Affirmative Action 8

[Maui]

My initial experience with Affirmative Action policies occurred at the first place that I applied for work when I graduated from school with an M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering and a Ph.D. in Materials Science. I sent a resume to a prospective employer through a friend of mine who told me that they were looking for people with my background and credentials. My friend and I worked in the same lab in graduate school, and he thought that he could set up an interview for me with his employer, a major aluminum manufacturer. I don't remember his supervisor's name, so I'll refer to him throughout this thread as AL COA. He passed the resume on to AL COA, who informed him that I would not be interviewed because they were required to hire a minority for the position, and I didn't fit the profile.

The recent Supreme Court case involving Affirmative Action policies regarding college admission criteria will no doubt impact engineering programs for years to come. I'd like to know where engineers stand on this issue, and why. For each of you that responds, please include in your response an indication of whether or not you have directly benefitted from these policies. And has anyone else run into problems that are similar to the one that I describe above?


Maui

 

[TheTick]

I have directly benefitted from a similar policy. I was eliminated from the candidate pool due to my unsuitability as a "quota filler". I had an inside view into the hiring by virtue of friends in the right places. I knew the young woman who did get the job, and she was (is) competent and qualified.

I later learned what a hellhole this department was, and was grateful to have not been hired.

Score on for affirmative action. Gravity is a harsh mistress.

 

[strokersix]

I have indirectly benefitted from these types of policies as my wife is also an engineer!

However, I'm not sure I agree with these types of hiring objectives. If factors other than ability to perform the job duties are given priority in hiring then the logical consequence must be reduced overall competence of the workforce.

I suspect that there are financial reasons for these hiring policies such as tax breaks or favorable consideration when bidding government contracts. Or perhaps public relations spin for the benefit of stock holders. Will someone please elaborate on the real reasons many companies have these hiring objectives?

 

[zdas04]

I have never benefited nor (to my knowledge) been harmed by these hateful and damaging plans. While I find excluding someone from consideration for irrelevant characteristics (such as gender, race, or religon) an unreasonable limiting of the talent pool, the government's "fix" is even more reprehensible. I see affirmative action as a dumbing-down of the American workplace that has to lead to a trend towards inferior results. My biggest fear is that the marginally qualified beneficiaries of afirmative action will sift their way to the top of organizations and not be up to the task - I don't want to be standing in the wrong place when they pull the critical dominoe to crush the entire U.S. economy.

 

[rbcoulter]

Check out Walter Williams views on this subject:

http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/wew/articles.html

 

[IRstuff]

There is a myth that there is some objective measure of the quality of a student or worker. IQ tests have shown that to be a complete falsehood.

A high score on achievement tests is merely an indicator of your overall performance. Studies have shown that test scores are weak indicators of performance in college.

Your score could easily shift 20 points depending on the day or the test. If someone was actually bumped off by the adder applied to a minority, then the odds are that that statistical significance of the point difference was nil and that either applicant is equally qualified. TTFN

 

[zdas04]

Funny thing about statistics - they can't apply to individuals. Every company has its own criteria for selecting a candidate and some of them are quite silly. When you overlay an arbitrary bias towards one group and away from another you shift silly into stupid or worse.

We've all know people (white males) who have stories about the only graduates in their class at college who got job offers being individuals heaped with diversity points and those individuals who were properly plumbed or adequately hued getting multiple offers while monochrome outies couldn't get a second interview. Maybe these stories are all just sour grapes, but I've known many people who's daughters have benefited from this bias.

David

 

[melone]

Discrimination is discrimination.....period!

 

[DaveVikingPE]

Private companies can hire whomever they want - so can the government. It's when a policy of discrimination is verbalized or otherwise publicized that problems crop up.

In the case of a Ph.D. in materials, I'd think that if a company were looking for such, why on earth would the person's ethnicity even matter?

If you are told "there's a quota" regarding race hirings and such there is a good chance you could sue that company (or University...) - I'm not saying you'd win, but perhaps you've been discriminated against one way or another.

 

[Maui]

DaveViking, private companies as well as universities in the United States are required by the federal government to meet and strictly follow the current affirmative action guidelines in hiring new employees. And the criteria they set usually is interpreted in terms of a quota system where a specific percentage of the employees must belong to minority groups and/or be women.

In the case of a Ph.D. the person's ethnicity presents even more of a problem for employers because most Ph.D.'s that are currently employed are caucasian men. And the affirmative action guidelines stipulate that not only must each company hire a sufficiently diversified workforce, but the employees at each level in the company must also show evidence of this diversity.

It is true that I could bring a lawsuit against a company that has discriminated against me. But by filing such a lawsuit, I would accomplish very little. Because my friend is the source who told me about what had occurred, he would have to testify on my behalf. By doing so, he would risk losing his job, or more likely being forced out. I would not willingly subject him to such a fate. And in the end, even if I won the lawsuit, there is a good chance that I would be blackballed in the industry. Instead of subjecting myself and my friend to these potentiallly disastrous situations, I decided that it was better to simply apply for a job somewhere else. This is what I ended up doing.

 

[PSE]

I can see this turning into a rather interesting thread. While to my knowledge, the affirmative action laws do not stipulate "quotas", in fact the US government has a case before the Supreme Court vs. University of Michigan on their admissions policies favoring minorities (quotas), about the only way that an entity can appear to comply is in fact to create de-facto quotas. Since there is no "standard for determining compliance", which would likely create quotas, any entity ends up appearing guilty until proven? innocent if someone complains. We end up with a fine example of legislating the impossible. The government at times seems very good at this.

Fact is we all discriminate constantly in every choice we make, we have to. It is the way we make sense of our surroundings. Legislation cannot remove intrinsic reaction.

To my knowledge, I have been neither helped nor harmed by affirmative action rules. Yes, back in my college days it seemed that female and minority engineering graduates tended to get job offers from companies in the first semester of senior year while white males ended up with offers in the final semester. Can I prove it, absolutely not.

I view the ideals of affirmative action as being on par with say the hippocratic oath for doctors or similar ethical standards. They make sense for the common good but are not truly enforceable.

End of rant. I am all quota'd out. I am just glad this was not about political correctness.

 

[DaveVikingPE]

I beg to differ. What are these requirements? Are there Federal laws on the books that force companies to hire a certain percentage of this or that?

 

[rbcoulter]

I have not heard of any affirmative action laws.
There are anti-discrimination laws. Many companies, colleges & government entities have affirmative action policies. It is basically as PSE says. Lawsuits have been successful against companies based on statistical data. In order for companies to avoid getting sued & losing in court they basically have to have an affirmative action policy.
Although the affirmative action program does not have to be a quota system, almost always quotas have to be used "to get the numbers right". This is the heart of the debate.

 

[zdas04]

rbcoulter,
You have it exactly right - the heart of the debate is the feeble-minded attempt by a segment of society (strongly supported in the government) to right the wrongs of the past. This never works. The market place would have eventually corrected the stupid anti-women, anti-minority policies of American companies.

There are so few really competent, decision-making individuals qualified to be leaders that over time the exclusion policies would have led to competing businesses being started by the cream of the excluded crop. These businesses don't need minority-preference laws to compete and often end up with the lion's share of the market simply because the best-and-brightest will find a way to succeed.

When you introduce affirmative action plans, it is just too easy for those being afirmed to slip into jobs beyond their abilities. The exclusion policies were probably (slightly) more stupid than the actions to redress the wrongs, but dumb plus dumber equals dumbest.

 

[IRstuff]

The case before the Supreme Court is specifically about the implementation of a previous Supreme Court ruling supporting affirmative action, with the stipulation that race not be the only or overriding factor.

The bonus points in question are part of a panoply of bonus points awarded for athletes, alumni offspring, etc. As such, NONE of these are technically fair, but I don't see these people complaining about the points that clearly academically deficient athletes receive, or about the scholarships that these athletes receive.

Again, the point that are lost is that it's not clear that the plaintiffs would have been accepted in any case, even if the bonus points were not given. Additionally, if they were on the cusp to begin with, their test score advantages were not statistically significant. TTFN

 

[brad]

IRstuff,
Living in the shadow of Ann Arbor as I do, there has been a lot press around the UM case. I read an article awhile back on this, and the crux of the plaintiffs' case rides on the claim that the bonus points given for race were so extreme that they did have considerable statistical significance.

Don't take the following literally, it is intended to convey the point--the supposed points bonus given for certain minorities wasn't the subtle difference between a 3.6 GPA minority getting accepted vs. a 3.7 "white male"; it was more like a 3.0 getting accepted over the 3.7. By any quantitative measure of future performance potential, there were clearly people harmed by this.

The really interesting aspect of the UM case is who originally uncovered this situation--it was a very liberal-leaning UM professor who initially wanted to understand why UM was so much more successful in recruiting "high-caliber" minorities to come (in the hopes of applying this success to other universities). After being refused the details of the application process (which is not allowed under Freedom of Information Act for public institutions), he filed some legal papers and got the information. He was appalled at what he viewed as a gross violation of principles of fairness, and pushed the university to review this policy. When the university refused, he went to some organizations with his findings, and here we are.

I do tend to agree with you on your statistical statement. Have I seen affirmative action policies affect people in the workplace? Yes. I got a student assignment as an "errand-boy" in personnel, and I saw first-hand the actual decision-making done with hires. There were shockingly-different criteria applied to white males vs. others. That opened my eyes quickly.

Have I been affected by them personally? In fact, yes, but not in an egregious fashion. I was delayed a promotion on two occassions partially because of such policies. However, in one case I unequivocally would agree that it was a "photo-finish" which of us should get promoted, and as there was only one slot available, the other guy got it (and I don't know that I would've gotten it over him even if we were both white). In this case, IRstuff's statement about "statistics" definitely applies.

However, the system made it up to me--instead of a promotion, in each case I got a non-promotion merit raise which was as much or more than I probably would've gotten with the promotion. I don't think my bottom line has been affected by such policies. I am not bitter about it, but I understand how some could be.

The real sad part of it is the really-qualified minority who has to live with the question of his/her competence. In my example above, my friend who did get the promotion felt ostracized by others who also were not promoted. Again, I felt I was the number one choice, and I would've put him number two. I was big enough to let him know that I was happy to see him get the promotion, if I couldn't. The other two employees weren't as generous as I, and he felt like the perception from others was that he was getting a free ride because of his skin.

Other friends, equally qualified, have expressed the same frustration. I don't know that scrapping the concept entirely is a good idea, but the current system in some ways causes more problems than it addresses.
Brad

 

[Maui]

To expand on bradh's example, I'll give you an idea of how different the acceptance criteria were at the University of Michigan. The U of M professor that he refers to in his thread used the following as an example of how unequal the admissions criteria are. Only 3% of the caucasian law school applicants were accepted into Michigan's Law program, while 100% of the minority applicants were accepted into the same program in the same year.

 

[melone]

Isn't affirmative action truly keeping minorities "down" by not requiring them to develop the neccessary skills to compete? For example, to qualify for a competition, all white high jumpers have to clear 6 feet, but non-white athletes must only clear 5 feet 10 inches. If the minimum requirements are too high, then shouldn't they be lowered for everyone?

 

[EngineerDave]

This is an interesting and highly controversial topic.

My own personal experience. I got a job at a large company through a contract agency. During this time I was painfully aware of who got hired full-time or who got converted from contract to full time for the company.

There was a period of maybe as much as 3 years in which no white male engineers were hired full-time (but interestingly enough several including myself were hired through the contract company. During this period every new hire for the company was either a woman or a minority. In fact I heard during one recruiting period every candidate interviewed was a woman.

Now I don't know about where you went to school, but I remember distinctly at my university that the incoming freshman class the year I entered consisted of 20% women. They were touting that as a positive, as it had typically been much lower!

In the end it is all sour grapes, my senior year I watched as the women and particularly one quite bright minority woman received several offers. I got several offers myself, but for a short while when we were going head to head on interviews (prior to her accepting a job) I knew I was at a disadvantage.

I think with the state of the economy the last couple of years this issue would probably be a bit more frustrating. When I graduated jobs were more plentiful. Now it could get downright discouraging.

 

[rbcoulter]

I know from my own experience that affirmative action policies are in place at many private companies. They do this to protect themselves from lawsuits. For this reason you will find CEOs of companies defending affirmative action policies. A personnel manager of a company I worked for once told me that during the economic downturn of the late 80s - early 90s that they only considered women & minorities.