Quote:
Originally posted by Munchkin03
I was simply referring to my own experiences.
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Seriously, I don't even think about it. I do remember it, though. However, my point is simply this -- it is dangerous to make blanket statements without either a pretty fair background or a pretty obvious and healthy disclaimer.
There is certainly some truth in what you say -- however the areas that you talk about are hardly the total of mainstream America.
In the end, a lot of very qualified white men (and women for that matter) were discriminated against. However, when compared to the number of minorities in the same position, it pales in comparison. Being a victim, it probably makes me stupid in that I don't have a big problem with Afirmative Action or even blatant quotas. Maybe it's some vague, blurry sense of fairness somewhere.
Someone else, I forget who, said he/she couldn't believe a hiring manager would waste their time hiring someone unqualified because then they would have to fire that person and hire someone else, as well as facing possible suits. Sorry, but it does happen. I was a hiring manager for over twenty years. To be blunt, top management doesn't really care in many cases what kind of burden they put on the middle managers, as long as the numbers look good on company reports. Efficient? No. Fair? No. Real? Yes.
In some ways, I think that's why HR Departments have sprung into more prominance in the past few years. They are the clearinghouse, and in some cases the buffer, between levels of management. Depending on how they are run, they can be a tool of top management, or a foil to them. In the best case, they are both.
Now, those are my opinions. But they have been built over forty years of business and college.