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California outlawed all-white-male boardrooms – reshaping corporate America

latimes.com

131–140 of 208 posts

Re: California outlawed all-white-male boardrooms – reshaping corporate America

#131
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's going to be one diverse person at a lot of those boards and they will get the stigma of being the person that was put there because the actual good candidates had the wrong skin color. No matter how qualified they might actually be, they can't escape the looks. Plus, by making this a factor, you're just kindling actual racism by pitting white males against everyone else. The resentment created by rejecting someo…

Do white males feel like they are all unfairly on the board because they passed over all the black candidates? No. They think they're there on merit, because well --- of course, they're white.

Welcome to 2021 when people think openly disparaging people on the basis of their race is ok.

Re: California outlawed all-white-male boardrooms – reshaping corporate America

#134
Yikes.

1. If White is understood to be a "race," then racial groups can distinguish ethnicity, nationality, extended ancestry, phenotype, or self-identifying group. It's not clear what "white" is, legally speaking. There may be legal precedents set for other "races," for other purposes, but they shouldn't apply across the board (see 2).

2. The typical racial groups in the US are highly asymmetrical. Think of Latino, Hispanic, Black, White, Asian, Pacific Islander, Mixed, etc. In ordinary usage, these all pick out different combinations of dimensions. Compare this to another group predicate, such as color. When we identify colors, we use the identical process to distinguish pink from blue, green from orange, etc.

3. This should go without saying, but one should be able to earn a board seat no matter their race. Further, if we care at all about merit (boardrooms are peak capitalism, after all), it should be possible for a group of all Black, all White, all Chinese, or all Jewish to earn seats on a merit basis.

4. No matter how you cash out racial differences, they are ultimately superficial. Putting this much importance on superficial categories places more importance on race and (almost certainly) division.

5. The move toward "equity" is hollow. To me, it looks like rhetorical salad dressing for shifting equality to a different variable to favor one demographic over another. It's equality, but with respect to a different purpose/demographic. There is literally no way to make any law universally equal for everyone. Laws purporting equity, such as this, are passed at the expense of the majority and the *supposedly* powerful; let's stop pretending otherwise.

6. IANAL, but this is probably illegal.

Re: California outlawed all-white-male boardrooms – reshaping corporate America

#135

The funny thing is that any actually bigoted company has a built in out. "Johnson, as the youngest member, the board has decided that you must identify as a woman for regulatory compliance." What are woke progressives going to do, deny that a man can identify as whatever gender she wants?

[flagged]

Re: California outlawed all-white-male boardrooms – reshaping corporate America

#136

What a shockingly sad interpretation from most (all at the time of writing) comments here. When did you ever have a job that you didn't learn 90% of what's needed, while on the job itself? Cries for meritocracy are woefully ignorant for this fact alone. If you want meritocracy, focus your energy on improving education. Until then, your worth is determined mostly by whether someone gives you a chance, which depends on…

> your worth is determined mostly by whether someone gives you a chance, which depends on your skin color, location, and last name, aka luck.

Nonsense. If you can code, you can start next week. You can set up a website and start selling things. If you make good music, people will come. If you solve a problem that saves people time or money, they will buy it.

Apart from people like you, most people don't care all that much about race.

Re: California outlawed all-white-male boardrooms – reshaping corporate America

#137
That is to say, as is ever clearer and ever more important to note, [identity] politics is not an alternative to class politics; it is a class politics, the politics of the left-wing of neoliberalism. It is the expression and active agency of a political order and moral economy in which capitalist market forces are treated as unassailable nature. An integral element of that moral economy is displacement of the critique of the invidious outcomes produced by capitalist class power onto equally naturalized categories of ascriptive identity that sort us into groups supposedly defined by what we essentially are rather than what we do.

As I have argued, following Walter Michaels and others, within that moral economy a society in which 1% of the population controlled 90% of the resources could be just, provided that roughly 12% of the 1% were black, 12% were Latino, 50% were women, and whatever the appropriate proportions were LGBT people. It would be tough to imagine a normative ideal that expresses more unambiguously the social position of people who consider themselves candidates for inclusion in, or at least significant staff positions in service to, the ruling class. - Adolph Reed, Jr.

Re: California outlawed all-white-male boardrooms – reshaping corporate America

#138

Discrimination on the basis of race is always unethical.

This comment ten years ago would be agreed to by almost everyone in the United States. Not anymore; it is now fashionable to be racist against Whites. No more!

This comment has never been agreed upon by almost everyone in the US. The difference now is that we want to take action to try to even the playing field against the majority of those who didn't agree with the statement then or now.

Re: California outlawed all-white-male boardrooms – reshaping corporate America

#139
post #13

Road the hell is paved with good intentions. As much as I support equality and diversity, I'm even more strongly opposed government over-reach. The state shouldn't have a say in who gets a job at a private (non owned by state) company. As the article state, I hope this will get over-turned by the courts. This would set a bad precedent. If the state can dictate the kind of person gets a highly coveted job, what else c…

It’s not just CA though. Nasdaq is doing it. US chamber of commerce has thrown its support as well.

NASDAQ rule in question, with SEC approval.

https://listingcenter.nasdaq.com/assets/Board%20Diversity%20...

Re: California outlawed all-white-male boardrooms – reshaping corporate America

#140

What a shockingly sad interpretation from most (all at the time of writing) comments here. When did you ever have a job that you didn't learn 90% of what's needed, while on the job itself? Cries for meritocracy are woefully ignorant for this fact alone. If you want meritocracy, focus your energy on improving education. Until then, your worth is determined mostly by whether someone gives you a chance, which depends on…

> your worth is determined mostly by whether someone gives you a chance, which depends on your skin color, location, and last name, aka luck. Nonsense. If you can code, you can start next week. You can set up a website and start selling things. If you make good music, people will come. If you solve a problem that saves people time or money, they will buy it. Apart from people like you, most people don't care all that…

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