lecture 10.3 (positive discrimiation: pros and cons)

Question 1

Positive action or discrimination hiring
Positive action & discrimination

Answer 1

measures external to the hiring process to redress existing disadvantages

(Removing the shackles from the runner)

Positive discrimination: certain characteristics (typically sex, race/ethinicity, disability, region, sex orientation and age) becomes legitimate criteria for evaluating candidates (being black would maek you a better candidate? seems stupid)

Removing the shackles and brining the runner level with her/his competitor

Question 2

The need for positive discrimination

Answer 2

Imagine a hundred yard dash in which one of the two runners has his legs shackled together. He has progressed 10 yards, while the unshackled runner has gone 50 yarrds. At the point the judges decide that the reace is unfair. how do they rectify the situation? Do they merely remove the shackles and allow the reace to proceed? Then theey could say that equal opportunity now prevailed. But one of the runners would still be forty yards ahead of the others. Would it not be the better part of justice to allow the previously shackled runner to make up the forty yard gap; or to start the race all over again?

Question 3

Pros of positive discrimination

Answer 3

Justice as focusing on manifested injustices rather than designing the perfect society

justice as iustari, to adjust, to repair something wrong

takes into account discriminations of the past that have effect on the present

Companies send a moral message to society

Question 4

cons of positive discrimination

Answer 4

1) hiring the less qualified or un-qualified

2) not meritocratic (relating to or characteristic of a society in which power is held by people selected according to merit.)

3) what others think about a person hired out of positive disrimination, and what the person thinks of himself/herself/themselves (dont get same respect from others, start second guessing ones self, am i a diversity hire)

4) reverse discrimination

Question 5

over the cons of (cons of positive discrimination)

Answer 5

Two ways out:

Tie break system: use positive discrimination to choose between two equal qualified candidate

Threshold system: minimum qualification above which other features an be taken into account

3) so what? maintaining the status quo?

4) dont be ideological about non-discrimination