Originally Posted by
Shaman
Minority specific organizations were created as a response to being shut out of existing channels that favored white men and disfavored everyone else. Pilot recruitment has always been biased towards white males (that doesn't mean white males are bad people, systems just have biases). I mean you don't think that the Apollo Space program pilots all being white males was just a happy coincidence do you? Or did having "The Right Stuff" mean fitting a particular demographic?
History didn't begin with our birthdays. A bunch of stuff happened before and has very much shaped and influenced the environment that exists in this moment. It can be an inconvenient thing, but the past and the present are inextricably linked.
"Unless of course you believe that they are actively being discriminated against because of their skin color or gender. Is that it? Do you believe that is happening? Are you trying to say that the airlines where the HR departments are filled with people who would walk over 30 white guys with 10,000 hours to find a Woman that would meet their bare minimums are not hiring women or minorities?"
And yet some how, inexplicably, pick any airline new hire class photo at random and it will be filled nearly all white males most of whom don't have anywhere near 10000 flight hours.
"Actively being discriminated against"? Systems have biases that effect outcomes. If those systems produce the aforementioned results maybe it's "actively" screening out candidates. Or maybe everything is just fine and the results just happened that way? <shrug>
They probably were no kidding the best of the best....at that time.
These programs are fixing symptoms not root causes....for example I'd love to see black men out of jail and in home with their families. Not see people in cages for non violent crimes. The fixing needs to be done at the beginning not the end of the cause and effect chain.
Again, I'm a white dude from a blighted small town. Parents (mine included) smoked like chimneys, were alcoholics, made terrible money and blew what money they had on stupid crap.
Guess how their kids (white) are doing when they grow up. Generally speaking not well. It's a struggle to overcome that culture pervasive where I grew up.