From: eisimps@cie.uoregon.edu (Eileen Simpson)
Subject: Re: Anita Hill to Head EEOC
Organization: University of Oregon Campus Information Exchange
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 92 07:48:38 GMT

In article <BxJAAI.88H@constellation.ecn.uoknor.edu> greg@gallifrey.ucs.uoknor.edu (Greg Trotter) writes:
>
>Rush's comment was along the lines of: "Since when are qualifications
>important to people who support AFFIRMATIVE ACTION?!?"
>
>Great line. It turned me into a dittohead.
>
>P.S. You ever notice that companies will put EEO/AA on applications, ads,
>etc.? Of course, this expands to mean "Equal Opportunity Employer/Affirmative
>Action." Isn't this contradictory? If you have a quota system in place, it's
>not equal opportunity.

Spoken by a beneficiary of white male privilege. What you call a quota
system is the only thing that has gotten people to even look at what are
called "qualifications of merit" when they are displayed by white men.

As a woman who was on the leading edge of our exit from the pink-collar
ghetto, I found affirmative action to be essential to having anyone look at
my qualifications.  Before that, they didn't see beyond the fact that I
wore a skirt and didn't stand over toilets.

I graduated with honors in 3 years from an undergraduate program
emphasizing pre-law and speech/communications.  I applied for a number of
jobs for which these are excellent degrees.  In the first, the Director of
Personnel decided that the job he had open was "too good for a woman" so I
was told there were no openings.  What he didn't know was that my father
was friends with the man who had posted the opening.  The guy got chewed
out, but I did not get interviewed--the job was filled by a male who had
barely a C average in the 'gimmy' department of a local college.

Next job was the same story--my dad knew of a job that I was told had been
filled by the time I applied.  Turned out that this time the woman who took
the applications felt it was too good for a woman. The job was there, she
just denied its existence.  It's something Blacks know  lot about.

The one I sued on was Aetna Ins. in Spokane Washington.  These guys (I
interviewed with 3 men in the office) were incredible.  As I left one of
them said, "Are you sure you don't have some boyfriend up here you're
interested in?"  When I actually shouted "NO" at him, he said, "Oh, I'm
sorry.  Must be my suspicious mind."  

As I was leaving, one of the other men commented to me that "No woman was
going to make it in claims, especially some damn black woman."  I didn't
get it--I am not black.  Turned out that another applicant was a black
woman and he intended this remark to make me feel better. The job went to a
man with lower grades than either of us and no prior work experience.  They
had some "soft" reasons why he was "better qualified."  (Like he'd lived in
the area before school.)

We both sued them. The black woman and I.

The investigation dragged on.  Because of rules of evidence we could not
support each other about what happened.  It was our individual word
against theirs.  By the time the investigation finished, I had left my
job with another company--which I was hired for because other women and 
minority men who came before me had sued the company and they were now under 
affirmative action--and entered law school.  The law school was still allowing 
women in on a differnt basis than men--they held down the admissions to one 
third of the class, rather than the 3 women they'd allowed in previously.  
Women applicants had significantly higher qualifications than men and
would've been over half the class if they were admitted on the same basis
men were selected before women's applications increased.  They created a special
category to make certain that under-qualified white males, especially
veterans, continued to be admitted in something close to their historic
numbers.

By the time the case was resolved, I was out of law school and praticing in
a DA's office.  I was the only woman in the office at a time when the legal
profession was 5% female and almost none of them were litigators.  I got
the job by trying cases 2 days a week my last year in law school while
pregnant--and not losing a case.  The guys were either okay with me working
there or they knocked me into walls when I walked by.  My boss had never hired 
a woman except as a law clerk.  I quit when he had me running the Support 
Enforcement Unit at 40% of the pay that went with the job when it was run by a 
man.

In case you haven't figured it out, WHITE MALES have been the beneficiaries
of the biggest affirmative action program in history:  it's called
discrimination. It means you have historically succeeded by removing the
potential competition of women of all races and minority men.  When you
needed to you killed those who objected to your form of affirmative action.
The rest of the time you used lesser forms of brutality and intimidation.

You could usually succeed by simply denying entry for anyone who didn't
look like you into all but the lowest levels of the system, tho.  That way
most of you could avoid your complicity in the system and the reality that
you had the biggest handout program on planet earth working to keep you
gettin special privileges.

I have never heard one of you 'reverse discrimination' boys ever suggest
that we get all the white males out of power who don't have a clue what
they are doing and who got there by virtue of privilege.  If you think
there aren't a lot of them around, just wait till you get your first job
and listen to how you and everyone else talks about you boss.

If you operated with honesty, integrity, and respect--if you were capable
of recognizing that people who are different from you and problem-solve in
different ways are not inferior--in short, if you could be trusted to apply
the rules of merit when they will keep you out of a job, then you folks
could gripe about affirmative action.  But you don't.  You cheat when the
rules of merit would work against you and rationalize it away.

But the fact is that when someone has had it all over you in objective
qualifications, grades, degrees, and demonstrated leadership, you guys have
run like hell into the vague land of 'intangible qualities' that show that
the white man should get the job.

Quit your whining over affirmative action, go to class, get decent grades,
and grow up.  I am sick of beating you guys of "Merit" and having some lush
of a frat boy cry 'affirmative action' because he finally has to compete on
a level playing field.  If you want to end affirmative action, work for
justice--even when you will not benefit from its application.




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