atw: Discrimination
- From: Peter Martin <prescribal@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: austechwriter <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 2 May 2013 12:26:33 +1000
Christine:
No, sorry.... it's a cop out to say that discrimination, like the poor, is
always with us, and then assume we can do nothing about it.
And it's wrong to say the law can't change things in this area. Pause and
think about black voting rights in the US up till the 1960s (actually, till
LBJ -- which surprises many people). Then ask yourself who POTUS is right now,
and how that came about. It wasn't magic.... enforcement of rights under
the law is a large part of what it was all about -- black people were allowed
to register and vote, once the law was strengthened and enforced.
Of course we're not going to get rid of discrimination everywhere. But we
don't have to meekly accept it as a "standard" and keep going back to the seats
in the back of the bus. And that's a very relevant comparison.
What is important at present is a combination of several factors: economics,
education in basic morality, and a touch of sensible law enforcement. The
economic imperative is with us already. If governments and economists and
employers etc want to whinge about how the aged, the disadvantaged, the black,
women and single parents etc etc are a drag on our society which they can't
afford, they have to know what to do: stop turning the blind eye when job
discrimination continues to prevent people in these categories getting work and
off their books for financial assistance.
On the information front, there's lip service already paid to the principles of
anti-discrimination throughout the community, and attitudes I think are already
changing here.... that is, attitudes to the principles.... not necessarily the
practice. My view is this process is always going to be very slow, although
most effective: it seems to work only through waves of generational change.
So enforcement (or the threat of it) is a key area. And it doesn't have to
be perfect enforcement.
One might say drinking and driving is a practice that is always going to be
with us. And law enforcement hasn't brought the problem to a dead halt.
But the threat of detection via random RBT has had a huge effect in this area.
If you convince people that they might be caught out in breaking the law,
you probably do as much to bring about change as actually penalising them for
breaches.
The irony is that what we need is the basis of real facts. What we need is for
people who apply for work to be able to separately (and only once) state their
age, sex, marital status, "racial" origin etc and for those figures to be
available for analysis, and to know that when those (confidential) application
details are collected, they can indicate problem areas which may then merit
enforcement inquiries.
Something of this kind needs to start with government bodies and the agents
they engage: it's probably too much to expect immediately that private
employers are going to come into line with something like that. I notice,
however, that for example, some US employers actually do just this when you
apply for work with them. Google is very polite about it.
Those who've worked for government already know that there are already areas
where a deal of confidential data is already collected for new employees:
they're called police checks, integrity checks, security checks, superannuation
qualifications, health checks etc etc
In government work, you have to assume that these details are kept
confidential... so what's new ?
I think it could be done. But saying discrimination is "always going to
happen" amounts to a cop out.
-Peter M
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