“Equality is not a concept. It's
not something we should be striving for. It's a necessity. Equality is like
gravity. We need it to stand on this earth as men and women, and the misogyny
that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition. It is life
out of balance, and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of
every man and woman who's confronted with it. We need equality. Kinda now.”
Week four is
now in the books. This was the most interesting of subjects so far; not sure if
it is because these issues of race and ageism are so entirely relevant today,
or just because there is a plethora of information out there to research on the
subjects and become more acquainted with them on my path of learning to become
an excellent leader.
This week,
we were to explore if we feel that affirmative action is ethical and what points
of contention and support surround it. From first blush, I do not feel that affirmative
action is ethical; it is “…the practice of giving special consideration to
minorities…in hiring and school placement…” (Lafollette, 2007, p. 1365) which in and of
itself is the practice of discrimination in my mind.
At the end
of the day, “…we should treat all people the same unless there is some general
and relevant difference between then that justifies a difference in treatment” (Lafollette,
2007, p. 1175) .
In today’s society, although there are many people that do feel race and sex
should be determining factors in their decision making process, I do not personally
believe in the benefit of favoring once oppressed groups in our societal
history simply because they are considered “…members of a systematically victimized
group” (Lafollette, 2007, p. 1385) .
I believe that
the best interest of us all is to stop making race and sex an issues amongst us
and that “any policy that deliberately or inadvertently treats employees
differently based solely…” on any one specific factor can result in an unintended
“…form of discrimination” (Thompson, Val, 2015) . As I found in researching
our paper this week, leaders have an obligation to strive to find the most
deserving employees whom represent a diversification of culture, backgrounds,
ages, races, and interest to help further and meet our strategic goals. If I am
pressured into systematically grading people with more points so to speak
because of their age, race, sex, or cultural background, I am then also systematically
considering a form of reverse discrimination because I am not weighing the same
characteristics of those whom do not meet the identical criteria. Case and
point, by following affirmative action, I am unintentionally hurting “…those
who have done no wrong” (Lafollette, 2007) .
Although
there are many that will contend that “affirmative action is a plausible form
of compensation…” (Lafollette, 2007, p. 1401) , I still feel that “people
should be judged by what they do now, not what their grandparents did” (Lafollette,
2007, p. 1401) .
This is primarily why I would in some cases contend that “…affirmative action
is morally inappropriate” (Lafollette, 2007, p. 1401) . By default, it
prevents me from making subjective decisions based upon current and relevant
information.
As emerging
leaders, we are bound to learn to embrace not only different perspectives, work
ethics, work styles, and methods of communication, but also extremely varied
perceptions as to how we make our decisions and what criteria our decisions are
based upon. At the end of the day, “…we should treat all people the same unless
there is some general and relevant difference between then that justifies a
difference in treatment” (Lafollette, 2007, p. 1175) .
Please don’t
misunderstand my overly simplified perspective on this; just because I do not
see color, I do know that millions of Americans do not see things the same way.
While watching the news this week, President Obama was interviewed on NPR and
stated that he felt that “… race relations
have improved dramatically in his lifetime” (Maron, 2015) but that “…more work still
needs to be done” (Maron, 2015). Just because we have now
had our first African American President in office doesn’t mean that racism is
dead and gone, I do get that. However, if we want to make continued progress
towards eliminating race as a major contender in our lifetimes, we have to
remove those barriers, such as using affirmative action to change our future “…abilities, interests, desires and
life prospects” (Lafollette, 2007, p. 1453) in which all form our opinions
and decision making skills regarding “…racism, sexism, and affirmative action” (Lafollette, 2007, p. 1453). If we continue to feed the
beast, we cannot expect racism to simply shrivel up and go away.
I do however believe that affirmative action from a perspective of
leadership is an essential learning opportunity; it reminds us to promote
equality and opportunity for all, not just some, as well as requires us “…to think
more carefully…” about whom we hire and admit, but
more importantly, gives us pause to evaluate why (Lafollette, 2007, p. 1527). As a society, we should be more
concerned with learning to promote the equality of opportunities everyone, not
specific groups of particular races, backgrounds or ethnicities. As utopian as
it may seem, I do believe that diversification gives us the best chances of
coming forward with the best mix of talent; we should learn to rethink how we
think, and not need an actual law to encourage us to do so on our own.
Therefore, I feel that affirmative action is unethical becasue it is forcing me
to ignore and explore the facts all in the same light to ensure the best decisión
is made in the honor of everyone involved.
Until we blog again!
References
Lafollette, H. (2007). The Practice of Ethics.
Malden: Blackwell Publishing.
Thompson, Val. (2015). Age Discrimination &
Sick Policies. Retrieved June 27, 2015, from smallbusiness.chron.com:
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/age-discrimination-sick-policies-61301.html
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