Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘affirmative action’

While much is being made of Nancy Pelosi’s comments on the relative lack of women in Saudi politics (see below), here at home, under very different circumstances, we’re hearing some of the same issues – and criticisms.

Stephane Dion is actively seeking female candidates to run for the federal Libs – he’s even stated that he’s willing to use a quota system to ensure “adequate representation”, and to kick out male candidates to make room for female ones.

Here in Quebec, criticism abounded after last week’s election reduced the number of female MNAs from 39 to 32.

Arguments like this have always annoyed me. As a woman, I believe that I ought to have every right and opportunity to do anything a man can do. And I also believe that, unlike in Saudi Arabia, here in Canada (and Quebec), that’s pretty much true.

Women in Saudi Arabia can’t drive, can’t vote, can’t walk out on the street unaccompanied by a male relative, have to hide behind veils and robes, can’t participate in society as free and equal members. Saudi Arabia’s problems run far deeper than simply ensuring adequate representation among elected officials. (For starters, the elections themselves are a sham… But that’s a whole different rant.)

In contrast, here, women are free, full and equal members of society. If barriers still exist – and I acknowledge that they do – they are no longer legal and we are working hard to deinstitutionalize them.

But politicians who rant about not having enough women candidates are not saying so because they truly believe that women are barred from politics or lack opportunities; they’re doing it for reasons that are – no pun intended – purely cosmetic.

And finally, a refreshing perspective on the subject from Brigitte Pellerin in the Ottawa Citizen:

According to something called the Inter-Parliamentary Union (ipu.org), Rwanda ranks first in the world with 48.8 per cent women representation in the national legislature, whereas Canada is 48th with 20.8 per cent. The United States, where we all know women are routinely persecuted by a political class bent on systemic gender inequality, is 68th with 16.3 per cent. So, is the theory that we’d be better off if we were governed more like Rwanda?

[ . . . ]

And if we’re legislating quotas for perspective, then we should also make the proportion of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, etc. representatives match their share of the general population, assuming we even know it. And once we get there, shouldn’t we also worry about religious representation? What about race?

Oooh, dear.

To me equality means not caring whether my elected representative is male or female or black or gay or Methodist or whatever. And democracy means letting people elect whomever they think represents their views. I believe enforcing equal representation of women in politics would be wrong, undemocratic, and possibly even counterproductive. I suspect I am not alone.

Nope, not alone at all. I agree completely. And I encourage you to read the whole thing.

Equality by quota is counter-productive in the long run. It doesn’t eradicate barriers, it merely sets up new ones. Equality really ought to mean equality of opportunity, and that will only happen when we stop electing, hiring people based on their gender or skin colour or language or religion, and start judging them based on ideas, accomplishments, and – what’s that old-fashioned outdated thing again? – oh yeah, merit.

(But that just wouldn’t be, y’know, politically correct).

When will people understand that certain ways of dealing with racism only serve to compound the problem?

Take, for example, the planned Quebec anti-racism initiative, which is being launched in response to public hearings and a report by the Task Force on the Full Participation of Black Communities in Quebec. Among the report’s recommendations:

- The Quebec government should adopt an official policy to fight all forms of racial discrimination.

- Quebec’s civil service should consider hiring quotas for blacks and other visible minorities.

- The province should document how blacks are portrayed in the media so it can inform journalists and media owners about how they ”often portray blacks negatively.”

- The Ministry of Education should review school textbooks to make sure they mention the contribution of blacks and other visible minorities to Quebec and the rest of Canada.

Hiring quotas? Media portrayal standards? Are we really back there again? Hasn’t anyone realized by now that this stuff doesn’t work?

Anyway, all of this is nothing but a smokescreen. The real problem with anti-racism initiatives in Quebec is that they’re politically-motivated. Any real efforts to combat racism would have to expose the nasty little secrets about Quebec society that nobody – particularly the politicians – wants to talk about.

The truth is, racism is a problem everywhere. But in Quebec, it’s more politically-correct to be racist against some groups than others. Sure, everyone will get on board when we talk about racism against people with different skin colour… so long as their first language is French. But racism against anglophones? Against Jews? Against Asians? Against groups that the Quebec government won’t even allow in as immigrants because their command of the French language is less than perfect? Anyone who dares bring any of those up is accused of being part of the bourgeoisie elite, or the oppressive “rich white English” from “Westmount” trying to keep down the poor, downtrodden working-class French.

Most of us who live here know that Quebec society has evolved past these outdated stereotypes. So why do government officials still insist on propagating them? And why is it that any discussion of racism only focuses on some groups and not others?

Quebec society is much more open-minded, multi-ethnic and multicultural than it used to be. Look how tolerant we are for, say, Hezbollah supporters who want to march downtown with flags comparing Israelis to Nazis… and with the backing of prominent Quebec politicians.

But racism isn’t going to go away here until we scrape under that surface. In the meantime, initiatives like the one proposed by the Quebec government serve only as expensive window-dressing.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favour of racism:

In upholding the law school’s policy, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said for the majority in the 5-4 ruling that student body diversity is a compelling state interest that can justify use of race in admissions decisions.

Sad.

You know, I’m getting really tired of people who analyse or critique political races, institutions, or policies by claiming that “there aren’t enough minorities”. I’m not talking about situations in which minorities are excluded or systematically discriminated against. Rather, I’m referring to instances where a person is given a position, an award, or an advantage specifically for being a member of a minority group. Not only is this “politically-correct”, but it’s considered very politically incorrect to criticize this practice.

A while back, I ranted about affirmative action. But right now, the issue at hand is the debate over minority candidates in politics. In today’s Gazette, an opinion piece by Don MacPherson criticized the three parties running in the upcoming Quebec provincial election for having an insufficient number of minority candidates:

As a result, the linguistic, cultural or ethnic minorities are consistently underrepresented in the National Assembly. While 19 per cent of Quebecers had mother tongues other than French at the 2001 census, non-francophones held less than half that proportion of the seats in the last legislature. When the legislature was dissolved for the April 14 election, minority members held only 11 seats out of 124, (there was one vacancy) or nine per cent.

The Quebec parties aren’t the only ones facing criticism. The CSU elections at Concordia have come under fire for having too few minority candidates. Prior to the election, slates were interviewed on their opinions on diversity. And in an editorial in the Link, racism is cited as a factor in last week’s election, in which the presidential candidates in all the slates running for executive happened to be Caucasian. The conclusion drawn was that “systematic racism against Arabs and Muslims” kept many of them from being elected.

A comment posted in response implied that the CSU will inadequately represent students because of the racial background of many of its members.

Might be shrill, but the article gets it partly right – this CSU is about the colour of rice pudding with a couple of raisins in it. Not really an improvement over the last batch, raisin-wise.

Nevermind Arabs – where are all the other non-whites in this most diverse of schools?

I posted the following comment in response:

All of you, are you even listening to yourselves?

That a group of seemingly educated, intelligent, reasonable people could claim to be opposed to racism, and yet spend an entire thread judging people by the colour of their skin baffles me beyond belief!

Does the fact that Natalie Pomerleau is white make her less capable of doing the job? Or Youri Cormier? Or Adam Slater, for that matter?

There is far, far too much “token”-ism in politics already. Political parties run their “token” minority candidates in order to appear diverse, and it’s starting to get far out of hand.

Here’s a new idea: why not *gasp!* vote for people based on their platforms? Their ideas? Their competence, their experience, and their ability to do a good job?

Nobody stopped minority candidates from running – in fact, they were encouraged! I’ll also note that the most recent three CSU presidents (including the president-elect) were women: Natalie Pomerleau, Sabine Friesinger, and Sabrina Stea. Should men cry gender discrimination?

You claim to be against racism. And yet which one of us here is making judgements based on the colour of a person’s skin? Think about that for a moment.

Every time a party is blasted for having inadequate minority representation, this only serves to encourage token-ism all that much more.

Maybe we ought to pass a law barring any photos from being disclosed of a candidate, or even preventing his or her name from being released. We should get presented with platforms and candidate CVs, listed under “Candidate #1″, “Candidate #2″, and so on. Maybe that’s the only way to ensure that people vote for someone based on competency, not racism.

But, since this isn’t likely to be implemented anytime soon, shouldn’t we do everything in our power to eliminate racism from elections? And this includes judging parties and candidates based on skin colour. To me, doing so is nothing more than politically-correct racism.

With Affirmative Action back in the US courts (and the news), now may be an opportune time for me to weigh in with my two cents on the subject.

I don’t support affirmative action in university admissions – or in the workplace, or other such domains for that matter. It’s a dangerous thing to say that, especially for politicians. Anyone who speaks out against affirmative action is considered to be racist, bigoted, discriminatory towards minorities, or all of the above. The perception is that these policies are a politically correct way to help counter discrimination and under-representation of minorities in certain spheres, and it certainly hasn’t been very politically correct to oppose them.

My reason for opposing these policies is hardly original: to me (and to a lot of people) they’re just another form of discrimination. If student X has higher grades and test scores, but student Y gets admitted in his or her place simply because of the colour of student Y’s skin, then that’s wrong in my book – whether it’s discriminating against blacks, whites, or purples. Any decision based on skin colour is just another form of racism.

Oh, sure, it’s not that simple. Of course it’s not. Certain groups are dramatically under-represented in the top schools and workplaces, and these policies are only a way to counter years of past discrimination, proponents argue. Because of systematic bias against minorities, these policies are necessary in order to make up the difference.

But I don’t agree that two wrongs equal a right. Past wrongs cannot be corrected by committing present wrongs. And there are a lot of reasons why affirmative action, especially in the context of university admissions, is wrong. On the one hand, it creates separate sets of standards. In order to be “good enough” to get into a certain school, students from some ethnic groups have to achieve one set of standards, while those from other groups have another set of standards. All this does is widen the gap between these groups, because mediocre performance is considered “good enough” for some people and not for others. What sort of future community leaders does this create? Furthermore, some schools are so desperate to fill their enrollment quotas, they accept students who are clearly under-qualified. You can’t take a student who graduated from an inner-city school and has a sixth-grade reading level and plunk him into a university classroom and expect him to keep up. And since it looks bad, politically, for a university to have higher failure rates among certain ethnic groups, some schools even resort to passing students who should never have been there in the first place.

When transplanted into the context of Quebec, some of these wrongs may become a little clearer. Recently, it was announced that medical schools in Quebec will boost the CRC-scores of applicants from regions outside of Montreal by a half-point, because there’s a shortage of doctors in the outlying regions and students from those regions are considered more likely to go back home to practice medicine when they graduate. But tell that to the student who pulled straight As all her life, volunteered at every hospital in her spare time, participated in every extra-curricular activity, and devoted her life to her dream of being a doctor – and who had all the qualifications but was rejected from medical school because of this policy. Don’t we want our doctors to be the best? In med school applications, where a tiny fraction of a point can make all the difference in the world, a half-point is huge. Why should someone’s zip code be a more important factor in admissions than the qualifications of the candidate?

In another example, lobby groups have pressured the provincial government to hire more anglophones and minorities in the Public Service, claiming that they are vastly under-represented. The government complied, making a whole host of positions available to specific minority communities – and nobody applied! The government is having an extremely difficult time filling these quotas. Speculation is that the positions are of little interest to the members of these minority groups, as most qualified people are already working at jobs in the private sector for better pay.

Therein lies the crux of the problem. Unlike McGill University’s quotas for Jews in the early part of last century, where many Jewish applicants were rejected due to lack of enough places, these new quotas are creating just as many problems – but in the opposite direction. There aren’t enough applicants from certain minority groups to fill the quotas – and so schools have had to lower the standards in order to fill them.

A related problem is that minority groups are under-represented in universities because of a lower degree of economic affluence in certain communities leading to a reduction in the affordability of the schools. But there are ways to combat these problems. More financial aid can and should be made available to students who need it. There’s nothing wrong with scholarships or grants designated specifically for certain groups.

But admissions quotas? Hiring quotas? Different standards? Those have got to go. It may not be politically correct of me to say so, but in the long run it’s the only right thing to do. The only way to end racial discrimination is to stop institutionalizing policies that legitimatize it – no matter who they favour.