Originally posted by Darion
In response to Gillan, the reason this scares me is because it's another sketchy way of legislating common sense. Instead of saying that employers are not allowed to discriminate based upon race, gender, et cetera, they are in effect being ordered to have at least X% minorities employed at their business. There is a difference.

This just smacks of the fiasco years ago (might have just been a New England thing) involving police and fire departments lowering the minimum test scores for and giving favorable placement to minority applicants so as to make for a more diverse (and less skilled?) force. In that kind of scenario, everything suffers except political correctness.

I understand that having a stupid dispatcher isn't the same as having a stupid cashier at A&F, because God knows there are enough of both and harm is minimal. And yet, in the end I believe everyone pays the price once you get that idiot Sergeant/Captain or Regional Director of Marketing/Loss Prevention because you were muscled into being diverse.
Darion I do not necessarily disagree with you, however, the situation isn't as you framed it. What happend is not that no minorities were applying it was that highly qualified minorities were applying (both to universities and even to "A/F"'s of the world) and were being shot down only because of their race. The Courts naturally said "Hey, that's lame.. by the way there's a law against this.. start by hiring X number of minorities to make up for what you did." Similar to if you get caught pissin on public property you have to pay a certain amount or do a certain amount of community service to make up for it.

The test score thing for police happend in a couple other places as well. It happend in Washington DC, California, and Texas. The idea was that they wanted to "diversify" the police force but historically minorities (for a lot of reasons - such as being deprived of that college and even HS education) scored a lot lower on the standardized tests (which were put in place in the first place to keep minorities out).

While I think some of this is very, very stupid I do not think we can just say "Hey we didn't allow your entire race to ever attain a 9th grade education for 150 years, but dont worry we'll treat you as if you did." The sad fact is discrimination still exists and the effects of segregation still last. Now dont take that to be an apologist stand point, or someone who's backing people that milk the system. Im just trying to explain my standpoint.

However, I do totally agree that parents need to control their children more and that (again) I would kill my youngest sister if I saw her shopping at A/F, A/E. or even the GAP.