Affirmative action survey..
 

Not looking to start a heated debate, and I ask we all keep it civil, but I am curious since this forum is filled with so many "happily employed" pilots and no too many out of work ones which may skew their view where the membership here falls on this hot topic in our profession.

No flame bait posts please... keep it professional.

For the record, my vote is for assistance for those in financial need.

BTW.. that's supposed to read "Status" and not "Statis" duh! How about a category for bad spellers! :D

Mods, forgive me in advance if this is off limits, but I found nothing to tell me that it was (nor do I believe it should be).

Sure. Uh huh.

:D


Voted: none

a discussion with a lot of exchange of ideas, but no name calling... that's when it falls apart! ;)

Are you really trying to suggest that a pilot should be hired on a basis of skin color, gender, or financial status and not professional ability?

UAL HR personnel from the 1990 time frame need not reply.

No suggesting anything of the sort... I'm agreeable however to the idea of helping out the young kid with financial aid to attend flight training, etc.. but no preferential hiring at all is my view.

too hard to gauge
 

I notice no one says anything. Telling isn't it?
I've flown with women pilots who were great pilots. I've flown with male pilots who were not so great and would NEVER make captain (anyone from Transmeridian knows what I'm talking about).
We all know the problem; it is inevitable that if we didnt have some sort of affirmative action there would only be male white upper income background military pilots flying at the the likes of FedEx. Having spent time at Fedex (in a different capacity) I noticed that those guys really went out of their way to find fault with minority pilots working there (this is from listening very closely to what they say and what they did).

Now, I have also sat next to a woman pilot at Mesaba who got a job flying a 4 engine jet with 1000/100; 1000 total and 100 multi who went to college in MSP. She even commented with a tongue-in-cheek fashion that she knew of no one else flying with this experience. Personally, I think she got her job because she was drop-dead-gorgeous. She literally looked like Heather Locklear wearing shoulder boards. I thought this was unfair. I remember a crash pad mate of mine who said "I dont think that women pilots are not good pilots, its just that get jobs before they become good pilots"
He's right.
Maybe we should ask if the pilots in this forum find they are more accepting of white hottie pilots over black or Hispanic men?

For the record, I think there should be some AFF. Action for pilots MEETING THE REQUIREMENTS and not below. Like I said, if we didint, it is inevitable that the pilots would always be rich republican white boyz.

This ground has been plowed over and over again already.

http://www.airlinepilotforums.com/showthread.php?t=6357

This topic, like politics and religion, usually brings out the worst in people: men vs women, white vs non-white, rich vs poor, old vs young, even passenger vs cargo! And this being an anonymous board somehow causes people to say things their momma told them not to in public. So let's see what kind of inflammatory comments are out there still.

I've heard this before on numerous occasions which I why I didn't lump the poll into one "minority" thing... in the end, white women are not a numerical minority in the world, but more so in the profession, and whether it's due to nature or nurture, the fact remains that most women don't fancy the idea of flying an airplane for a living.. certainly one's I've known for my 3 and a half decades of life, but there are going to be women who do, and I say if they have the spacial awareness skills, technical mind, and the "right stuff" to fly, then by all means...

Black men and other obvious minorities (such as native American, or Asian) on the other hand are far more under represented in the profession than white women (when you factor in the interest of doing the job part in).. and in my 15 years being in and around pilots, in the flight training world of CFI's, bottom dweller FAR135 world, and 121 airline world one observation has been quite clear to me... there are a lot of full blown racists out there in Chief Pilot's uniforms and Check Airmans shoes that throw the N word around like bread crumbs at pigeons when around "us whites" or maybe they will go on and on about the Mexicans, this race or the other... but I rarely saw anyone complain if a good looking white woman was hired or flying with them. Come to think of it, I've never heard a single complaint.

Now if we're to accept this self evident anecdote to be fact, that there is a built-in preference that good looking white women have (for obvious reasons), and then compound this with the government and private sector AA programs that are rampant today. Seems to me like the best thing to be in this profession isn't what many here think; which is to say a Black man.. but rather a good looking white woman.

Fair? I say no. Not especially when you consider (politically correct to say or not) that the average black man is going to come from a VERY underprivileged background while likely the attractive white woman's dad my well be a senior Captain (I've seen this often).

btw... this poll with it's anonymity is quite telling, isn't it?

Thanks, saved me the trouble of using the search function and copy paste.

guys, there is no need to discuss.. I like the idea of an anonymous poll.. the results are far more telling than a few of us dominating a thread debating back and forth anyway.

Although as a point of interest, and to further prove my above point... that thread you so kindly provided with it's 12 pages of back and forth, rants and rave... had 4, count them, 4 references to women, and I lost count at 29 at racial minorities..

Can we say, elephant in the living room?

Man Do you REALLY wanna know what I think!!!

How about affirmative action in the NBA? I'm a 5'10" white guy and would love to play for the Knicks. :eek:

I voted none, btw.

Well, I was agreeing with everything you said up until you made that comment.

"He's right"

As long as she can talk on the radio...



;)




Can I request her on all my flights? :D





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sure... are blacks getting fair shake compared to the white women?

If I talk good on the radio, can I play with your stick? ;)

Not in my experience CE750.

exactly.....

I've used the skills of networking,constantly improving myself in this profession and always thinking how I can be a better pilot and employee. Taking advantage of every opportunity to move up,so nobody could say he's there cause he's a minority. No I'm here because I approach this profession with the passion I have for flying jets. By the way I got turned down twice in the 90's at UAL,the second time I was a 727 Capt.

Is this Dwight?

Nope,my friends call me VMan,and so can you.

Heather?!?!? Is that YOU?!?!? :p




.

It has been my experience that AA cuts two ways.

One it allows minorities employment opportunities but also creates doubts as to their abilities. I have heard people make comments such as "Is that Women/Black/Hispanic/ect qualified for that job or did He/She get the job to meet the minority hiring quota?"

These are real concerns. I believe AA undermines the dedication of many people who have worked hard to reach a goal, Minority or White.

Okay Fire Away!

Vman
 

Vman, Why does it say Ex-757 captain? Did you retire or get furloughed?

SkyHigh

Ex-757 FO laid off.

At what? Makes perfect sense. ;)

Good point.

I've never understood the wisdom in correcting a past injustice by perpetrating one in the present.

No need to fire away, your comments are sensible, reasonable and a quiet admission of the things said when these minority groups aren't within earshot.

Unfortunately a misunderstanding of what affirmative action is, and what it isn't, is a common issue with these discussions.

1) Legal Affirmative Action doesn't require the hiring of less qualified individuals to meet required quotas. What it does say is that a company must demonstrate that it has taken "affirmative action" to reach out to, and hire qualified individuals from groups that have been historically underrepresented due to racist/sexist/ethnocentric policies. Any hiring of a person just because they are of a certain racial group is pseudo affirmative action.

2) Legal Affirmative Action requires that the individual must meet the qualifications of the job. Of course some qualifications are more subjective than others. In pilot hiring once you meet the minimum requirements, and pass a sim ride everything else is subjective. That's why its so funny when some of us on this forum cry "I was more qualified" everyone that meets the minimum requirements is qualified, if the requirements are 1000/100 and you have 5000/500 your as qualified as the person with 1000/100. In fact, the guy in my training class that flunked out was one of the higher time pilots.

3) Realize that pseudo Affirmative Action has been around for a very long time, and has raised the wealth, stature, and economic vitality of many of the people and their decendents helped by it. Is anyone here familar with Marlon Green, an ex-military Air force pilot that was denied a job with a major airline because of psuedo of Affirmative Action. Do a wikipedia search for his name. You may learn something!


Onfinal

Is that you Vern?

Ok VMan,nice to meet you. I thought you might be a certain UAL 75 CA that gave me a ride once. He had a side business so I thought the EX75 CA part in your profile inidcated it was him.

Shackone:

In a perfect world, we wouldn't need to. In a perfect world the past injustices would never have occurred.

All:
It's not a perfect world, and affirmative action, in it's PRESENT form, is far from perfect. It's a relic, just like all of those other topics, abortion, gay-marriage,flag-burning, etc. Their sole purpose is to divide and get politicians re-elected. Affirmative-Action isn't the answer, any race/gender based entitlements aren't, but recent history dictates that those with power only want more power, and even feel sorry for themselves when they don't have it handed them. I wish those who hate it would present a better solution than "let's ban it!". I'd love to have a system that helps the less fortunate in our society, and not the less white or less male. There I go day-dreaming again. Politics is a world of absolutes lately. The truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Good points, but I recall in the military, where the physical tests are administered as part of the screening for certain positions, and the grading is on a scale on 0-100 points per event; a score of 100 points for a woman required X, while a score of 100 in the same event for a man required 3X.. in the end, both score 300 points on their PT test, and both are deemed equally "qualified" as the test is (what's known in the social engineering business) "Gender Normed" .. how does that fit into the above categories?

I actually got in a huge arguement with my ex over this. I stated that questions asking what your race is should be removed from college applications. This should apply here too.

I was wondering how often they update the numbers since the ethnicity of the population is changing overall.

I noticed that you were quite flippant in comparing abortion to flag-burning, and that you're quick to poo-poo the concept of absolutes, so I thought I'd toss you a question for thought.



Are you absolutely alive, or absolutely dead?

Or does the truth lie somewhere in the middle?







.

Big BIG +1 for that! The silent evil..

deleted.double-entry

[quote=A320fumes;85245]Are you absolutely alive, or absolutely dead?

Or does the truth lie somewhere in the middle?

:confused: Wha?

Didn't mean to poo on anything. Just stating that none of these topics will ever get resolved until we all realize that we don't have a monopoly on the truth.

:confused: That was a wierd response to my statement. Was that Nitze, or Fallwell?





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[QUOTE=A320fumes;85246]I think I catch your drive there A320 about moderation, but somethings are indeed black and white, it's not Fallwell only who teaches this, by Pope John Paul II.. let's not get side tracked though.

Kudos to all...
 

The only reason I have continued to read this thread is because it hasn't "devolved" into flame-baiting, rather it's been a reasoned discussion of the issues (how often does that happen here?!?)

Keep up the good work guys!

Dave "ain't missing Browntail" P ;)

P.S. I voted 'none'

[quote=CE750;85249]True but VERY, VERY few things are black or white and it's very dangerous for one to think they have a handle on that. Apropos, we agree to disagree and I have no further comment. Godspeed.