Posted on 05/26/2008 9:07:54 PM PDT by jazusamo
In order to keep from being tripped up by “diversity police”, HR departments should assign a number to the resume, and omit the name.
Yes, this “typical white racist” would vote for Sowell in a heartbeat!!
Both Barack Hussein Obama and his wife, Michelle, are obviously beneficiaries of affirmative action policies. If one takes away the teleprompter, Barack Obama becomes tongue-tied, awkward, and prone to “misstatements” (at least according to the MSM). He does not appear to be quick on his feet, just like Hillary Clinton. He is a singularly unaccomplished Harvard Law graduate in terms of actually practicing law, and is only where he is by virtue of being half-black. Michelle Obama is obviously not very smart, and certainly represented a mascot to Princeton University, Harvard Law School, Winston and Strawn Law, and The University of Chicago Hospitals and Clinics. I’ve seen her senior thesis and am surprised she was able to graduate. Together, in my view, they are mascots of the shameless democrat party.
I'm lucky in that there's not a whole lot of room for unqualified hires in IT....the "Affirmative Action" hires take place at the blunt end of the stick where the people can't do too much damage. Lots of forward-facing positions (HR, Training, Marketing) where management can point at the mascots (I *love* that term!!) and say "See how enlightened we are!"...but when it hits the fan, the people in back who get the work done are the most qualified.
I worked at a site many years ago. We had a staff of around 100 people. They were from all over the US, and every continent (except Antartica)...both sexes, gay/straight, all races and colors. A national magazine came out to interview the management team - this was back in my younger days when I got excited about things like this.
First question out of the interviewer's mouth was "What program did you use to achieve such diversity on your staff?" We managers just looked at each other...there wasn't a program. One guy spoke up and said "We just hired the most qualified people as they came in the door."
End of interview. I guess that hiring qualified people isn't news, but hiring unqualified people is.
I hear ya. I think the kid from Tuskeegee’s shortcomings were mostly in the training rather than the aptitude department. If they had hired him in in, say, reliability, he would have quickly learned the job and been a producer and eventually he could widen his horizons.
Ouch.
Mr. Sowell hits the nail on the head again!
IMHO, you don't do people any favors by hiring them to do jobs for which they're not qualified (or not ready). Better to start out low and figure things out, than start out too high and be a pariah amongst your peers. I think that "Affirmative Action Hire" is one of the biggest perjoratives that I've ever heard a person called - ran into it at a 3-letter behemoth of a company that I worked at for about 5 minutes.
I'm probably the equivalent to a systems engineer in IT. I started out with a BS in EE, and I would have gotten my head handed to me if I had tried to do the job that I'm doing now. It wasn't an intelligence thing, it was an experience thing. A person needs to know how a system, or a business works, before jumping in and messing with it. Most important - they need to know "If I do 'X', then not only 'X' changes, but 'Y' changes as well". That's the biggest hurdle I see with new hires on the IT dept. They get so focused on the problem at hand that they don't realize that fixing it will (more often than not) have other ramifications....
Diversity is just a code name for quotas. When quota became a dirty word after the failure of affirmative discrimination excuse me action, they came up with the diversity scam. As if simply having samples of a host of different ethnic groups plus the sex equation will produce great employees. Tell that to professional sports teams.
Yup. Not sure if you read one of my prior posts, but I was on a *very* diverse team for a time (actually did the hiring for it). It was excellent - but that excellence came from hiring top notch people, not filling in checkboxes for various ethnicities.
I want the best employees possible working for me and with me. Call me a rebel, but if they happen to be straight white males, so be it.
Obama wants to have a national discussion about race. I say we start with this column.
As Sowell pointed out in a previous column - precisely in the context of Obama's famous speech - when a race hustler calls for "a national dialog on race," what he means is that he demands a monolog on race - in which he talks and everyone else shuts up and listens to him.My point is that a race hustler is able to get away with that precisely to the extent that Big Journalism runs interference for him. The imposture is so utterly transparent that there would be no possible response to the dreaded "second question." The race hustler operates only so long as he knows that Big Journalism will never ask the second question but will fawn over the hustler's monolog and treat it as dispositive of all legitimate points of view on the issue.
The fraudulent, 150-year-old process which gives Big Journalism the motive and opportunity to do that is demystified here.
Ping
I read this earlier today. Great piece by Sowell.
15 years and millions of dollars in revenue after proving myself an asset to my company, they wanted to give me money as a diverse employee for business development for being a minority....
I was insulted. I did this on my own. So I did the honorable thing and told them what they could do with their money....
Deposit it in my account and thanked them.
Sounds to me like the only reasonable thing to do! :-)
I can see how that would be offensive, but it’s also pretty silly. Makes you wonder what goes on in some craniums. You did the right thing. At least you had plenty of time to prove yourself before that happened.
It reminded me of the final scene from “Arthur” the 1980 movie.
“I’m not f*&^ing stupid, I took the money.”
Using human beings as mascots is not idealism. It is self-aggrandizement that is ugly in both its concept and its consequences.
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