April 11, 2011

Obama Administration's cutting edge of job-killing

From the Houston Chronicle on the Obama Administration's assiduous efforts to make it harder for employers to hire good employees:
P. David Lopez, general counsel for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, was in Houston recently to speak before a conference about race discrimination and his agency's efforts to take on large-scale, nationwide investigations. ... 
Q: What are the big, cutting-edge discrimination issues facing the EEOC?
A: We're going through difficult economic times right now. It's important to us to identify discriminatory hiring practices and policies that are excluding people unlawfully from the workplace. 
I think the EEOC is in a unique position to do that. We're able to look at the patterns within a particular employer in a way a private individual isn't. You often don't know why you weren't hired. We can examine an employer's reasons and try to identify if there were any hiring screens. 
We have a race discrimination case out of Chicago (that involved) a contracting company for custodial services. They had a predominantly Eastern European and Latino workforce and the (lack of) representation of African-Americans compared to the availability was statistically significant. They were using either word-of-mouth recruitment practices or relying on certain ethnic press. 
We resolved it for $3 million and approximately 550 people benefited - the people who applied but weren't hired. The consent decree requires the company to actively recruit African-Americans. The whole goal is to make sure it doesn't happen again. 
Another case we filed is a nationwide challenge to criminal arrest and conviction screens. We challenged that as having a disparate impact against African-Americans and Latinos. That is still pending in Baltimore. 

I watched some of The Wire, and thank God the Obama Administration is cracking down on employers discriminating against criminals in Baltimore. These companies will make much higher profits once the Obama Administration forces them to overcome their bias against Baltimore convicts. Who wouldn't want to hire Baltimore's crooks? Didn't President Obama say Omar, the gay gunman, was his favorite character on The Wire? I don't want to be guilty of insider trading, but you should buy Baltimore real estate now, because, obviously, employment in Baltimore is going to boom once the Obama Administration stops all this irrational discrimination against Baltimore's armed robbers and murderers. Who wouldn't want to be an employer in Baltimore once the Obama Administration is in charge of your hiring policy?

Oh, now I notice that this case is "nationwide." The case is pending in Baltimore merely because the Obama Administration just wanted a jury of Wire characters. So, good times are here again ... nationwide!
Another one was filed in Ohio and we're looking at the use of credit reportsto screen out applicants. We allege it has a disparate impact against African-Americans.
Credit checks and criminal screens (were big) in the '70s and '80s and sort of disappeared but with the new economy, employers are adopting these types of employment screens. That is something that has generated a lot of interest at the EEOC. 
Q: Why are more employers using credit scores and criminal convictions to weed out job applicants? 
A: My speculation is that employers are in a position to generate much more interest in jobs and they're looking for shorthand ways to screen applicants. If we're able to establish disparate impact, then it's the employer's burden to demonstrate the hiring qualification is job-related. 
(Employers) say it relates to honesty and performance. But that's where most of the litigation and discussion has centered - whether these screens can really be job-related and a business necessity. 
Q: With so much information available online about virtually everyone, how much checking should an employer do before making a hiring decision? 
A: I think they need to be very cautious doing online background checks. 
There is the potential that if employers do that, certain classes of individuals will be scrutinized more heavily and you'll only look at the Facebook pages of certain applicants. There are potentially disparate treatment implications in doing that.

Speaking of fighting discrimination, shouldn't the Obama Administration be filing disparate impact lawsuits based on job applicants having Facebook v. MySpace pages?

66 comments:

Anonymous said...

'Eastern European'?

Do they mean new immigrants or the descendants of Poles who have been in the USA for one hundred years?

RS said...

If you can't check for crime... wouldn't you shift to a strategy of overall avoidance of low-class labor?

Does the administration realize that the latter can be partly swapped out with skilled labor and machines, even if this is dyseconomic under present law?

Black Death said...

I like "The Wire" too - Omar (Michael K. Williams) is one of my favorite characters. And did you notice that "Snoop" (Felicia Pearson) was just arrested in a drug raid?

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2011-03-10/entertainment/bs-md-ci-drug-raids-20110310_1_drug-raids-dea-and-baltimore-police-drug-dealers

RKU said...

P. David Lopez: "How dare Chicago employers hire Latinos as janitors insteads of African-Americans! It's pure racial discrimination, and we won't tolerate such a thing!"

Similarly, apparently zero reaction to that mass gang-rape of the 11-year-old Hispanic girl in Texas...

Yep, Hispanics here seem to be assimilating very rapidly into modern American society.

Sword said...

This could be a boon to white applicants.

Imagine that you are an employer, and that you have 3 applicants for a low-level job.
1. John - white, no gaps in work history, and he demands minimum wage+20%
2. Jamal - black, gaps in recent work history not due to incarceration, and he demands minimum wage.
3. Demetrius - black, gaps in recent work history due to recent incarceration, and he demands minimum wage.

Given all information, the employer will consider Jamal preferable to Demetrius, and probably to John also, unless the employer is willing to pay up front20% for his racism.

Now, if the employer can not know reasons for gaps in work history, then he might well assume that both Jamal and Demetrius are criminals, and should be avoided. He is thus willing to pay 20% extra to avoid a potential problem.

But the politicians have no formal schoolig in game theory, so they
can not get their heads around this.

Big Bill said...

I believe they mean actual, recent Eastern Europeans.

The Jewish fundamentalists and segregationists who set up a meat processing operation in Postville, Iowa imported lots of poor Eastern Europeans, stacking them up in houses they bought in Postville.

Wisconsin Dells, a very popular summer vacation spot in Central Wisconsin, uses tons of Eastern European young people for seasonal labor. The only native English-speakers they hire nowadays are kids who deal with the public: desk clerks, etc.

Anonymous said...

Applicants for should not have to provide any background information whatsoever on themselves in order to get a job.

I mean, that worked for Obama, right?

Chicago said...

It's all about blacks, isn't it, they're the only group on this planet worth worrying about and expending all our resources on. If this custodial company discriminated against East Europeans nothing would ever even be said.
The only reliable workers willing to push a mop at midnight are the Europeans and Hispanics. Few blacks want those jobs or are willing to work at the required pace.
So being a criminal, being a deadbeat and being black fairly well overlap? We all knew that, didn't we, but I guess it's now official. Hire a thug today.
It's bad for the other employees when lousy workers are introduced into the work environment. But what's good for them is not important. The only point of view to be considered is what's best for blacks

The Anti-Gnostic said...

Obama is in office solely to divvy up the civil rights loot. Constitutional law, geopolitics, national security, that's womens work.

The EEOC's Chief Legal Gnat has an interesting perspective:

A: Pregnancy discrimination. Many employees don't understand it's against the law. Many don't view it as discrimination. But a lot of it is very easy to prove. Some are almost slam dunks.

We had one case, a woman who was a courtesy shuttle driver at a car lot. Right before the Christmas holidays she informed her boss she was pregnant. He fired her because he was concerned she'd be a health and safety hazard because at any moment she could cramp up and get nauseous. It was just stunning.

That has a chilling effect on women who are starting a family...

Single women in menial jobs who have no business starting families, we didn't forget you!

headache said...

Actually Obummer should have been pursuing his donors on WS, since that is where the really big crimes have been committed lately, so I guess this is just another smoke screen to divert from the real issues and cause some more harm to his natural enemies/victims: ordinary white males.

headache said...

RS sez:Does the administration realize that the latter can be partly swapped out with skilled labor and machines, even if this is dyseconomic under present law?

That is something a black prez will NEVER consider, coz its obvious who is going to take the hit of automation.

Big bill said...

EEOC: "Another case we filed is a nationwide challenge to criminal arrest and conviction screens. We challenged that as having a disparate impact against African-Americans and Latinos. That is still pending in Baltimore."

So not hiring violent criminals is discriminatory against blacks and Latinos nationwide because blacks and Latinos are violent nationwide?

Its nice that the EEOC admits that.

Is there any job for which we can discriminate on the basis of criminality?

Home health care workers who take care of Alzheimer's patients?

Nursery School attendants?

Bank tellers?

rightsaidfred said...

Disparate impact, hmmm. How about the disparate impact of public policy that encouraged minority mortgages etc that gave us this recession that killed millions of jobs? Who do we sue for that?

Anonymous said...

Look how many criminals are at the highest level of government now (e.g. Turbo Timmy and Rangel are two that come to mind...) and look how that is working for us. Why not replicate that methodology at the lowest level of the employment rung.

MDR

Big bill said...

CORRECTION: I soudl have read further. If the employers in Chicago are using "certain ethnic press", the "Eastern Europeans" likely refers to Chicago's ethnics, many of whom are recent immigrants.

I wonder is why the EEOC is giving all of the Indian bodyshops a pass.

In our town we have a national supplier of Indian IT workers from the owner's hometown in India.

He is clearly avoiding placing whites, blacks or Mexicans in any jobs whatsoever.

Is salary a defense to a disparate impact case? Is it a defense to say that "blacks are offered the jobs, but they just won't work as cheap as imported Mexicans" or (in the case of the Indian bodyshop) "white programmers won't work as cheap as imported Indian programmers"?

vg said...

Off topic, but with Steve Jobs' biography being called iSteve, will you go for a rebranding? Or, as you had suggested once, you can make a tidy sum selling him your domain name.

Anonymous said...

"Oh, now I notice that this case is "nationwide." The case is pending in Baltimore merely because the Obama Administration just wanted a jury of Wire characters. So, good times are here again ... nationwide!"

Steve, you are the only writer I know that can make someone laugh reading such a depressing subject. Bravo.

Mr. Mcgranor said...

The global economy liberates the third world--for equality's sake.

Mr. Mcgranor said...

One should discriminate for whatever reasons that compel him.

Anonymous said...

The depressing thing is that the public in general can't connect the dots. The man of the street can't connect Obama's policies to their everyday lives.

I know this to be true because the nice man who checked my groceries yesterday had no idea what QE-2 is - nor did anyone else in the supermarket. I spent $200 for what I hope will be a week's worth of food. Everyone knows that food is now suddenly every expensive as is gasoline - but no one seems to understand the connection to Bernanke and the Obama stimuli.

The Republicans focus the argument on the future (save your grand-kids)and Bill O'Reilly tells America that high gas prices are a plot by greedy speculators.

Debts get paid. Obama would have preferred higher taxes but inflation also works.

After fighting the budget cuts Obama now takes credit for them. Shades of Jerry Brown and Prop 13.

Albertosaurus

Harry Baldwin said...

Would any Republican candidate DARE to make an issue of an outrage like this? The only one I can imagine raising it is Donald Trump, and that's why it's fine with me if he wants to get in the primary and take some of the varnish off Obama.

Anonymous said...

Look how many criminals are at the highest level of government now (e.g. Turbo Timmy and Rangel are two that come to mind...) and look how that is working for us. Why not replicate that methodology at the lowest level of the employment rung.

Who needs brains, talent, and honesty anymore? All that's needed are so-called social skills, diversity, and vibrancy.

Janus said...

Didn't Obama say Omar was his favorite character on all of television? They are definitely charismatic thugs on the Wire, though. Omar, Slinger Bell, that freaky eyed guy from the last season. "Omar don't scare."

Even the black thugs know who to hire when you need a lawyer. Maybe they can be taken down, a la Al Capone for tax evasion, for disparate impact violations in only hiring Jews to defend them.

Anonymous said...

That giant sucking sound is of an increase of formerly American jobs leaking overseas.

One reason Atlas Shrugged is not a great book is NOT that "going on strike" is a silly plot device. Job-creators HAVE been going on strike. Only, Galt's Gulch ain't in Colorado.

It's in India, China, et al.

Anonymous said...

Steve,

Why do you have a problem with creating job opportunities for black Americans? Why should these jobs go to illegal and legal immigrants instead?

Address the mass immigration disaster, and we won't have to worry about these issues.

Peter A said...

"They were using either word-of-mouth recruitment practices"

God forbid a company should use the cheapest, most efficient method of recruiting known to man. Naturally any manager worth his salt would rather spend hours and hours of his time interviewing strangers rather than hire known quantities his existing employees can vouch for.

Anonymous said...

" a contracting company for custodial services ... had a predominantly Eastern European and Latino workforce"

I'd like to know more about this.

Hasn't EEOC often been used to break up any possible centers of Catholic ethnic power? Nixon's Philadelphia Plan back in the 1970s appears to have targeted the rise of Catholic power, as if in revenge for the usurpation of the WASPs/Quakers there.

Kylie said...

"So not hiring violent criminals is discriminatory against blacks and Latinos nationwide because blacks and Latinos are violent nationwide?"

No, not hiring blacks and Latinos because they've been convicted of violent crimes is an example of institutional racism, which is based on white privilege. We all know black and Latinos are disproprotionately convicted and sentenced to prison when whites accused of the exact same offenses would get off scot free or with far shorter sentences.

You see, in the left-wing world view,t he violence of blacks and Latinos is actually "proof" of white racism, one way or another.

beowulf said...

Oh, now I notice that this case is "nationwide." The case is pending in Baltimore merely because the Obama Administration just wanted a jury of Wire characters.

The EEOC is headquartered in Washington DC, considering that the Federal District of Maryland is just over the state line, a more parsiminous explanation is that EEOC lawyers just picked the nearest federal court that could claim jurisdiction (why commute to, say, Cleveland, if you don't have to). And you're missing the point that since Maryland has a single federal judicial district, the statewide jury pool is predominantly white (California has 4 federal judicial districts; since CA is too damn big to govern, it could be split up into 4 states based on those boundaries, but I digress).
http://www.fedstats.gov/mapstats/fjd/06fjd.html

There's been criticism that the Feds step into state murder prosecutions in predominantly black counties (such as Prince Georges County MD) solely to bring death penalty cases before predominantly white federal juries:
As a result of these practices, more death sentences have been imposed in the U.S. District Courts for the Eastern District of Louisiana, the Eastern District of Virginia, the Eastern District of Missouri and the District of Maryland than in federal districts that include New York, Chicago, California, and Florida, where far more murders occur.
http://www.secondclassjustice.com/?p=57

jody said...

yeah i also notice that businesses started and operated by east asians and indians, are not subject to department of justice regulations or civil rights lawsuits.

it's perfectly fine for them to run an operation where they only ever hire 100% ethnic compatriots. the US government never comes calling.

this is, easily, the most frustrating thing about the modern world. europeans create so much from scratch, so many enterprises and industries, universities, sports leagues, and so forth, and then are instantly under attack to deliberately give it all away, with the full backing of the legal system.

it's like the unproductive do-nothing groups just sit around waiting for euros to develop the next thing for them to parasite off of. it's infuriating.

jody said...

meanwhile, it looks like the new york stock exchange has decided to reject the NASDAQ bid and will instead sell to ze germans for a lower price.

could certainly end up having a "disparate impact" on some of the jewish guys who find they are no longer employed.

Carol said...

"So not hiring violent criminals is discriminatory against blacks and Latinos nationwide because blacks and Latinos are violent nationwide?"

They were framed!

Whiskey said...

Waiting for the Obama Administration to file Disparate Impact lawsuits against the NBA and NFL for not hiring more White players in ... 1 ... 2 ... 3 ...

Obviously, this is not sustainable. It will break, and hard. Moreover, Obama is not even TRYING to generate patronage, loyalty, and dependence on anyone outside Blacks and Hispanics (and College Educated White women). He plans to cheat his way in if it's 15% or thereabouts.

That's his whole MO. Against his patron, disqualifying her from the ballot. Against Ryan, getting his divorce records unsealed (and leaking them to the press).

Anonymous said...

"Everyone knows that food is now suddenly every expensive as is gasoline - but no one seems to understand the connection to Bernanke and the Obama stimuli."

This is just as well, because there is no connection.

RS said...

> Steve, Why do you have a problem with creating job opportunities for black Americans?

This probably won't do that, not in the long term - I think Headache is mistaken.

Assume people start complying tomorrow: suddenly a lot of black felons get hired, some deserving and some not so much. But businesses sure won't like the situations that the less deserving ones create.

So by ten years from now, businesses will have adjusted. They can make their firms more capital (machine) intensive, they can offshore, make them more skilled labor intensive and semi-skilled labor intensive, pretend like all (or more of) the jobs require a BA - in brief, they'll do what's necessary to become less unskilled labor intensive, so that they don't have to hire the sort of people who are (say) 20% likely to be felons and thus are (say) 13% likely to represent trouble for the firm.

They can also offshore to China/India. But /also/, over and above that, production will decline, because shifting toward something more capital intensive is less efficient than things as they are now, but more efficient than staying unskilled labor intensive at such time as you can no longer screen for felonies.

Therefore, this might be bad for Blacks starting very soon; the intention is to benefit them in the short term - the point is the election in 2012. I'm not saying the long-term effect on Blacks will necessarily be massive, but it does seem pretty likely to be bad, and I doubt it will be minute.

Anonymous said...

And assuming that the NAMs can't compete for the good jobs, they will want welfare.

But that's much more problematic than in 1970. Then 90% white, 10% minority meant that 9 whites could be taxed for 1 minority on welfare.

Now, or soon, there will be only 1 white for 1 minority; 9 times the taxes per capita. Not too likely. The gravy train won't be there.

Even worse, many more whites will be in the "system" delivering "services" to the minorities; so there will be fewer whites in productive jobs generating taxable wealth.

Robert Hume

Svigor said...

Omar, lol. People say Obama's a closet homosexual. If he is, he's got brass, picking Omar.

In any case, Clay Davis is clearly a better character. McNulty's black curmudgeon partner's pretty funny, too. He kinda reminds me of Chi McBride from Human Target, my favorite black actor of all time.

Svigor said...

a more parsiminous explanation is that EEOC lawyers just picked the nearest federal court that could claim jurisdiction (why commute to, say, Cleveland, if you don't have to).

I'll buy that, if Baltimore's the shortest commute. Is there no closer federal court, even in MD?

Also, I'm curious as to why the jurors would be mostly white - do they have to be demographically representative of the district?

Svigor said...

Small companies are largely exempt from anti-discrimination law AFAIK. Folks should consider that before they comment on this stuff.

Svigor said...

Waiting for the Obama Administration to file Disparate Impact lawsuits against the NBA and NFL for not hiring more White players in ... 1 ... 2 ... 3 ...

Now, see, there is a good point. It simply doesn't get any higher-profile than the NBA and NFL, their "racism" doesn't get any higher-profile, and they're definitely over the limit for small company exemptions, and... the feds couldn't give less of a crap.

Svigor said...

So by ten years from now, businesses will have adjusted. They can make their firms more capital (machine) intensive, they can offshore, make them more skilled labor intensive and semi-skilled labor intensive, pretend like all (or more of) the jobs require a BA - in brief, they'll do what's necessary to become less unskilled labor intensive, so that they don't have to hire the sort of people who are (say) 20% likely to be felons and thus are (say) 13% likely to represent trouble for the firm.

I'm kinda surprised lots of companies don't use the small company exemptions. You know, lawyers create a labyrinth of paperwork obscuring the fact that all these small companies are actually a smaller number of larger companies, requiring an army of gubbmint lawyers and years of litigation to untangle it all.

Hey, maybe they have, and it's working, but I doubt it.

Unknown said...

Single women in menial jobs who have no business starting families, we didn't forget you!

Who said anything about this woman being single? Do married women never work?

You'll probably complain if this woman, who loses her job, subsequently signs up for unemployment and/or TANF.

Anonymous said...

Why does the government inspect lowly jobs like custodial work for 'disparate impact' when disparate impact--especially in favor of Jews--is a much bigger problem in elite jobs?

I guess the assumption is that a black guy CAN be a janitor but not a top-notch financial analyst or brain surgeon. Well... isn't the bigotry of low expectations?

One good thing about this is it's bound to drive a wedge among working class whites, Hispanics, and blacks--all heavily Democratic--as they scramble for the same pie.

Camlost said...

Small companies are largely exempt from anti-discrimination law AFAIK. Folks should consider that before they comment on this stuff.

Yes, that's somewhat true. Also, big companies are huge fat targets for discrimination lawsuits of any kind - people assume that they can afford to pay out the money without going out of business.

But the most painful piece of federal anti-discrimination legislation is OFCCP.

Any company that receives government contracts must abide by the dictates of OFCCP, which is kind of like basic EEOC laws on steroids, and with more reporting overhead.

Anonymous said...

Wasn't Amy Chua's book satire?

I mean, she had long given up that style of rearing children..

The Anti-Gnostic said...

Who said anything about this woman being single? Do married women never work

Shuttle driver for a parking lot is a job that students take to hustle for beer money. Anybody banking on such a job to "start a family," in Mr. Lopez's words, clearly has no business starting one. She's underclass and statistically unlikely to be married.

You'll probably complain if this woman, who loses her job, subsequently signs up for unemployment and/or TANF.

Why shouldn't I?

Stan said...

We should extend disparate-impact principles to the whole world. Living in Africa has a disparate impact on Africans, and this is unfair. So let's move them all to the U.S. To not do so would be racist. Everyone should have the right to live in the U.S.

Svigor said...

We should extend disparate-impact principles to the whole world. Living in Africa has a disparate impact on Africans, and this is unfair. So let's move them all to the U.S. To not do so would be racist. Everyone should have the right to live in the U.S.

I'm down with that. But whites get South Africa back.

More Anon said...

Svigor: "Small companies are largely exempt from anti-discrimination law AFAIK"

This might not matter much.

Please read the article "The Growing Necessity of Supplier Diversity" -
No longer a niche, diversity is gaining ground in the corporate supply chain

Poder Magazine

Small businesses face pressure to "diversify" in order to land subcontracts.

jody said...

"This is just as well, because there is no connection."

the price of food is directly connected to the price of oil due to how modern industrial agriculture works. byproducts of oil refineries are used for fertilizer.

the price of oil goes up, the price of fertilizer goes up, the price of food goes up. this is how the green revolution works, and is why there are now 5 billion third worlders when 100 years ago there were only 1 billion. the oil age led directly to an explosion in population growth in the third world.

so, when the price of oil goes up a lot, the price of food goes up a lot, and teeming masses of third worlders start having trouble eating. this was a contributing factor to the revolution in egypt, for instance.

due to NAFTA, small time farmers in mexico lost a lot of their ability to produce the volume of corn which mexico consumes, and mexico now needs to import a vast amount of corn from the US. when the price of oil goes up, the price of corn goes up, and poor mexicans start having trouble buying enough corn, and the complaining starts. futher exacerbating the situation is how the US turns a portion of it's corn crop into ethanol - hardly a problem for the US since it generates far more corn than it needs, but a problem for corn importers who have less corn exports to buy.

jody said...

"Small companies are largely exempt from anti-discrimination law AFAIK."

i'm not too sure about this. personally i think it's just a matter of, there are simply too many of them for the federal lawyers to go after all of them. the .gov now employs thousands of diversity lawyers but they're still outnumbered by existing small businesses 100 to 1. can't hit 'em all. i'll definitely look into actual legal language for definitions and terms, but i've now dealt with several operations in california which were definitely bigger than "small" and which were mainly only hiring chinese or indian employees. operations which had like 200 people and 95% of them were from the same group.

i'm at the point where i'm considering starting a small business in a year or two, and getting mugged by diversity lawyers, or blindsided by an annoying and spurious lawsuit initiated by an angry NAM who didn't get a job or a promotion because he plain wasn't good enough, is high on my mind and one of the things which gives me pause.

not that i expect to be successful for sure. but if i am, successful operations started by and run by euro-americans (which is the vast majority of private sector employers) quickly become targets for a diversity take over when they are doing good and expanding. not that i'm looking for stormfront-like demographics for my employees but i'd like to retain freedom of association and not have government lawyers, emboldened by a potential obama second term, dictating terms to me 5 years down the road.

ben tillman said...

The EEOC's Chief Legal Gnat has an interesting perspective:

A: Pregnancy discrimination. Many employees don't understand it's against the law. Many don't view it as discrimination. But a lot of it is very easy to prove. Some are almost slam dunks.


No kidding. Women get pregnancy leave, and men don't.

ben tillman said...

Why do you have a problem with creating job opportunities for black Americans?

He doesn't. He has a problem with the "disparate impact" policy, under which the executive and judicial branches decide disputes on the basis of the contestants' identity rather than the law.

none of the above said...

Also, there's this error that antidiscrimination law keeps making, over and over: Suppose thereis some measure on which blacks, as a population, do much worse than whites, as a population. Since whites do better than blacks on a lot of things, this is common--IQ, income, credit rating, net worth, grades, test scores of all kinds, criminal record, health.

Now, one model of the world is that employers are using these measures as markers for blackness--saying "I don't care about this guy's credit or IQ, but I can justify hiring mostly whites if I use those as criteria. If you think that model describes reality pretty well, than disparate impact law makes some sense.

But there's another model, which seems more plausible to me in most cases: employers care about what's being measured, or something correlated with it. That is, I don't care whether the guy I hire is black or white, but I want him to be bright enough to do the job, and given the IQ difference, far fewer blacks than whites will qualify.

If you believe the second model, forbidding the test makes blacks less employable--it takes away my ability to check to see if the applicant is really smart enough for the job, but leaves me with the knowledge that far fewer blacks than whites are bright enough. I end up with an incentive to discriminate, even though I am indifferent to the race of my employees.

Rohan Swee said...

jody: the price of oil goes up, the price of fertilizer goes up, the price of food goes up. this is how the green revolution works, and is why there are now 5 billion third worlders when 100 years ago there were only 1 billion. the oil age led directly to an explosion in population growth in the third world.

So for all the complaining people do around here about the liberals, the Bilderbergers, the Frankfurt Schoolers, the feminists, the CFR, the Rothchilds, the Kennedys, Davos Man, and Jonathan Edwards causing White Plight, it's all really Norman Borlaug's fault.

I always suspected that when we got to the bottom of this we'd find some Upper Midwestern Norwegian do-gooder sitting there.

Svigor said...

i'm not too sure about this. personally i think it's just a matter of, there are simply too many of them for the federal lawyers to go after all of them.

I'm just going by the laws I read (which are admittedly few). It's right there in black letters that they apply only to companies with more than x employees. I wish I had a cite for you, but I know what I read.

Svigor said...

Same goes for real estate. If the property in question is below a certain size (in terms of units for multi-unit dwellings, for example) the owner may legally discriminate racially in selling or renting. Or rather, the anti-discrimination law in question does not apply.

IANAL though, so in practical terms this may not be true due to other laws overlapping.

Svigor said...

No kidding. Women get pregnancy leave, and men don't.

Maybe it's a kind of inversion of my logic on "gay marriage." Homosexuals have the same right to marry as anyone else, after all; they don't want the same rights as everyone else, they want special, new rights, to "marry" people of the same sex.

Similarly, men have the same right to pregnancy leave as women - it's not the law's fault if they can't get pregnant. :)

Of course, "who-whom?" is the inversion point.

Svigor said...

But the most painful piece of federal anti-discrimination legislation is OFCCP.

I have no problem with the gubbmint being PC in its own dealings. My problem is with the gubbmint's dealings adding up to anything significant in the big picture. In other words, I want the government to be running little more than a lemonade stand. Given that, how they run it is their business.

Svigor said...

But if the gubbmint's to have more than a lemonade stand to run, then I expect, at the very least, for it to apply its ostensible values in a FAAAAAAAAAAAR more consistent fashion.

E.g., okay, sure, it's worth considering having the government's hiring practices have as their goal a workforce that "looks like America." That seems fair. But there are other considerations. E.g., taxpayers. Shouldn't the tax-recipients look like the tax-contributors? Why should white America be taxed to pay black America? What's "fair" about that?

Svigor said...

the price of food is directly connected to the price of oil due to how modern industrial agriculture works. byproducts of oil refineries are used for fertilizer.

Natural gas production is another source of fertilizer, so there goes any 1:1 relationship between oil and fertilizer. Not that you were suggesting such, but you didn't take any pains to disabuse, either.

Svigor said...

i'll definitely look into actual legal language for definitions and terms, but i've now dealt with several operations in california which were definitely bigger than "small" and which were mainly only hiring chinese or indian employees. operations which had like 200 people and 95% of them were from the same group.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I wasn't suggesting that the gubbmint wouldn't engage in Anarcho-Tyranny via selective enforcement, far from it. I was just pointing out a fact that a lot of people don't seem to know. The typical American seems to think you can be thrown in jail for voicing racist thoughts, and the typical ethnopatriot doesn't seem to be aware of some of the limitations on "anti-discrimination" (anti-freedom) laws.

Svigor said...

"Why do you have a problem with creating job opportunities for black Americans?"

He doesn't. He has a problem with the "disparate impact" policy, under which the executive and judicial branches decide disputes on the basis of the contestants' identity rather than the law.


Heh, typical leftist "argument." If I don't want the government to fund abortions, I'm "denying women their right to choose." If I don't want my pockets robbed by the government, I want to "starve the children."

They cry out in pain as they strike you.

Svigor said...

Please read the article "The Growing Necessity of Supplier Diversity"

I have this policy of not reading beyond a couple minutes or a few thousand characters if the author doesn't give me anything. Most of the first page was just pap. I get the point that corporate America is drunk on the Kool-Aid, beyond that, where's the beef?

Anonymous said...

Sure, it's pernicious and idiotic what they're doing but it's worth talking to your local "liberal" to learn where they're coming from. And that us a conviction that the criminal justice system is so grossly biased against blacks that most of the people we think of as dangerous (black) ex-cons are no worse than any number of white people who have no criminal record at all. Yeah, it's nuts, but it's worth pointing out.

One particularly popular talking point for these people is the DoJ's crime victimization survey. It shows that for violent crimes other than murder whites are victimized no more than blacks. That fact plus the axiomatic one that people are victimized mostly by members of their own group, serves to buttress quite a lot of the "liberal" conventional wisdom.

Randall K said...

"And that us a conviction that the criminal justice system is so grossly biased against blacks that most of the people we think of as dangerous (black) ex-cons are no worse than any number of white people who have no criminal record at all."

- Not true at all. Read "the Color of Crime", for starters. In fact the evidence shows that the justice system is biased in favor of blacks (as do articles such as this one).

"One particularly popular talking point for these people is the DoJ's crime victimization survey. It shows that for violent crimes other than murder whites are victimized no more than blacks."

-Why, when you put it that way, it makes me wonder what the fuss is all about. Only murder? Why, happened to me three times on the way to work just last Tuesday!

In all seriousness, whether blacks might victimize me as often as they do other blacks is of no importance- its whether or not there is a significant chance that they are victimizing me period. Whether they are equal opportunity criminals is irrelevant to me.