How long do you predict till descrimination against caucasian men are treated as such

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Albert Speer
boris:

answer my questions concerning Joe and Hector

Why? It's irrelevant to my argument. Have Vesayen answer it, he's the one saying that whites are *more* oppressed than anyone else.

But why don't we compare a white male corporate middle manager (Bob) and a hispanic female corporate middle manager (...wait...wait...I'm sure I can find one...somewhere...give me a sec...)

[Al B. Sure!]

boris:

my point is, even if we assume that society is racist and will deny oppurtunities to hispanics, society would not differentiate Joe from Hector as they both are swarthy-skinned, dark eyed, and dark haired with latin-derived last named. how is Joe, by being 'white', gaining anything that Hector is not, when society can not tell if Joe is white or hispanic or what?

my point is, if the world thinks Joe is a Jose, how is he not suffering from any racism, even though he is technically white.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Albert Speer

my point is *snip*

And it's still irrelevant to mine. If people are discriminating against Joe because they think he's a minority, even though he really isn't, that doesn't in anyway mitigate the racism that's still entrenched in society. If anything, it highlights how blindly stupid it is that it can't even target the "right folks."

Of course, 75-100 years ago it would have been argued that swarthy Italians weren't white anyway, the same as any group that wasn't WASP. Even the Irish weren't considered "white" by many.

All part of the narrow, subjective crap that is racism.

[Al B. Sure!]

but boris... if Joe Romano is suffering the same racism as Hector Martinez... how come Joe can't benefit from affirmitive action?

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Albert Speer
boris:

answer my questions concerning Joe and Hector

A hypothetical involving two people in one city doesn't have anything to do with a general pattern.

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Warning for the hyper PC and sensitive: Ethnic pejoratives used to illustrate point. If you can't handle it, too bad.

**********************

Besides, Albert, from a stereotypical privileged WASP perspective, everyone knows you hire the wop for the waiter job and the spic as a busboy, not the other way around.

Unless you're dealing with a specific event or context, discrimination is alway a generalized thing - we have tens of thousands of encounters with other people ocer our lifetimes, and discrimination in the abstract turns on whether you get treated in a certain way more often than not because of the color of your skin, your accent, your gender, your age, etc.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Albert Speer
but boris... if Joe Romano is suffering the same racism as Hector Martinez... how come Joe can't benefit from affirmitive action?

AA may not benefit either. It sure as hell isn't universal, and what's to prevent the dark guy with an Italian name from claiming he's Hispanic, or even a high yellow black?

If you've got a specific, provable event of discrimination, then that's not an AA issue, it's a separate legal issue entirely. Generalized programs like AA are intended to deal with broad patterns of behavior towards targeted groups, not specific instances of discriminatory behavior towards specific individuals.

If anyone is not hired, is fired, denied promotion, or other employment considerations solely based on illegal discriminatory criteria, they have separate legal recourse. Back when I worked in Silicon Valley, I was a witness in a civil suit brought by a white male management candidate who was denied promotion by a woman manager solely because he was a white male. He won a good size judgment too, because the little twit (nasty short ***** with a female version of a Napoleon complex) The guy was hired with a promise of a managerial job as soon as one department (managed by twit) completed it's expansion and split into two. That happened, and twit promoted a lesser qualified woman, and made the mistake of proclaiming quite loudly in an open room "this is not going to be one of those companies where white men get all the management jobs." Too bad that it already wasn't, and she even said this with a woman and a hispanic manager present. The guy sued and he won. AA didn't apply, California and Federal civil rights and labor law did.

[Dis]

If heavy metal music has taught me anything, is that the devil is cool.

I am white- and I am the devil.

[Saras]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
Back when I worked in Silicon Valley, I was a witness in a civil suit brought by a white male management candidate who was denied promotion by a woman manager solely because he was a white male. He won a good size judgment too, because the little twit (nasty short ***** with a female version of a Napoleon complex) The guy was hired with a promise of a managerial job as soon as one department (managed by twit) completed it's expansion and split into two. That happened, and twit promoted a lesser qualified woman, and made the mistake of proclaiming quite loudly in an open room "this is not going to be one of those companies where white men get all the management jobs." Too bad that it already wasn't, and she even said this with a woman and a hispanic manager present. The guy sued and he won. AA didn't apply, California and Federal civil rights and labor law did.

Is that like an outlier or is it a normal everyday case?

[Dis]

face it guys. white men have it good in this country. I think it is appropiate to discriminate against white men to even things up in the U.S.

[Sikander]

As far as the "gender gap" goes in wages, women earn about 97% of what men do when you take into account things like time on the job etc. The vast majority of the gap exists not due to discrimination but to the fact that a lot of jobs still tend to be divided along gender lines. For instance, men still suffer death and injury at a rate much more impressive than the 97% to 100% disparity in wages because they do the vast majority of dangerous work. They should be paid more for doing dangerous work, as women should be when they do dangerous work. Also men stay at their jobs longer because they much more rarely take time off for their children and are ill much less often, the difference there mainly being the result of the much greater chance that women will suffer from reproductive system illnesses than men.

I agree with Albert that this society needs to quit focusing on race. The government should take the lead here, as not only are they one of the main arenas for racial politics to be played out, they make it pay for some people. This gives some people an additional reason to perpetuate racial tensions. We need to assess individuals as individuals in order to determine whether or not they need assistance in getting into college etc. It is not just a stupid waste of resources when the child of an educated and financially successful minority is given a scholarship or financial aid solely due to their race, it is an insult and yet another yet another case of discrimination. Give to the needy, it seems simple enough.

[Q Classic]

white men are discriminated against? news to me.

next time someone comes up to you and says you speak english good, or asks you when you're going back, or calls you a slur to your face without realizing how offensive those terms are... then maybe we'll talk.

admittedly, asians get off much easier than some other minorities.

but the point remains. as long as caucasian males are held to be the standard by which all others are compared to, caucasian males will forever be "discriminated against".

[our_man]

There's no disputing the fact that white males are discrimated in certain areas: there's a common view that we're always the discrimator, never the discriminated.

I still don't think that we should complain about it though. Other groups have it much, much worse. Look at the U.S. - OK, so maybe you don't get the same chance if you're white when it comes to education. You have to counterbalance this with the fact that if you're white in the U.S. you have a much less chance of receiving the death sentence than someone of hispanic or black origin.

So, maybe we have a good case for discrimination, but let's try and keep it in perspective. There are far greater injustices being committed against other groups than there are against whites.

[Lincoln]

The whole idea of racial discrimination and other forms of discrimination has gotten way out of hand. Everyone wants to be a protected group now. Asains do not seem to have much trouble advancing in society. Could it be that they generally work harder and emphasize education? Society should be color blind. There should be no racial test just as there cannot be a religious test. The whole concept of race is devisive and destructive of society.

[Q Classic]

asians don't have much trouble; we do, however, end up like white females. i'd wager that's probably our closest analogue. we get hit with the glass ceiling right now.

wait ten to twenty years, and then because we'll have been in the elite universities for so long, we'll have embedded ourselves into the new power structure.

that aside...

as long as white males are treated as the standard by which all others are compared, white males will be perceived as the "majority", as those in power, and thus, "discriminated" against.

to discriminate, you have to have something to discriminate for and against; white males are one side, while everybody else is on the other.