Yes!....And don't you think a lot of the tension or animosity people feel about Affirimative Action is due, in large part, to a pronounced lack of understanding the structure of the program and how it works?... AND ITS LIMITATIONS!!!

Comply means maintaining a quota of minorities.

NAACP gonna' whine big time when the new, mexican minority gets the preferential treatment instead of them, (don't ya' know)? << Practicing speaking Canadian, just in case.

I do think most people dont understand it, yes. Especially throughout the years IVe been discussing it online, its amazing what people 'think' the laws say and what they ACTUALLY say.

I hope not...The "poetic" pleasure would be short lived and I don't think women are that stupid or rhat naive...

I think a great amount of naivety exists in the general public. There are few remnants of private sector unions hanging on by a thread, and the number of people who have always enjoyed government supported unionization are also declining because many state are privitizing large sections of their public sector and many states have begun that process by privitizing the highest paid employees, the human resourse araea and management. All those employees are now subject to the private sector pay for production competitie wages rather than the merit program most govermnet employees fall under.

Unemployment and underemployment has hit men harder than women. Of the unskilled labor, who once enjoyed middle income benefits of unionized industry, will not be returning to those kinds of jobs.

Woman are happy right now to take .80 of the dollar for a mans job becuase it may be the only income a family has. Women out of college have typically always received less pay than men being hired in the same position. With more women graduating with large student loan debt, it makes sense to think that more women are getting those jobs.

Even if the minimum wage is upped to $10.00 an hour, that barely covers the amount of inflation in the last decade. So it's unlikely that such a move would have an effect on the wages of those who already earn more than 10 an hour.

Severe weather patterns are causing a world wide food crisis, this will not only affect the purchase power of people at the grocery store, it will affect the whoe food production, processing,transportation and container manufacturing industries. More unemployment is on the horizon.

Problems will compounded by the number of homeless as severe weather contines to destroy property. The government cannot cannot continue to direct funding to cover major catastrophy insurance shortfalls.

We are already in the process of austerity programs in which several states are discontinuing pention payments to retirees, and pention funding for employees.

We have a long way to go and I think women are smart to take the jobs they can get, to go back and further their education, and in the long run, it's hard to even fathom that when work retuns to the unemployed that it will be consistent with the rates of pay and benefits that once existed.

The real debate is about using Affirimative Action as a remedy for past discrimination...So what does that mean in terms of AA's legal status?..

Recently, some states have amended their constitutions to eliminate race and gender preferences because the public is becoming less and less tolerant of government picking and choosing based on "political correctness"...

Once a case manages to reach the courts, it must be dissected and then dissected again in order to pass constitutional muster...This is because "identified" discrimination needs to be served at the least amount of expense to those who have NOT been discriminated against...

As of now, the supreme court majority believes AA is constitutional as long as the reason(s) for undertaking the affirimative action are compelling...Courts are beginning to rule against AA when it is based solely on diversity issues, but I think cases tied to PROVEN discrimination, both past and present, will continue to survive and I think they need to continue to survive...

Comply means maintaining a quota of minorities.

NAACP gonna' whine big time when the new, mexican minority gets the preferential treatment instead of them, (don't ya' know)? << Practicing speaking Canadian, just in case.

AA is a government program. It is legal in its current form unless Congress changes it. As it is now, AA does not typically apply to the private sector unless an organization contracts to do work, under certain conditions, for the government.




It's not that easy to change a state constitution, and since the Civil Rights Act already includes protections or minorities, it doesn't make sense for states to spend time & resources amending constitutions when they simply in agreement with current federal regulations.

Of course that's a blanket assumption - do you have any specific examples?



Cases proceed to the court level either based on EEOC compliance, AA compliance or under one of the other discriminatory acts. These cases do not go straight to court, they are first mediated and a great majority of them are resolved at that level.

This proscess is extremely costly to organizations which is why the human resource departments must have thorough understanding of the all the laws that have effects on employment. From writing job descriptions, recruitment efforts, training, and benefits, it is better for orgs to spend more money to prevent discrimination than to allow a case to proceed to court level.



As long as the vast majority of wealth and power remain in the hands of whites, then whites will be considered the majority, whether population numbers prove that out or not. As long as minorities are under-repesented in wealth, power, and elitist status (corporate, decision makers in government, & the highest paid professional people) there will be a need for AA.

It's a simplistic idea based on a complicated philosophy and an emotional history....

We all have misconceptions about the law and our various constitutions which is why discussion like these are important to have. Somewhere in the mix all the misconceptions are elements derived from fact, so it's always a good idea to see what others say and then research it in the hopes of gaining new understanding.

thanx ladies, nice to have 'civilized' discussion on a complex topic

I wasn't referring to the general public, I was referring to the women running big business...

Women are not happy to take .77 on the $ for any reason(s)....We take it because FOR NOW we are stuck with it and because we know once we get our foot in the door and prove our worth we can re-negotiate....And before you start, this goes for entry level jobs too....

The rest of your post is angst....

Being happy and being pragmatic have different effects on behavior. Women who go with the 'happy' effect will find themselves out of a job becasue there is simply too much competition with others, even men, who are pragmatic enough to take that lessor paying job. Of course this is speaking to new employment and not to promotion. But we have been discussing the avenues of regress that are available to woment who are discriminated against by their employers.

The rest of that post was an explanation supporting the notion that we will not return to the previous state of normal with regards to pay and benefits.

At this point women are rising to highest levels of managemnt and ownership by creating their own organizations or joining newer ones at the ground level. The pay will not be what current 'fortune' corporations pay their upper most managment but there is more job satisfaction for such women and thus better quality of life.

We need to understand the great big picture and that our current laws are a very small part of picture. We are affected by so many other global economic and environmental issues that we have to face the fact that even OUR laws may no longer insulate us against those outside forces.

Certainly we need to be discussing them, but to do so without considering the bigger picture assumes that those laws insulate us from those larger issues.

The great economic gains of the middle class in the last century were achieved from inside that insulated view. We have lost it all becuase we did not consider the effects of our behavior on the rest of the world.

You can consider that more angst but at least consider it.

I do think most people dont understand it, yes. Especially throughout the years IVe been discussing it online, its amazing what people 'think' the laws say and what they ACTUALLY say.

So try being an employer trying to manage it accurately!

as a goal I love it, but we still have to have honest discussion of how to GET THERE.....

I want to go back to a conversation that appears on the first page of this thread.



If you want to "GET THERE", then you need to do one thing in particular:
Stop saying that certain people are "your people".

To explain what I mean, take a look at the below image of the main characters in the animated show Hey Arnold!:



The blond-haired boy in the upper-left-hand corner of the image is Arnold, the show's title character. The boy immediately to the right of Arnold (wearing the sweatshirt with "33" on the front) is Gerald, Arnold's best friend.


* * * *[Gerald]* * * *



The rest of the characters are kids in Arnold's neighborhood who participate in Arnold's adventures.

One of the show's strengths is that it depicts children of different ethnic backgrounds (one girl is Asian; one boy is Jewish) treating each other as equals. To these characters, ethnic background is irrelevant (except in one episode in which the characters celebrate the Bar Mitzvah of one of their friends).

In the show, Gerald's "people" aren't people who share his racial characteristics. Instead, Gerald's "people" are Arnold and the other kids depicted in the above image, because the kids live in the same environment, attend the same school and have the same public experiences (as opposed to family experiences) and treat each other as equals. In short, the kids are culturally the same despite the fact that they have different ethnic ancestries.

What is true in that fictional show is also true in real life. Who you are culturally is not determined by your physical features, but by your language, beliefs, upbringing and experiences. This reality is seen in the "Harry Potter" film series (although a fictional story), in which the students at Hogwarts are culturally the same although they are of different racial backgrounds (Angelina Johnson is a black student who eventually becomes Ron Weasley's sister-in-law).

As I see it, if you limit your "people" to being only people who share your physical/racial characteristics, then you are engaging in racism because you are practicing racial segregation.

In the show, Gerald's "people" aren't people who share his racial characteristics. Instead, Gerald's "people" are Arnold and the other kids depicted in the above image, because the kids live in the same environment, attend the same school and have the same public experiences (as opposed to family experiences) and treat each other as equals. In short, the kids are culturally the same despite the fact that they have different ethnic ancestries.


as it stands, in america, because of the racial element of its very FOUNDATION

people within a 'race' have experience a very similar 'culture'


that is why, in fed statistics, they dont have impoverished, educated, or any other type of 'category' or distinction

but you can easily find out what percentage of americans are black white,,,etc

and you can find further distinctions by RACE even amongst people that otherwise have similar (Culture) education, social status,,etc,,,

or how many incarcerated are white, black, etc,,,

or how many in college are white black, etc....


so when we further examine INFORMATION that is collected with such categorization, it is going to be necessarily relevant to use that same categorization when looking at the underlying causes,,,,,