House of Eratosthenes

The post previous to this one inspected the possibility about whether the CIOs in our information management businesses might be causing the problems…about which…they do their grumbling. Said problems having to do with this alleged “IT skills shortage.” My answer boils down to Yes, but not in the way most people think. I believe a trend exists wherein everything in Information Technology is being distilled down to a step-by-step process, with no problem-solving skills necessary, no knowledge about how things actually work necessary. The goal is to make all skills economical — portable — easily transferred to the next person. And, IT being a big thing, all skills within it simply don’t translate that way. They’re trying to put fifty pounds of potatoes in a twenty pound bag. So yes, we should blame the CIOs.

I hope people found that one to be thoughtful. A lot of people decide this stuff with feelings, and you know, that’s the second sign that you are going insane.

What happens when you go insane? You can’t make decisions that are beneficial or productive anymore…or at least, are beneficial or productive on a frequency greater than random chance. You leave it to others to make things better, as a best-case scenario — worst-case scenario being, you jump in and bollux it all up for them.

And here’s a great example of that: Via ZNet Cartoons, via Alas! A Blog!, via Glenn Sacks writing in Men’s News Daily:

Niiiiiiiiicccceeee……….

Why do I find this cartoon to be insane? Because it derogates the accomplishments of white people, indeed is calculated and designed to do that very thing, and I’m a white person? No. Because it fails to navigate the first triad and it cannot culminate into a thought that will navigate that triad: FACT…OPINION…THING TO DO. The fact it seeks to point out is that white people benefit from racism without knowing it. What opinion are we to draw from this? That white people are, typically, less competent than they believe themselves to be? I think even among people who sympathize with the cartoon, most of them would be reluctant to jump to that conclusion. They’d need to see a few more facts.

And forget about the Thing-To-Do. Just forget it. What are we to do about this? Well gee, affirmative action with quotas might seem like the only reasonable way to go…that might seem like a sound plan…to people who feel their way around problems rather than thinking their way through them. All those who seek to define a goal before they make their plans, so they can assess their progress toward that goal…abandon all hope ye who enter here. What are you trying to do? Make everyone the same? Lay the smack down on whitey? Give persons-of-color opportunity? Cool down racial tensions? People who want the first two to happen, can’t say how that helps anyone. People who want the third thing to happen, can’t say how that’s supposed to work, over the long term. And people who want the fourth thing to happen, by supporting quotas in college admissions, hiring and contracting, work diligently against the goals they say are theirs.

Over on Alas!, there are just shy of a hundred comments about this cartoon. I’m particularly interested in #5, #6, #8, #10, #16 and #47.

Sailorman doesn’t seem to think too highly of the comic. He ‘fesses up that he can’t draw, but if he could this is the strip he’d do in response…what follows is a panel by panel description of what happened to the white folks and their ancestors — the darker side.

Jake Squid calls him a “right-winger.”

Sailorman points out that Squid is engaging in ad hom; Jake Squid denies it, then engages in it again.

Ampersand, who seems to be the CEO of the blog, does some backpedaling…

Sailorman, I’m not sure where the cartoon said that white people have it easy, or don’t work for what they get. The person was offered “a foot in the door,” not the keys to the executive washroom; the white couple was given a mortgage, not a free house.

What the cartoon does say (in my view) is that white people have it easier than black people, and that the system works in a way that makes it easy for white people to be unaware of how they’ve benefited from racism. I don’t think believing that requires believing that white people are handed the world on a silver platter.

I call it backpedaling because if one accepts the point of the original cartoon, and from that does navigate the first triad of fact/opinion/thing-to-do, albeit in an insane way — it’s almost certain that whatever navigation that was, it just got scuttled by Ampersand’s miniaturization of the original point that was being made. White people are being given, not free stuff, but opportunities. Oops. Well, here’s news for Ampersand — a lot of people who saw the cartoon and liked it, it doesn’t seem at all a logical leap to say, thought the stuff that belongs to white people should be taken away from them. What else is to be done? We shouldn’t do that? The cartoon seeks only to make white people more thankful for the opportunities they’ve had? Eh…if that’s the case, it’s not that good of a cartoon, because it doesn’t seem to stop there. I’m pretty sure Jake Squid isn’t stopping there. He thinks you’re a “right-winger” if you simply bring up some historical points the cartoon might’ve forgotten to mention.

Leora, also, doesn’t find much use in Sailorman‘s point. But interestingly, when she discusses why this is, she makes his point all over again for him. Read her entry, all the way to the last paragraph:

What this comic (and Sailorman’s response) reminded me of is a very personal interaction I have in my own life. It is not exactly the same, but humor me on this analogy, ok?

My sister and I are both white females, both came from working class parents with a strong work ethic, and are both first-generation college educated with advanced degrees. Inasmuch as we can be similar, we are as sisters. The main difference in our lives is that she is able-bodied and I am disabled. (I am very obviously vision and hearing impaired.)

My sister is a very hard worker and has a successful career. I would not say that she hasn’t “earned” her successes because she put her nose to the grindstone, made the right decisions to get to her goals, and met her goals by working hard.

The difference between her and I is that she has always had the OPPORTUNITY to work hard. For her, say the goal is “D”. If she worked hard at A, it would get her to B. If she worked hard at B, it would get her to C. If she worked hard at C, it would get her to D. She pretty much has always had the benefit of the assumption that A B C=D. There was an obvious return to her investment.

For me, A may or may not = B, which may or may not get me to C, etc. And the time I will have to spend at any one of these steps (working just as hard or harder than my sister, is usually longer and may offer me less return on my investment.)

To use real life examples: My sister could earn money in high school by babysitting or doing high school fast food jobs. It was relatively easy for her to get the opportunities to work hard. I sat around a lot in high school earning way less money because people were less inclined to hire a deafblind babysitter or fast food worker. She had the opportunity to work hard.

She was in honors programs and I was in special ed, which didn’t even allow me to take the qualifying tests for honors programs. She worked hard in her honors programs because she had the opportunity to work hard.

She got through college more quickly than I did because she was able to work to pay for college at a much increased rate than I did. I did work, in high school and college, but I spent much more time job hunting and doing volunteer work to get my foot in the door or begging for more hours than she did. She did work hard to put herself through college, as did I, but the benefits allowing her to work hard gave her more opportunities.

Most notably, she got many jobs and internships, etc. by word of mouth. Someone would recommend her and she would get hired. I had people who were also willing to vouch for me, and they would come back to me apologetically saying that they put in a good word for me but that the other person said that they just didn’t know if they could see themselves hiring a disabled person.

In her case, with all of these opportunities to work hard, she was able to build on her success over time. In my case, any accomplishment I earned in the past by hard work was not likely to count for anything past my disability. Her past accomplishments led to more opportunities to work hard and earn more successes. I have to start over proving myself at every opportunity as if I have no past. I have to defend myself for things that may or may not happen in the future. I have no past and no future in regards to earning things, her past accomplishments are step ladders for her and no one expects her to prove that she will never make a mistake in the future she cannot foresee.

So, I have never understood this argument that sailorman gives. No one is saying that white people didn’t work hard to earn their successes. But don’t they understand how fortunate they are to have those opportunities to work hard? And how frustrating it is when you want to work hard, you have the skills, you have played by the rules, yet there is no return? Working hard and earning success is a privilege that is not afforded equally to everyone in society. Why is that so hard to understand?

As an interesting epilogue here, my sister has now reached the proverbial glass ceiling in her career. She is finding that she has reached a point that she cannot move out of. A B C is no longer easily equal to D. She is seeing younger, less qualified men jump past her in promotions and opportunities. And I’m sure they worked hard, too.

So the privileged sister peaked out, and now must take her turn on the sidelines watching men leapfrog over where she is, just because they’re MEN. “And [Leora’s] sure they worked hard, too.” Uh huh…and I’ll tell you something else, Leora: Those men had to put up with a lot of guff that didn’t get in the way of your privileged sister…or you. They could have had their careers destroyed by some underachieving woman, not even all that good-looking, or for that matter even having anything to do with the guy at all — going to Human Resources and saying “when he walked into the room he made me feel uncomfortable.”

One wonders, further, how many opportunities this privileged sister had that were denied to the men who are now passing her up, back when it was fashionable to hand the plum assignments out to the gals. Can anyone deny there is such a force of nature at work here? We’re seriously considering putting a woman in the White House this year — a nasty, toxic woman who has accomplished very little, and doesn’t seem to have a kind word to say about anyone except when it’s in the context of bashing someone else. And for that matter, does Leora really expect me to think it is never in vogue to hand things out to a disabled person? It hasn’t happened in her case? Shenanigans. What if we went and talked to the privileged sister? What would she say?

I’m sure if we tallied up the unfair advantages and got into a subtraction game, net-for-gross, Leora’s point would still stand. But…a subtraction game is useful only if you’ve validated that you’ve collected everything that should go into it. In this case, there’s no way to validate it. We live in a big complicated world full of people gaining “unfair” advantages all the time. And there’s another question to be pondered — aren’t we supposed to be working together for some things? When did this become a competition against each other?

My point is that all this stuff is useless. All these arguments to be made are “valid,” on the most superficial level anyway, because they all have a kernel of truth to them. But just a kernel. You can’t really do anything with any of them…all they say is that this class of people, or that class of people, got a raw deal.

I like the idea of white people being more thankful for the advantages they’ve had — but that’s good advice for anyone isn’t it? Here and there, I know I’ve had benefits because of the friendships I’ve had, as well as whatever class to which someone thinks I’m a member. I’ve been hurt too — passed over for opportunities that went to persons far less qualified.

You really open a Pandora’s Box when you say because Morgan was passed over for something, Morgan is owed something by someone. We just shouldn’t get into that. Nobody owes Morgan anything…because everyone gets a raw deal. And it logically follows that for whatever opportunities I have had come my way…I don’t owe anybody anything either. Just some gratitude toward those who made it possible. Anything beyond that, we have to get into the whallopin’ countin’ business. Oh no, to make up for past opportunities he shouldn’t have gotten, we gave this guy three whallops, now we think on it some more we see he only had two whallopin’s comin’. He gets one back, so who does he get to whallop?

And once you start that crap, it never ends. Worse still, someone has to get the job of figuring out how many whallopin’s so-and-so has comin’ to ’em. And ultimately, that is a position involving so much power, we shouldn’t want anyone to have it.

Does that make someone angry?

Then that would be a sign someone is participating in the formation of our public policies, and they aren’t engaging any spirit of compromise before doing so — they just want things their way, period. If we’re looking for something somewhere that needs fixing, I think we should start there.

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Everyone Gets a Raw DealMonday, March 24th, 2008

Everyone Gets a Raw Deal
Monday, March 24th, 2008