BBO Discussion Forums: Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped? - BBO Discussion Forums

jonottawa, on 2016-December-08, 15:24, said:

I don't know whether to laugh or cry...

(This does a lot to explain why you're so sad and bitter)

jonottawa, on 2016-December-08, 15:24, said:

What has the United States ever done to you that you hate us this much? I would never wish for such a disaster to befall your country. I just do not understand this sort of hatred. Do you send gloating messages to victims of floods? It has been many years since I have encountered anyone remotely like you.

You have certainly made it clear, repeatedly, and then repeatedly, followed by repeatedly, that you take great pleasure in this. I assure you that there is no one who has not realized how much pleasure you take in this. . And I do not expect you to stop. You will continue. I understand. You have made the thread virtually unreadable, certainly grossly unpleasant. And you will continue to do so.

Did I mention that I understand you will keep doing this? Yes, I do understand you will keep doing this.

kenberg, on 2016-December-08, 19:14, said:

Ken

It is possible to put him on ignore and this thread has become far more pleasant since I did that

kenberg, on 2016-December-08, 19:14, said:

This may be of interest to you.

Quote

diana_eva, on 2016-December-08, 17:36, said:

In an ideal world, that is what would happen.

Unfortunately, we don't live in an ideal world. Many people do fail to hire or promote minorities for actual racist reasons. (Let's get off the blacks kick for a minute - I mean does it really make a difference in our discussion? Anybody can sue for discrimination.) Because many people fail to hire or promote minorities for racist reasons, which is deplorable, there are many cases in which a minority person is going to have a legitimate suit against an employer for not being picked.

However, when the employer did nothing wrong (say he just flipped a coin but not in front of the candidates), it may not appear any differently to the minority person who lost out. The minority person may sue, with the backing of Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson or the NAACP, or an activist lawyer or CAIR or whatever organization supports the advancement of his minority, thinking that he has a real case (because it doesn't look to him any different than if he was really passed over for racist reasons) when the employer did nothing wrong and had no racist intent.

You may call the fear of this happening racist, but that fear can be real. And because this fear can exist, there is a further discrimination against minorities not for racist reasons, but for reasons that occur because other employers are racist and the minority person might not be able to tell the difference.

This should not be a reason to get rid of the anti-discrimination laws; they are still needed because there are still plenty of people that will not hire minorities for racist reasons. As long as that is true, we need the laws and the lawsuits will persist. In many cases, they are justified. However, a side effect is that some employers who are fair will suffer for the sins of others when he faces an unjustified suit simply because a minority person can't tell the difference. I don't see how this problem is avoidable as long as some hiring/promotion racism still exists.

If I were an employer, and I could reasonably say "I am fair, I promise not to discriminate as long as you promise not to sue for discrimination - that's in the contract", there would be zero reason to choose the white male from two equally qualified candidates. However, as far as I know (and I'm not a lawyer so I totally expect mikeh to tell me I'm full of sh*t) such a contract would never hold up in court. But if I was making employment policy decisions at a large company and could get those contracts to hold up, I would in fact use them, and I would happily have as diverse a workforce as I could get and still get people that can do the jobs I needed done. I would always promote based on the person I thought was the most qualified regardless of race. I am hoping that I have hired well enough that if I promote a minority person, that he will be respected by those who are working for him. (I can see someone making a non-racist decision that the racists who work for him won't respect their new minority boss, but I'd hope I wouldn't be hiring such people that would force me into such a decision, and I'd be more inclined to say "I promoted the person who I thought was more qualified, so suck it up!" to the racist who doesn't want to work for a minority.)

I'm sorry if there are still points on which we disagree. I feel like you're a really good person and I know you mean well and you might even be right, but I just don't see it. Maybe we just have to agree to disagree.

Kaitlyn S, on 2016-December-08, 13:20, said:

Sorry Kaitlyn but here you are falling into another classical trap. Let me start with a clearer example. Company C has a Recruitment Manager X with "alt-right" views. Because he rejects every non-white individual sent to him for interview regardless of their qualifications, it leads to several law suits. An analysis shows that the cost of non-white interview candidates is 5 times that of white candidates. Does it seem reasonable to you for the company to reject all non-white candidates in this case on financial grounds? Clearly (I hope!) not. The correct response would be to educate or fire the Recruitment Manager so that the recruitment process stops being racist.

The same is true of your example. If the costs for black employees are so much higher than for whites then it highlights an issue of racism within the company that needs to be addressed, not that that racism is reinforced an supported. Your "business decision" is simply taking the position that racism in the workplace is acceptable.

Perhaps this goes back a little to your response to my post on covert racism, where you mentioned that you were previously unaware of just how much racism is still around in society. Now that you are aware it would be helpful for you to be vigilant for where it pops up that perhaps you did not expect. If something appears to be racist but you have a line of reasoning that makes it not so, perhaps you need to go back to the basic facts of the case and see if there really is an underlying issue. I suppose it might be that company C just got extremely unlucky with its black employees bringing frivolous lawsuits but it is far, far more likely that these employees encountered such clear and obvious racism that bringing a lawsuit seemed to them the only reasonable solution. In that case the best business decision is clearly to eradicate that racism and be able to hire the best candidates. If nothing else it will save money as blacks and women typically earn considerably less for a job than an equivalently qualified white man. But that is another aspect of racism (and sexism) that is ingrained and unlikely to change any time soon.

Zelandakh, on 2016-December-09, 03:59, said:

If my aunt had balls she would be my uncle.

Zelandakh, on 2016-December-09, 03:59, said:

helene_t, on 2016-December-09, 07:48, said:

Reasonably, Zelandkh and Helene_t reject Kailyn's premise that the hiring company believe costs are higher for black employees.

• Can you imagine circumstances where that assumption could be true, without wrongdoing by the company?
• Would it still be racist for the company to take this belief into account when hiring?
• What should the company policy be, if it estimates that an altruistic non-racist approach would bankrupt the company, with adverse effects on current workers, customers, and share-holders?
• You can dismiss this scenario as impossible if you like, but surely it is closer to Kaitlyn's example?

During Apartheid, I guess that South African employers were sometimes faced with starker quandaries.

Zelandakh, on 2016-December-09, 03:59, said:

Wow. I would have guessed the opposite. If I'm an employer and I have a black person who can do the job well, and his mere presence will probably help me if a different black person sues me, I'm really going to pay him less and risk him leaving and have my competitor have that advantage?

Yes, I realize how racist that probably appears to you. But again, simply thinking of the bottom line. In this case, I would think the racial component shoukd favor minorities (and that is not even figuring in possible future mandated quotas.)

But if it is true, and I believe it probably us because other posters would have jumped on you if it wasn't, thus is a terrible situation and I would be in favor of taking steps to get people of all races paid the same. For whatever I say about the bottom line, if I was hiring, I'd like to think that fairness was a goal in wage discussions.

Some companies aren't into fairness. So if they can hire women and minorities for less, why aren't they doing so in most cases?

nige1, on 2016-December-09, 10:38, said:

I can imagine anything. So: Yes. For example, it might be that his skin colour would make him more likely to become a random crime victim which would of course be inconvenient for his employer.

Suppose I have a choice between two candidates of different skin colour and I expect the white guy to be more expensive because the statistics say that white guys are more likely to come back with a "your competitor offered me 10% more, can you match that?" after a few months of employment.

Suppose I hired the black guy for that reason. Would I be a racist?

You don't need to answer because 1) it is a silly hypothetical scenario and 2) even if it was not entirely hypothetical I still don't care whether it should be classified as racism or not.

But the hypothetical scenario which we are discussing is even more silly. Frankly, I would rather discuss the scenario that my aunt actually had balls.

Kaitlyn S, on 2016-December-09, 11:01, said:

This is yet another in a seemingly unending series of posts in which your (edited) lack of awareness come through. In what universe do you exist in which you are unaware that women, blacks, and other 'minority' groups get paid less for the same job than do white males? I put minority in quotes since it seems to me silly to call women a 'minority', but I don't know of any other word that similarly captures 'women' as a group that faces wage discrimination compared to 'men'.

I don't care how selective your google search is: it is easy to find actual studies on this. It isn't necessary to rely upon your (edited) biases to (mis)inform you about reality. You may not realize that your biases (edited) affect your view of reality: your posts make it clear that they do. Of course, mine affect mine as well, but I try to check my facts before posting


Edit: I realize, having read the polite, restrained and informative posts by Helene and Zel, that it is possible to point out that Kaitlyn remains unaware of the extent to which her reality is unreal without the strong language I often employ so I have edited this post, to soften the choice of words while preserving the message intended. Time will tell if I can keep to this in future.

Kaitlyn S, on 2016-December-09, 11:01, said:

I really appreciate your open mind about this.

I also think (and it sounds like you are aware of this) that you fail to appreciate the degree to which black people face discrimination. I think this is very common among white people regardless of political orientation. It is of course understandable. The few black friends that you and I have are probably our friends in part because they are not typical of the black community and therefore their stories are not that horrific.

When I moved to the Netherlands, I (as a newly outed transsexual) found myself at the very bottom of society, frequently being denied housing, jobs or even hotel stays (and several times victim of violence and sexual harasment) explicitly because of my gender identity. I emphasize "explicitly" because whenever someone is rude to me without explicit reference to my gender identity I will just attribute it to something else (after all, WASPs get harrased, too), but there have been enough incidents where the reason was explicit, sometimes by people who have never seen me in person. That experience taught me something which to some extent makes it possible for me to imagine how it might be like to belong to an ethnic, religious or racial minority group that is associated with low social status. I emphasise "to some extent" because I am just a single individual belonging to a completely different type of minority in a different society. So my imagination about racial discrimination is almost certainly biased in a many ways.

I once read an article in Scientific American about the mysterious phenomena of hypertension in black americans. The author seemed to have ruled out socioeconomic, nutritional, medical and genetic explanations and came to the conclusion that the enormous excess rate of hypertension in black americans is probably due to the constant psychological stress associated with racial discrimination and prejudice. At first, I found that implausible because at that time I thought that skin colour in itself was a non-problem and any disadvantage of being black was an illusion caused by socioeconomic confounding. Today I think differently. How awful it may sound, the authors conclusion is, if not anywhere near proven, certainly plausible.

jonottawa has seen fit to send an email to all of my partners, accusing me of defaming him and suggesting that my partners take action against me. He has threatened to report me to the Law Society. He even addressed the email to one of the associates, effectively one of my employees.

Now, I am not overly concerned about this. I am happy to stand by my opinions as voiced herein, buttressed by the fact that my opinions of him are apparently shared by many others.

However, I thought that you might be interested in the fact that jon thinks it to be appropriate to take disagreements voiced here into the personal and business lives of those with whom he disagrees.

Frankly, repugnant tho I find him and his views (the former because of the latter) it would not have occurred to me to go beyond the WC to mention him. Oh well.

mikeh, on 2016-December-09, 14:50, said:

I wasn't going to mention that email here, but since Mike is bringing it up ... I warned Mike to delete the defamatory libel. He didn't. [deleted]

I would urge Mike to post my email in its entirety and let the forum participants be the judge if my position is unreasonable.

I'm curious what action Mike thinks I suggested his partners take against him.

Since Mike's misconduct ultimately reflects on his entire law firm, I don't see why his associates wouldn't be entitled to know about his misconduct. So I CC'd one of them.

Anyway, glad to hear the email went through. I was worried it might end up in a spam filter.

This post has been edited by diana_eva: 2016-December-09, 15:11

jonottawa, on 2016-December-09, 14:58, said:

Goodbye Jon,

Somehow, I doubt that we will ever be hearing from you again...

This post has been edited by diana_eva: 2016-December-09, 15:16

Jon has been banned from the BBO Forums.

mikeh, on 2016-December-09, 14:50, said:

Defamed someone in an internet forum? Really?

Jon, I know you will probably be back under a different username. Contrary to what some of the other posters thought, I thought your posts were well within what I would expect to see posted on an internet forum; i.e. where others thought you were crossing the line, I thought you were simply exercising your free speech right.

This act - contacting other people associated with a poster - is just wrong. I suspect that it's a lot to expect you to apologize to Mike but my hope is that if you see this, you will consider not doing this again. All posters have the right to free speech and the expectation that they can give their true opinion without any repercussions beyond having mean things said to them by other posters. If you somehow start a trend and people fear that their life could be negatively affected by posting their honest opinions, people will stop posting honest opinions and a credible exchange of ideas can't happen anymore.

The mere fact that this happened has made me even further doubt the sanity of posting honest thoughts on BridgeWinners where one must use their true identity. Is that what you want?

hrothgar, on 2016-December-09, 15:09, said:

Oh you will...with a different name and account.

Guy like that should be more careful, could have some kind of an accident, if you know what I mean.

deleted post, thought better of it