Discrimination, no more
The junior-department of one of our nation’s biggest political parties (the PvdA) has spoken wise words to their senior division: there should not be any discrimination the the composing of the votinglist.
Last year, the PvdA has put a man next to a woman throughout their entire list, non-autochthone residents are put next to autochthonous residents. In other words: positive discrimination is put to use to get such a diverse list (which has, among other things, resulted in the fact that the PvdA has become the biggest party among foreigners in Holland)
The junior-devision has claimed that women and non-autochthonous people generally are not pleased with the fact they are not only judged on their possibilities and ideas, but also on their gender or ethnicity. It is regarded to be moralizing and unfair by all, including the beneficiaries and the others.
The reason of positive discrimination of women and immigrants was the idea these groups needed support in their (political) careers as they would be considered inferior as of various reasons compared to autochthonous men. An idea nowadays regarded to be out-of-date.
So, what do you think should be done? Should positive discrimination be abolished as discrimination in any form is deplorable, or should it be kept as those groups of people still need the extra support?
As the only people who have any influence on the election list of a party is the party itself, positive discrimination in this situation only “helps” against the discrimination from exactly the people who make up the list. Ironic, isn’t it.
That having been said, the election list is not by definition sorted by political competence. It’s the party’s choice, thus the party’s arguments. If they thus sort it in favour of foreigners to get an elective advantage, I consider that a valid tactic, although – in my opinion and your words – deplorable.
That being said: I intended to stretch the scope of my post to the entire society, although it didn’t work out to look like that in the post itself btw.
So, here is my revised question, posed without changing the post itself:
How do you stand on positive discrimination in general?
That depends on what you consider positive discrimination.
There’s positive discrimination where characteristics such as sex and ethnicity have no influence on performance whatsoever and are used to decide, and there’s positive discrimination where these characteristics dó have influence on performance. For example, it could well be that female sales representatives are better performers. Or, as in the above example, ethnicity could make for a “better” or rather more succesfull politician. While in both of these examples selection isn’t done on any ordinary characteristic and rather on controversial arguments, I dó think this should be allowed as selection Ãs basically done on performance-enhancing characteristics and thus in the best interest of the company.
As soon as sex and ethnicity (or other such characteristics, such as sexual preference or even haircolour) have a minimal or zero influence on the expected performance in any way, I oppose ‘positive’ discrimination.
The hard part is, of course, accepting that ethnicity can, for example, cause an effect because others perceive it to be of influence. For example, a Moroccan sales person who sells less because others don’t trust him or her. This is morally hard to accept because it’s unjust and based on ancient imagery. However, I don’t think it’s correct to ‘punish’ the hiring company by forcing onto them an employee who will perform worse than a different candidate in practice, even though qualifications might be equal. It’s not corporate responsibility to deal with discrimination. Which is not to say that we can’t, somehow, applaud those who do. As long as it’s not financially – that’d be positive discrimination 🙂