by TR 43 Replies latest jw friends
Waiting,
What started out as a tongue-in-cheek comment I made turned into a pretty good conversation. You slapped me around, and got me thinking about how things were and still are in many cases. I appreciate the wake up call.
I, too, am self- employed, as well as my wife. It's been years since I had to deal with the day to day problems of hiring and firing.
Tom
Hey Tom,
There are among us, Doubting Thomas', who thought I couldn't discuss, or argue, without the thread deteriorating into a melodrama.
Thanks for proving them wrong. I still don't know much about Affirmative Action - but I did learn that black men had the vote before black/white women.
And it was fun.
waiting
Hey Frenchy, Sure hope I didn't offend you by calling you the endearment of "Cajun Boy".
Of course not. It’s what I am! I don’t have any statistics for wife beatings by the Cajuns or reason to believe it would be any different for them as it was for other immigrants. I just know that in my family none of that went on. My mother told me that he never so much as raised his hand to her. He was a big, powerful man and had quite a temper but I don’t remember ever hearing him raise his voice at Mom.
Affirmative action, (which is being given a very serious second look in every state now) simply put can be demonstrated this way: A white male and a minority both apply for a job. If there is not a ‘sufficient’ percentage of minorities already serving in that position then the minority is given the job REGARDLESS of the merits of his qualifications as compared to the white male. Think of what that means for such professions as policemen and firemen and EMT’s! I’ll give you a true to life example of this. A white man and a woman both go to apply for a job as an EMT. The company is forced to hire the woman to meet the quota of minorities.
A friend of mine who is a rather large fellow falls off a ladder picking figs and hurts his back so that he cannot move. His wife calls 911 and two women show up. Of course they are unable to pick him up. The wife has to start scouring the neighborhood to find a man that can come pick her husband up and put him on the gourney (I hope that’s spelled correctly). As it turned out she did find someone. But if her husband had been having a heart attack instead of just a fall, he could very well have died while they looked for a man to pick him up.
-Seen it all, done it all, can't remember most of it-
Frenchy, the example you mention is exactly the kind of abuse of a good law that I was referring to earlier.
The women in question need to be qualified to do the job. For that matter, many men would be unable to pick up a large, injured man. It's all about abilities and being given a chance to use them.
I'm not the strongest woman in the world, but I can stack 60 lb. bales of hay and haul 50 lb. bags of feed when necessary (I've done the 100 lb bags, but after hauling one or two of them, your arms simply refuse to work anymore LOL). There have been times when my daughter has come down with one of her boyfriends, and they've been unable to hoist even one bale of hay.
Prior to laws about discrimination and affirmative action, women would have never even gotten a chance to get that job....even if they could do it as well as a man. However, the abuse comes in when an unqualified person is given a job simply because they meet some sort of minority guideline. If the person is qualified, however, they deserve a chance.
I do agree that these laws need adjustment. At this point in time, the people being discriminated against in many cases ARE the white males.
