I am a white male. I've seen this policy in play and it's not even new - it's been going on for decades. Here's the thing - there are N "good jobs" and the population of N doesn't reflect the population of America - namely, there's too many white males holding those jobs. If you adjust the composition of N to better reflect the population of America then that will necessarily lead to fewer white males having those "good jobs." There's no way of avoiding that. If you decide to go off "merit" - well, there are some people who were born on 2nd base and when they advance to third the claim they hit a triple. Meanwhile there's other people who weren't born anywhere close to the field, had to get the equipment to play, learn the rules of the game, and worked their butts off to hit a double. Which of these two people have shown more "merit"?
I think part of the problem we're having is we're not having the right conversation, what we should be discussing is why are there only N "good jobs." Even better, why are there any "bad jobs"? What does it mean for a job to be bad and why then would we expect, even demand, that people do such jobs? I think we'll have more meaningful and productive conversations focusing on those questions rather than focusing on race.
> If you decide to go off "merit" - well, there are some people who were born on 2nd base and when they advance to third the claim they hit a triple. Meanwhile there's other people who weren't born anywhere close to the field, had to get the equipment to play, learn the rules of the game, and worked their butts off to hit a double. Which of these two people have shown more "merit"?
Only problems
- is "merit" an indicator of knowing to do the job better?
- are you able to evaluate "merit" - specifically whether a person started from second base or not?
I think part of the problem we're having is we're not having the right conversation, what we should be discussing is why are there only N "good jobs." Even better, why are there any "bad jobs"? What does it mean for a job to be bad and why then would we expect, even demand, that people do such jobs? I think we'll have more meaningful and productive conversations focusing on those questions rather than focusing on race.