given the same access to education and training as white men were. So some kind of "action" was required, to "affirm" the abilities of these people who had been historically marginalised. In fact, if you actually learned about these things instead of being guided by your wild, unsupported fears, you'd know that white women have been the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action:
You know what? You're right. I don't know your motives. But you've spent (an extremely long) time telling me your views. And everything you've said so far suggests that a) you haven't thought about these issues very clearly at all. And b) to the extent you have thought about them, you side firmly with the bigots.
But I might be wrong. So let's find out.
You keep saying you're all for not discriminating, but as far as I can see, you haven't suggested anything that might prevent it other than what is effectively a "wait and see" approach. So let's figure out what you're *for* with regards to ending discrimination with the following question.
Black people were forced, by law, to live as second (or third) class citizens in America. After the end of slavery (where they essentially built the entire country and supported the economy for free), they had no access to resources, jobs or power.
White people, most of whom considered them worthless subhumans, had control of absolutely everything. If you were in charge at that time, what would you have done about that?
Wow, really? You hadn’t considered that black people couldn’t boycott businesses they weren’t allowed into? You hadn’t thought it through even that far? Hopefully you see why I said you hadn’t thought about this from the point of view of the victims of bigotry.
It’s also worth noting that the only “coercion” that actually led to civil war was when the south was “coerced” into not keeping black people as slaves. Boycotts probably wouldn’t have worked then either…
This is the point I’ve been trying to make to you this whole time. It’s fine to be against coercion. I am too. Sincerely. But you have to consider what you’re weighing it against. I was getting frustrated with you precisely because it was obvious you’d spent a lot of time worrying about the *potential* harm to racists and next to none thinking about to fix the *actual* harm being done to black people.
"I thought I did - boycotts. They proved pretty damn effective throughout history."
So your solution, in a world where black people are not allowed to frequent white-only businesses, or attend white-only schools, is for black people to boycott those businesses and schools?
"How do you know that? How do you know he's not hiring based on merit (Spanish speaking, good looking)? You can't know that."
Okay Catherine, this is getting silly now. This conversation isn't worth taking up days more of either of our time. Yes, sure. The hypothetical man who "only hires hot Latina chicas" *for his IT company* might not actually be racist or sexist. Maybe he's hiring purely on merit. Jesus, what a stupid argument to try to defend.
You're not for not discriminating, you're for an imaginary world where people who discriminate will magically change their ways of their own accord just as quickly as if there was some external pressure to stop being bigots. Meanwhile, all the people who suffer because of their bigotry are supposed to wait patiently and hope it works out. Again, you're laser focused on the bigot's right to be a bigot and seemingly blind to the people who are being discriminated against. This is not being "all for not discriminating". It's being "all for bigotry".
And lastly, you example like most of your others, is badly thought out. First, slavic people are the best programmers in the world? You can't just assert things like this. In what programming language? By what criteria? Where is your evidence?
But let's assume that you're correct. If there are atomic bombs placed all over the earth, I want the best programmers, ***NOT BY RACE BUT BY ABILITY!!!!!!!*** to disarm them. I'm not going to shout, "Get me a Slav! Catherine says they're the best programmers!!!" I'm going to ask who the best person is for this job (or more sensibly who the best few peopler so they can confer) and I don't care, not even a little bit, what colour their skin is or what they have between their legs. This is not the same as working for a random IT company.
Again, you're throwing arguments in front of me that have nothing to do with me and it's infuriating. I've never once spoken about equality of outcome. I've never once argued in favour of it. But you've obviously argued with somebody else about it and so you're wasting my time asking me to defend something I'm against.
Anything I can say in response will just be retreating old ground so I'm signing off here. I think we've spent more than enough time presenting our points of view on this. If nothing I"ve said has convinced you, I don't think anything will.
Ugh. Okay, I'm only replying because I can't have you leaving this discussion thinking that this argument actually has any merit. I answered this point in my second reply to you. Again, the source of my frustration is...well, that your arguments are racist and poorly researched. But also that you keep making me repeat myself:
"I am against any hiring practice where people are discriminated against for things that don't affect their practical ability to do the job."
I guess you could make the case, in your gross and sexist carwash, that not being good-looking affected your ability to do the job. Though even there you'd be on shaky ground. Strip clubs hire fat women and women who aren't traditionally good looking and obviously there's a market for them. So it's still discrimination. But I don't see anybody going to court over it.
However, you can't argue that being white or being a "hot Latina" makes you better at IT (and please don't make some disingenuous argument about "WhAt If ThEy NeEd To Be SpAnIsH sPeAkInG?? if that had been your original point, you would have mentioned that in your original argument. Don't try moving the goalposts because you're wrong).
If an IT company, hiring on merit, legitimately finds that the top 100 applicants all happen to be white males, there's no problem with that. That would be equality of opportunity in action.
But as IT is a learned skill, you'd have to believe that there's something inherent to white people, that makes them so superior to all other people, that in a fair application process, not one person of any other colour made the grade.
And don't get me wrong, back in the sixties, that was the case. But it wasn't that black people and women were inferior or incapable. It was that black people and women weren't given the same access to education and training as white men were. So some kind of "action" was required, to "affirm" the abilities of these people who had been historically marginalised. In fact, if you actually learned about these things instead of being guided by your wild, unsupported fears, you'd know that white women have been the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action:
https://www.vox.com/2016/5/25/11682950/fisher-supreme-court-white-women-affirmative-action
You know what? You're right. I don't know your motives. But you've spent (an extremely long) time telling me your views. And everything you've said so far suggests that a) you haven't thought about these issues very clearly at all. And b) to the extent you have thought about them, you side firmly with the bigots.
But I might be wrong. So let's find out.
You keep saying you're all for not discriminating, but as far as I can see, you haven't suggested anything that might prevent it other than what is effectively a "wait and see" approach. So let's figure out what you're *for* with regards to ending discrimination with the following question.
Black people were forced, by law, to live as second (or third) class citizens in America. After the end of slavery (where they essentially built the entire country and supported the economy for free), they had no access to resources, jobs or power.
White people, most of whom considered them worthless subhumans, had control of absolutely everything. If you were in charge at that time, what would you have done about that?
Wow, really? You hadn’t considered that black people couldn’t boycott businesses they weren’t allowed into? You hadn’t thought it through even that far? Hopefully you see why I said you hadn’t thought about this from the point of view of the victims of bigotry.
It’s also worth noting that the only “coercion” that actually led to civil war was when the south was “coerced” into not keeping black people as slaves. Boycotts probably wouldn’t have worked then either…
This is the point I’ve been trying to make to you this whole time. It’s fine to be against coercion. I am too. Sincerely. But you have to consider what you’re weighing it against. I was getting frustrated with you precisely because it was obvious you’d spent a lot of time worrying about the *potential* harm to racists and next to none thinking about to fix the *actual* harm being done to black people.
"I thought I did - boycotts. They proved pretty damn effective throughout history."
So your solution, in a world where black people are not allowed to frequent white-only businesses, or attend white-only schools, is for black people to boycott those businesses and schools?
Do you see the problem here?