Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
From: mfriedma@uucp (Michael Friedman)
Subject: Re: Pessimism
Organization: Oracle Corporation
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 23:28:24 GMT
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by an unauthenticated user
              at Oracle Corporation.  The opinions expressed are those
              of the user and not necessarily those of Oracle.

In article <1992Sep29.134830.2396@cas.org> cwm54@cas.org writes:

>In article <1992Sep28.211217.3952@oracle.us.oracle.com> you write:
>>In article <1992Sep25.190754.3705@cas.org> cwm54@cas.org writes:

>>>      In a capitalist society there are always going to be fewer jobs
>>>     than workers.

>>Why?  Ever hear of a labor shortage?  For example, Miami has one right
>>now.

>  Miami is a unique community. When everyone who is qualified for a job can
>  get a job come talk to me, otherwise shove your "labor shortage".

Well, you claimed always.  I provided a counterexample.  If you claim
always I only need one.

Also look at some parts of Long Island in New York.  A couple of years
ago the local fast food chains were busing in kids from NYC to flip
burgers, etc. becasue they couldn't find people locally.  I'm not sure
if that situation has changed or not, but it is another counter-example.

>>>     It is the nature of competition. If I "pull myself
>>>     up by my own bootstraps" I necessarily displace someone else down
>>>     to my previous position.

>>Depends on how you define position.  If you mean rank order of income
>>in population, then certainly.  If you mean income and standard of
>>living then no.

>  Da..what?

Seems simple to me.

Let's say there are two people in our society.  Well, no matter how
rich we both get one of us is still going to be ranked 1 and one of us
is still going to rank 2.  If number 2 becomes number 1 then number 1
has to become number 2.  In that sense you are right, but it's a
pretty stupid sense.

On the other hand, it is totally clear that they can start out naked
with nothing and build themselves houses and farm land and domesticate
wild animals and that both can end up mcuh better off than they were
before.  In that sense you are totally wrong.

>>>     When I open a restaurant someone else
>>>     goes out of business because there are only so many dollars to be
>>>     spent on entertainment. These are the cold hard facts. But you NEVER
>>>     hear those with a voice explain this reality. This is the core of
>>>     the problem.

>>Actually, they don't explain this 'reality' because it is not reality.
>>If it was then our average standard of living would be the same as it
>>was 2,000 years ago - after all, how could it possibly improve if
>>every success was accompanied by an equal and opposite failure?

>   Ever hear of a mature economy, dope.

Sure, and in fact in a zero growth economy you would be right.  We
don't have a zero growth economy.

>   With westward expansion followed
>   by modernization sure there is going to be a rise in the standard of
>   living,however there comes a point when the economy changes to one
>   of maintenance when most people have their VCR's, two car etc..Then
>   they buy products less frequently. 

Ever hear of planned obsolescence?  People who have to have the newest
models of everything?  Yuppies?

>   Added to that problem is the
>   modernization of the rest of the world lagging behind. When those
>   countries,like Korea,begin to build factories,your precious capitalist
>   without regard for social concerns,take jobs there. Why would a business
>   man pay an American twenty dollars an hour when he can pay a Korean three
>   dollars a day. 

No reason at all.  Why should an American be paid twenty dollars a day
unless he can produce 6.66 times as much as a Korean paid three
dollars a day?

>   If you expect the US to do what no other country EVER
>   has, that is continue to have an ever expanding economy, you're as stupid
>   as I think you are.

Well, we haven't done that either.  A recession is a period of
negative economic growth and we have had our share.  On the other
hand, the West as a whole has been steadily growing for the past 1,000
years.  Individual parts have had economic downturns, but they have
always caught up and continued to grow.  If you think that's going to
change I think the burden of proof is on you.

>>>      Those of us who are "black professionals" know
>>>      that no matter how educated,how rich,how nice the suit, you're
>>>      still just a n....

>>Well, that may be true at Chemical Abstracts Services but it's not
>>true where I work.  In a competitive environment you can't afford to
>>have that attitude.  I'm doing new product development right now so I
>>don't have people working for me, but a year ago when I was a
>>development manager for one of our financial products I was barely
>>hanging on by my fingernails.  I guarantee to you that the only things
>>I worried about in the people who worked for me was how much work I
>>could get out of them and how good it would be without making them
>>decide that their salaries just weren't worth the pain.  I didn't give
>>a damn what sex or race they were.

>>If people at CAS have time to worry about that kind of irrelevancy
>>maybe you are overstaffed.

>    As employers go Chemical Abstracts is a pretty nice place to work. I have
>    worked at places not so pleasant or tolerant. It has it's problems but I
>    was not speaking about CAS. 

So CAS is an exception to your rule?  How many exceptions are there?
Are they the rule rather than the exception?

>    You know, every white person I know "doesn't
>    give a damn about sex or race". It's always "someone else".

Well, in general, you can't afford to be racist unless you have a lot
of excess capacity arround.

>    Though EVERY
>    statistic shows we don't even approach getting our fair share of the
>    pie, we must be imagining discrimination.

1.  Ther eis obviously some racism, the question is how much.

2.  It is equally obvious that there are plenty of other possible
causes for blacks having a smaller than average share of the nation;s
economic pie besides racism.

>    We must stop that.( Whether
>    you voluntarily stepped out of management or were politely shoved I
>    thank you for not being in that position anymore.)

Neither.  I got promoted.  

>      I no longer believe capitalism is an impartial,color-blind "religion"
>    that rewards people solely on their ability. 

Well of course not.  

1.  It isn't a religion.

2.  It doesn't reward anybody.

3.  Luck, shmoozing, having rich parents, and marrying the boss's
daughter are all just as important as having ability.

>    If that is true then the
>    corollary is that blacks are a dumb or lazy group relative to ALL
>    others because we certainly don't get equal rewards proportionately.

So then what do you think the cause is?  After all, I gurantee to you
that the economics itself can't even tell what color your skin is,
never mind discrimminate based on it.

>>>      I have seen so many people ruined by thinking
>>>      that they "only need that piece of paper" and being devasted when
>>>      a white high school graduate with less senority, who they trained
>>>      becomes their boss.

>>Well, if they think that that piece of paper is all they needed then I
>>am hardly surprised that they didn't become managers.  A diploma gets
>>your foot in the door.  That's it.

>       For us it gets our mop in the door. That's it.

My.  Maybe you should tell that to some of the blacks who work in
important positions in Oracle.

> We rarely get promoted like whites but thats probably because we're either
> stupid or don't work as hard.It couldn't have anything to do with color?
> Nah, never.

Well, if color is the only reason then why aren't blacks all building
their own companies?  The answer is that some are (TLC Beatrice, for
example) but most aren't.

>>seniority should be a factor when it's promotion time?  Maybe in
>>places like IBM, but not in companies that are growing.

>  Not THE factor but a factor. 

Why should it even be a factor?  Promote based on ability, not how
long people have served.

>  WE have historically not been promoted
>  because of senority systems. 

True.  That's one of the reasons why seniority systems suck.
Promotions should be based on ability, not how long you ahve served.

>  Last hired and all...

Again, not in growing companies.

>  but it's funny how
>  when a HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATE with less senority becomes your boss all of
>  a sudden "you do a great job, it's just that we feel Bob has more of the
>  traits for supervision..." Hmmm, go figure.

Yeah, do.  Do you really need a college degree to supervise a bunch of
burger flippers?  Is it even relevant?  Probably not.  To be a
programmer?  Usually, but interestingly enough I know a highschool
graduate who is a quite senior manager at a software company.
Interestingly enough, he is black.  Just for another datapoint, Larry
Ellison, the CEO of Oracle (and a white) also never graduated from
college.  Hmm, go figure.

>>When I became a manager I became the boss of a guy with a year and a
>>half more experience than I who had trained me when I joined the
>>company.  Nobody said that was racist because we were both White.
>>Would matters have been different if he was Black?

>     Idiot, could anyone have said it was racist?  Geez!

Not unless he was Black....  then they could have.  If it had been
you, would you have?

>     Maybe you just sucked up better. It's the American way.

Maybe, although the fact that I got promoted again argues against it.
Moreover, even if you are right, so what?  It's still a non-racial
standard.  

>>>      I no longer am one to stress education as the
>>>      key to equality. We should be educated to be better informed but
>>>      we should not delude ourselves into thinking we "can be anything
>>>      we want to be".

>>You should tell that to some of the Blacks (not n...'s) I know in the
>>software industry... like the woman I went to college with who is a
>>year younger than me, who is working for a bank software company, and
>>who keeps teasing me because she's making more money now than I was a
>>year ago...  Or the guy I know at another company who doesn't even
>>have a college degree but demonstrated technical competence as a
>>consultant, and then joined the company and proved that he was also a
>>grade A manager.  This guy is only three or four years older than me
>>but I'll need three promotions in that time to match where he
>>is now.

>     The standard arguement. Can you spell TOKEN? 

Sure, except I know these people.  They aren't tokens.  They have
reputations within their companies as people who do good work and who
you come to if you want advice on a problem.  Tokens get shunted into
HR and other non-critical areas.  

>Besides,
>I never said ALL whites are racist just you and millions of others.

Now, on what basis do you draw that conclusion about me?

>>Well, in that case you mean forever and you might as well curl up and
>>die.  The people I know who have succeeded don't give up that easily.

>   I, will neither curl up or die because of racism. I fight and try to
>   educate cheerleaders like you.

Sorry, but I was never a cheerleader.

>>>        In short if everyone in this country has a college education
>>>      then college grads will be cleaning toilets and sweeping streets,
>>>      and guess who that will be. Until Americans admit that because of
>>>      our economic system(I make no judgements on the right or wrong of
>>>      it),"the poor will always be with us" and because of racism the poor
>>>      will always be disproportinately black; and poverty breeds
>>>      violence.

>>Mind explaining why I can't substitute Chinese for black in the
>>sentence above?

>     Whites always try to equate other ethnics to us. Orientals do not
>   come with the baggage of "inferiority". 

They did 100 years ago.  What changed?

>   In our glorious,perfect consti-
>   tution Chinese aren't three-fifths a person. 

Interestingly enough, blacks weren't either.  Slaves were. 

>   Different motivation for being
>   here etc..

Well, that's something internal to the group in question, not
external.  Are you finally admitting that some of America's racial
problems are not linked to current racism?

>If you can't use a token throw the "model minority at us ,eh?

I'll throw anything I have to to convince you that things are not
nearly as simple as you seem to think.

>>>      When I go
>>>      to a store or a restaurant and still get "the look" I can understand
>>>      why.

>>You'll get the look as long as crime and poverty are
>>disproportionately black.  These are chicken and egg problems.  The
>>only way to beat them is to work on both at once.

>>--  No, it's a cause and effect relationship and you'll never understand it.

So which is the cause and which is the effect?
-- 
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Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american