djackson 22568 (6/10/2014)
Gary Varga (6/10/2014)
I am thankful that I work in a country that is relatively unbiased.The UK isn't perfect but I work alongside (or have done) men, women and other (it's a complicated world) as well as those of various ethnicity, people with a range of religious beliefs (including none), various disablements (from ingrowing toenails to no legs) amongst them (of should I say us) as well as differing abilities. Progression is mainly due to the latter (there will always be exceptions) combined with ambition.
The world isn't an even place but I have found that natural tolerance in the UK IT workplace to be almost universal. Hurrah for us!!!
I have unfortunately seen the opposite in the US. I worked with a very, very intelligent black man named Broderick when I first started in this career. He was easily smarter and better than everyone else on the team, yet was paid less than all of us. That includes me, as a new hire, with no experience.
I have also had the pleasure of working in environments where almost everyone was a minority. So discrimination or unfairness isn't everywhere.
I would love to see the day when the only bias we have is on capabilities, not skin color, gender or religion. Unfortunately I think it is getting worse in a lot of cases.
Back in 2001 I had an intelligent debate with a coworker about positive discrimination. It was in the context of inner city poverty which the demographics reported at the time was largely from a ethnically black background.
He was certain what was required was to target funding for black families to allow the to become upwardly socially mobile.
I vehemently disagreed and said that we could achieve the same thing just by targeting the poorest families in the inner cities. I felt, and still do, that if we were to base it on funding the inner city families who were poorest then we probably would be funding an extremely large proportion of black people (maybe even 100%) but that the criteria is one that is more widely acceptable. I said that it was wholly unfair to base it on ethnicity and would in the long term lead to a racist backlash. I feel that we can see that now.
It would not surprise me to find here on SSC a mature cross section of people who struggle with understanding prejudice.
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!