This past Sunday I watched part of a TV News Show where a group of our "hot shot" executives discussed how they deal with the concept of affirmative action. Most were no less than pathetic. I have no idea what rock many of these crawled out from under. That is the point of this blog.
First off, I think that racism and favoritism of any kind is totally sick. I have blogged in the past about how colleges used to ask on their application, "what college did your parents attend". The purpose of that was to give people like John F. Kennedy special treatment on admission. We have the same thing today in our military academies and that is clearly how John McCain got into Annapolis over people like me. I am one quarter Native American and have no desire for that to be taken into account over "merit"! With me so far?
On the TV show, I listened to executives one after the other explain how they have problems finding and hiring qualified technical people. Many were against Trump's policy on immigration because it limited their ability to import foreign technical people. They claimed that it was difficult to meet affirmative action goals if they could not get people from foreign countries. This has to be sick logic!
Do you understand why this is sick logic? If not, I will explain it.
I will use engineers for may example. If you look at most technical companies, you will find that they have far more male engineers than they do female. They clearly have far fewer female engineers than the ratio of females in our population. Males and females are about 50%-50% in the general population. The problem with this sick bunch of business executives was that they were trying to meet a 50%-50% ratio of female engineers. They believed that they might be able to meet that goal if they could "import" a bunch of female engineers. Do you see that was a sick idea? The fact is that females only account for less than 10% of new engineering graduates because females, by free choice, select other careers. You have to ask why the goal of businesses is not the ratio of engineering school graduation rates?
If the executives had a brain, they would adjust their goal to account for trends in engineering school graduate rates. Here is how it should work. If the mix of your engineers is such that the median years that they are out of college is 15 years, you should look at the graduation rates 15 years ago and use that as the goal. For the record, I never had a female or a Black in any of my engineering classes nor did I have any when I was an engineering instructor. I know that times have changed and now there would be a few females in those classes. If the ratio today were 50% female or Black, it would be sick logic to expect that a company that had been business for 50 years should be expected to have 50% female or Black engineers.
As I pointed out earlier how I believe in "merit" not favoritism of any kind. That applies to sports as well. Would you watch professional football or basketball if the players were selected on the basis of current affirmative action policy? I don't think so. This business of sick affirmative action will continue if you don't speak up and get businesses to start applying real logic.
First off, I think that racism and favoritism of any kind is totally sick. I have blogged in the past about how colleges used to ask on their application, "what college did your parents attend". The purpose of that was to give people like John F. Kennedy special treatment on admission. We have the same thing today in our military academies and that is clearly how John McCain got into Annapolis over people like me. I am one quarter Native American and have no desire for that to be taken into account over "merit"! With me so far?
On the TV show, I listened to executives one after the other explain how they have problems finding and hiring qualified technical people. Many were against Trump's policy on immigration because it limited their ability to import foreign technical people. They claimed that it was difficult to meet affirmative action goals if they could not get people from foreign countries. This has to be sick logic!
Do you understand why this is sick logic? If not, I will explain it.
I will use engineers for may example. If you look at most technical companies, you will find that they have far more male engineers than they do female. They clearly have far fewer female engineers than the ratio of females in our population. Males and females are about 50%-50% in the general population. The problem with this sick bunch of business executives was that they were trying to meet a 50%-50% ratio of female engineers. They believed that they might be able to meet that goal if they could "import" a bunch of female engineers. Do you see that was a sick idea? The fact is that females only account for less than 10% of new engineering graduates because females, by free choice, select other careers. You have to ask why the goal of businesses is not the ratio of engineering school graduation rates?
If the executives had a brain, they would adjust their goal to account for trends in engineering school graduate rates. Here is how it should work. If the mix of your engineers is such that the median years that they are out of college is 15 years, you should look at the graduation rates 15 years ago and use that as the goal. For the record, I never had a female or a Black in any of my engineering classes nor did I have any when I was an engineering instructor. I know that times have changed and now there would be a few females in those classes. If the ratio today were 50% female or Black, it would be sick logic to expect that a company that had been business for 50 years should be expected to have 50% female or Black engineers.
As I pointed out earlier how I believe in "merit" not favoritism of any kind. That applies to sports as well. Would you watch professional football or basketball if the players were selected on the basis of current affirmative action policy? I don't think so. This business of sick affirmative action will continue if you don't speak up and get businesses to start applying real logic.
