I noticed the editorial on diversity on the AJ’s website this morning in which the paper’s managers promised to discriminate in hiring in favor or blacks, Hispanics, American Indians, and some women for the next few years to reach quotas for having the percentage of employees from each ethnic group on their staff match the percentage of people from that group in the city’s total population.
If an organization discriminates in favor of members of one set of people, it necessarily discriminates against those outside the set – in this case white people, especially white men, and Asians. Such discrimination is wrong and far from any real sort of equity.
If an organization discriminates in favor of members of one set of people, it necessarily discriminates against those outside the set
Hiring should be based on merit, and what the AJ is doing is fully as wrong as if its bosses were announcing a plan to discriminate against those they now plan to favor.
Most people have no interest in working for the AJ and likely will pass over this as perhaps annoying but not directly harmful to them. They should think about their sons or grandsons or any white or Asian kids who might want to go to work for the paper someday and will be facing a stacked deck if they try. That might increase the level of annoyance enough to make people stop giving the AJ their money either as subscribers or advertisers and encourage others to do the same.
Gary
The metrics used to justify such discrimination never consider the cultural impacts on people’s personal choices. Employment and career is a very personal choice. Anyone that chooses a career requiring a college degree has put a significant amount of work into their choice, and I don’t know of anyone that puts that much work to have a career in a field that is not respected by their native culture. How many children from the groups they’re trying to hire from start their lives all stary-eyed dreaming to be a journalist? Most of them I know, dream of being a major league athlete, a rancher/farmer, a doctor/vetrinarian, an engineer, an astronaught, fireman/police, pilot, military, a mother, rich, etc…Most kids in health families dream to be like their parents, and I’ve never met a kid that ever dreamed, “I want to be a journalist!” But then again, I never met any journalists with kids, and the journalists I do know, their kids wanted to be something else. (Out of honesty, I must tell you, I don’t personally know a lot of journalists, and the ones that did have kids stopped being journalists to be home makers.)
And as far as journalism goes…they are doing a great job destroying whatever respect they may have had in our culture, leaving the only people interested in that job being those who think they can skew public opinion towards their preferred political ideals. After all, when writing for a news paper, they don’t ever have to debate and truly defend their ideas, they just print them, wonder why no one is subscribing to their newspapers, and then look for some way to shut down all other competing voices in media.
“they are doing a great job destroying whatever respect they may have had in our culture, leaving the only people interested in that job being those who think they can skew public opinion towards their preferred political ideals” — great stuff!