casualDude....what?
oh man. Merit isn’t limited to the present but also should include projections about people’s future development and performance. Companies hire people with less experience and less accomplishment all the time because of a belief that they have a higher ceiling or will be more easily molded.
You’re really suggesting what? Companies hire people belonging to specific racial/ethnic groups that are as individuals less qualified for a particular position out of a kind of guilt/atonement for things they themselves are not culpable in or guilty of? How is that not detrimental both to companies/institutions and the individuals themselves?
And this already exists in college admissions.
So indulge me. Which groups, specifically, should get this radical treatment you just suggested?
Explain to me why a couple key ethnic/racial groups have outpaced white people in terms of income upward mobility? Are Asian people privileged would you say?
I dont think people think these things through. So what’s got more cache in terms of companies making concessions towards hires? Race? Gender? Age? Sexual orientation? Religion? Economic class/station?
These are not rhetorical questions, I’d like your answers. This has to be sorted. Employers making hiring decisions must know who is the most marginalized and hire accordingly to go along with what you’re suggesting. So is it Race (well, specific ones...) > gender > sexual orientation > religion? Or something else?
The single most closely correlated variable in terms of predicting future success is whether a child was raised in a 2 parent household or not. So, should companies favor hiring kids from single parent households?
You don’t think it’s fairly patronizing and paternalistic of you to suggest that there are groups of people every bit as smart and capable as you are, need you to gift them things they’ve not earned? Does that extend to promotions, etc.? If that’s where we go from here, why would anyone from either side strive to outwork and over achieve?
Are equality of opportunity and outcome interchangeable?
im genuinely curious about your thoughts because I find your suggestion pretty troubling.
i really disagree strongly.
**This post was edited on Apr 1st 2018 at 7:44:36pm
This response is awesome and I don't think I have the knowledge to honestly and/or accurately answer all of your questions, but I'll take a stab at addressing what I can.
I feel like you might be interpreting my point differently than I mean to make it. I don't want to say that certain groups deserve a preferential, "radical treatment" as you say ONLY because of their backgrounds. What I mean to say is that many people tend to establish the argument that career hiring and college admissions should be purely merit based, which the basic concept of a meritocratic society. To an extent, I agree with this - I think that the most qualified candidate should get the position/acceptance. My problem with this argument is that it assumes that a society (I'm American, so I'm assuming USA) is a perfect meritocracy in the first place, which I believe it is not.
Andrew gave a really good example with the ACT/SAT system in the US. In order to be accepted into many quality universities in the US, you'll have to score reasonably well on one or both of those standardized tests. However, your performance on tests can be leveraged by study guides, tutors, taking multiple testing sessions, etc. An underprivileged minority student will be less likely than a privileged majority student to have the same access to these resources. For example, a minority student will be more likely to have to work alongside or in substitute of their high school education, care for other family members, be enrolled in underfunded educational institutions, have lacking educational, emotional, financial, etc. support from family, etc... These compounding factors prevent those students from the time or resources that are more readily available to higher class members. As a result, such minorities might not have the free time to take multiple rounds of SAT or ACT testing, nor the money to afford tutoring or study guides. Resultantly, they are more likely to underperform on standardized tests and thus have a lower opportunity to prove their merit and qualification for getting into a good college.
I know I'm still arguing in a pretty theoretical sense, and I definitely can't say that one group (race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc.) deserves concessions, because I don't think that's how it should work. I think it should work that someone is hired/accepted on their merit, BUT there also needs to be a critical evaluation of how someone's background might have challenged their ability to gain certain merit that they could be lacking. This is why I think affirmative action is a reasonable intervention, because it acknowledges that a society's structural forces can prevent equally capable and worthy individuals from gaining merit, but does not necessarily disagree with meritocracy altogether.
To summarize, I think meritocracy is a wonderful idea in concept, but like many ideologies, it does not exist perfectly in reality. Affirmative action helps to correct a narrow-sighted ideal of meritocracy and puts it in a better context of reality. There needs to be some balance between merit and privilege - If employers and educators can identify the best qualified candidates AND the candidates who would be qualified but their unchosen background prevents that, we'll have a more diverse and capable workforce and educated society.
