Yostivanich

Okay, so this week I have been really bad at post­ing, thus far I have missed 2 out of the 3 days. Unfor­tu­nately I couldn’t do much of any­thing about the project or being sick. Speak­ing of which I’m feel­ing slightly bet­ter, today I can actu­ally think straight, so here goes another crazy ven­ture into my mind.

An idea has been pro­posed by sev­eral Women’s Advo­cacy, Fem­i­nist, Women’s Rights, etc. groups, the idea is to push for the next UN – Secretary-General to be a female. Now, let me unequiv­o­cally state that I have no issues with a woman being the Sec­re­tary Gen­eral or being the next Pres­i­dent or being really in any posi­tion of lead­er­ship. Yes, there are peo­ple who feel that women can not and should hold cer­tain posi­tions of lead­er­ship, I how­ever am not one of those peo­ple. I do know peo­ple who have stated in very cer­tain terms that if a woman was to run for Pres­i­dent of the USA they would not vote for her, sim­ply because she is a woman. A com­pletely sex­ist and in my per­sonal opin­ion stu­pid and igno­rant remark. How­ever, I also take issue with these fem­i­nist groups push­ing for a woman to be elected the next Secretary-General. Well, why one might ask why, if I don’t have a prob­lem with women being in posi­tions of leadership?

The rea­son is sim­ple, I do not feel that it is nec­es­sary to sup­port one social group over another. Sex, race, color, creed, and reli­gion should be put aside to elect the best PERSON for the posi­tion. Note that I said per­son, not man, not woman, not African-American, not Anglo-Saxon, not His­panic, not gay man, or gay woman, the best per­son. Groups that wish to advo­cate equal­ity for dif­fer­ent social groups should not advo­cate the pro­mo­tion of one social group over another sim­ply because they are work­ing for the rights of that social group. For exam­ple, the National Asso­ci­a­tion for the Advance­ment of Col­ored Peo­ple (NAACP), should not request that a African-American be elected to some posi­tion, sim­ply because there has never been an African-American in said position.

This changes the dynam­ics of what it means to have free elec­tions and choos­ing the best per­son for the job, rather than choos­ing the best PERSON for a posi­tion, it becomes what social group hasn’t been included that has enough pow­er­ful orga­ni­za­tions push­ing for said social group to be included. The UN, the US, recruiters, all of these people/organizations need to search for the best per­son for a posi­tion, not the best woman, African-American, or His­panic. This in effect becomes reverse dis­crim­i­na­tion, a term that crops up in con­ser­v­a­tive cir­cles, but should be some­thing that lib­er­als need to rec­og­nize. Reverse dis­crim­i­na­tion is the idea where white males, gen­er­ally though not always, are in effect dis­crim­i­nated because they are white males. Jobs are lost because a com­pany needs to have so many minori­ties for a diverse com­pany is the eas­i­est exam­ple to use. This also affects com­pa­nies in their sex­ual harass­ment poli­cies, where females are allowed to say things to a male that if a male was to say towards a female, they would be fired for. There is a point where try­ing to level the play­ing field goes to far and the play­ing field tilts the other direction.

I have noth­ing against lev­el­ing the play­ing field, I have noth­ing intrin­si­cally against any females or minori­ties that I have met. I have noth­ing against them if/when I do not receive a job offer that I wanted but they receive the job offer instead. As long as the per­son is qual­i­fied for the posi­tion, as long as I was eval­u­ated on the same basis that every­one else was eval­u­ated on. I wish there were no stereo­types and dis­crim­i­na­tion in the world as I wrote about on Mon­day morn­ing. How­ever stereo­types and dis­crim­i­na­tion does exist, and it does become nec­es­sary to level the play­ing field, but I feel that the play­ing field is very quickly being tilted the other way.

While yes, it is true that white males do still cur­rently tend to (though not always) earn more money than minori­ties, be pro­moted faster, receive more job offers, there are numer­ous cases that I have per­son­ally expe­ri­enced and my white male friends have expe­ri­enced where a less qual­i­fied per­son was put into a posi­tion, received a schol­ar­ship, pro­moted or elected to a posi­tion even though it was uni­ver­sally acknowl­edged that the said per­son was less qual­i­fied or even unqual­i­fied for what they received. Per­sonal Exam­ple: there was a friend that my brother had, who spent one entire semes­ter of col­lege teach­ing an African-American female the basics of gram­mar (sub­ject, verb and noun) and she still did not under­stand them by the end of the semes­ter. This lady did not qual­ify for even attend­ing the col­lege, her SAT scores were below the schools stan­dards, yet she received imme­di­ate accep­tance to sev­eral col­leges and the one that she chose, gave her a full ride to the school. All because she was #1 – Female, #2 – African-American, #3 – The first to attend col­lege in her family.

Now I am not say­ing that this lady did not deserve a chance to attend col­lege, and I am not say­ing kudos to the col­lege for pay­ing for her edu­ca­tion when her fam­ily could not afford it. How­ever she was not qual­i­fied to attend col­lege aca­d­e­m­i­cally, why then was she accepted and even more so, given a full ride? The ques­tion is raised that if some­one else was in that exact same posi­tion would they receive the same thing that this lady received? I would will­ingly state no, espe­cially if that per­son was a white male. My first thought for col­leges and job hunters is to not ask the race or sex of some­one on a job appli­ca­tion, pos­si­bly also hid­ing the person’s name (owing to the fact that names can and do give away sex and eth­nic­ity many times). Do not even con­sider it in your ini­tial round elim­i­na­tions. The first elim­i­na­tion round is com­pletely neu­tral, deci­sions to stop con­sid­er­ing some­one are based entirely on their indi­vid­ual qual­i­fi­ca­tions. Obvi­ously at some point or another you will have to see the actual per­son and at that point dis­crim­i­na­tion can come into play, but at least give peo­ple a chance rather than bas­ing deci­sions on their sex or ethnicity.

Please do not take this post as I hate women and minori­ties, I do not. I wish for ALL social groups to be treated fairly and equally. Towards this end I can not sup­port the advo­cacy of some­one into any posi­tion on any basis other than their qual­i­fi­ca­tions. I do sup­port many fem­i­nist and minor­ity advo­cacy groups because I feel their cause is a noble and good cause. But I do not and can not sup­port such groups sup­port­ing one social groups sta­tus to be raised over another, this is not fair and equal treatment.