Re: Supreme Court on CO anti-gay law

Topics: Rights, AA
23 Feb 1995

From: "DG Ervan Darnell"


ThomasG1@aol.com wrote:

>Non-quota, merit based requirements, as outlined
>above, may be the best line to walk in my mind.

DOA. The PC'ers hate merit based requirements because they do not result in
enough jobs for their supporters. Implicit in the above suggestion is that
the government decides what constitutes merit and what does not. I would
have thought that it was obvious to you (Thomas) that this is impossible.
Merit would be defined as the group most likely to produce the swing votes
to get congressman X reelected (witness the 'fixing' of the national service
exam test socres without telling anyone it was happening).

Even if that could be fixed, what is merit in my company will not be in
yours and how to objectively measure it is very difficult (e.g. 'I read his
code and it sucks, he is fired.'). A straight jacket of test scores is no
more useful than a straight jacket of racial quotas, and ultimately the
former will be nothing but the latter. Leave people free to judge merit and
decide what constitutes merit. The market for merit tests works too. Let it.

>I *do* believe it is possible to outlaw pure racial discrimination, and also
>retain merit as the basis for hiring and promotions. In applicable work

If your above suggestion is how to do this, you need to try harder.
Propose specific language and I'll tell you why it won't work.





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