Hispanic engineer helps space station crews stay fit

In article , says...
In article , John Doe wrote:
Alan Erskine wrote:

Racism will have disapeared only when employers don't even store in their HR
databases the race of an employee.

In most countries, there are laws that already stop employers from
doing this!

Things aren't quite that simple in the USA. An employer is
simultaneously required to not allow race, religion, sex, etc. to enter
into personal decisions, and, to make sure of this, the government
requires major employers to report the race, religion, sex, etc. of all
its job candidates and employees. I've been on interview-trips where I
had two separate stacks of paper, one with the EEOC statistics for the
government and a separate stack of paper for use within the company. I
assume NASA and NASA's contractors have at least as much red tape,
probably more.
--
Kevin Willoughby lid

Imagine that, a FROG ON-OFF switch, hardly the work
for test pilots. -- Mike Collins

In article ,
Kevin Willoughby wrote:

In most countries, there are laws that already stop employers from
doing this!

Things aren't quite that simple in the USA. An employer is
simultaneously required to not allow race, religion, sex, etc. to enter
into personal decisions, and, to make sure of this, the government
requires major employers to report the race, religion, sex, etc. of all
its job candidates and employees.

Yeah, I'm aware. We've had to fill in reports on such stuff while
bidding for US Federal contracts. Which creates a dilemna ... we aren't
allowed to keep data on such things ... don't know what the resolution
on that was!

For Canadian government contractors, we also have to submit a report.
But the stats are completely voluntary, self-reporting, and kept
separate from the HR files. But you get some interesting stuff.
One person, whose skin colour was obviously one thing, reported that
she wasn't a visible minority. (esentially ours is simply:
Female: yes or no Visible Minority: yes or no Disabled: yes or no
Aboriginal (Indian, Inuit, or Metis): yes or no) I had the interesting
job of asking her about it ... and she said that basically, she didn't
feel like she was a minority, no matter the colour of her skin. Great,
I thought ... we're winning, and hopefully oneday everyone will feel
that way ... the same way red heads don't feel like a minority (can't
speak for blondes ... :-) On the other hand, it does impact the numbers
on our report ...

(btw, in this whole process, when I did briefly have to deal with
US rules ... no-one could ever give me the definition of a Hispanic.
I've seen blond-hair blue-eyed Mexicans ... so it can't be about skin
colour ... but apparently Spainards don't count ... so it isn't language.
And no-one could tell me what to do with the Brazilian!)

Nick

"Nicholas Fitzpatrick" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Kevin Willoughby wrote:

In most countries, there are laws that already stop employers from
doing this!

Things aren't quite that simple in the USA. An employer is
simultaneously required to not allow race, religion, sex, etc. to enter
into personal decisions, and, to make sure of this, the government
requires major employers to report the race, religion, sex, etc. of all
its job candidates and employees.

Yeah, I'm aware. We've had to fill in reports on such stuff while
bidding for US Federal contracts. Which creates a dilemna ... we aren't
allowed to keep data on such things ... don't know what the resolution
on that was!

Quandry: How do you know if you meet the 'requirements' (for Equal Rights
etc) if you aren't allowed to keep figures that _show_ you as keeping the
right percentages of various groups?

Unbelieveable. And typical government too.

--
Alan Erskine
We can get people to the Moon in five years,
not the fifteen GWB proposes.
Give NASA a real challenge

In article ,
Alan Erskine wrote:

Quandry: How do you know if you meet the 'requirements' (for Equal Rights
etc) if you aren't allowed to keep figures that _show_ you as keeping the
right percentages of various groups?

Unbelieveable. And typical government too.

Well, it is the US government that requires the racial profile. And
as we are in Canada, it is the Canadian government (and most other ones
I would think) that doesn't let us do this.

Nick

(Nicholas Fitzpatrick) wrote in message ...
Am I the only one who find the headline racist? You wouldn't have
a headline saying "Soyuz departing space station leaving behind
two white male astronauts" would you?

You don't have equality, if people still feel the need to highlight
people in this way.

Nick

First of all, I don't find the headline to be racist, and the story
itself is quite good.

Second, the term 'racist' is often misused, since that there's only
one race in the human race, of course unless one thinks that the human
race is superior to other races (or in this case species, including ET
species), that one I don't mind.

Third, humans always and will always be in the future to catalog
things under different groups, they will even catalog themself under
different things.

Fourth, there's nothing wrong with cataloging stuff under different
things, I mean that, a whale is a mammal, a salmon is a fish, and a
dodo is a bird. Am I wrong to catalog whale, salmon, and dodo under
their own groups?

Fifth, if there's an indication of an offending material in the
article, it should be noted that the mass media has a long reputation
of inciting conflict, even in an article that disguised itself as an
objective article that proclaim to bring only good and the truth. And
yes, that includes news release from NASA.

"EAC" wrote ...
(Nicholas Fitzpatrick) wrote ...
Am I the only one who find the headline racist? You wouldn't have
a headline saying "Soyuz departing space station leaving behind
two white male astronauts" would you?

You don't have equality, if people still feel the need to highlight
people in this way.

First of all, I don't find the headline to be racist,

I don't think it is - but it is indicative of a lack of equality.

You'd be pretty unlikely to get a headline like
"Left-handed engineer helps space station crews stay fit".
The only reason 'Hispanic' is included in the headline is that
it is thought to be worthy of comment. It can be inferred
from that that 'Hispanics' (for whatever reason) are thought
unlikely to achieve success in technical jobs.

and the story itself is quite good.

Second, the term 'racist' is often misused, since that there's only
one race in the human race

Pfft. The definition of a word follows the usage of the word in practice
- not vice versa.

On or about Wed, 5 May 2004 09:33:48 +0100, Paul Blay
made the sensational claim that:
You'd be pretty unlikely to get a headline like
"Left-handed engineer helps space station crews stay fit".

And it's a damn shame too. I think a right brained engineer would be more
noteworthy than a hispanic one.
--
This is a siggy | To E-mail, do note | Just because something
It's properly formatted | who you mean to reply-to | is possible, doesn't
No person, none, care | and it will reach me | mean it can happen

"LooseChanj" wrote ...
On or about Wed, 5 May 2004 09:33:48 +0100, Paul Blay
made the sensational claim that:
You'd be pretty unlikely to get a headline like
"Left-handed engineer helps space station crews stay fit".

And it's a damn shame too. I think a right brained engineer would be more
noteworthy than a hispanic one.

So, are there notably more, or less, than 10% left-handers in Engineering?

"LooseChanj" wrote ...
On or about Wed, 5 May 2004 09:33:48 +0100, Paul Blay
made the sensational claim that:
You'd be pretty unlikely to get a headline like
"Left-handed engineer helps space station crews stay fit".

And it's a damn shame too. I think a right brained engineer would be more
noteworthy than a hispanic one.

So, are there notably more, or less, than 10% left-handers in Engineering?

In article ,
says...
"Nicholas Fitzpatrick" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Kevin Willoughby wrote:
Things aren't quite that simple in the USA. An employer is
simultaneously required to not allow race, religion, sex, etc. to enter
into personal decisions, and, to make sure of this, the government
requires major employers to report the race, religion, sex, etc. of all
its job candidates and employees.

Yeah, I'm aware. We've had to fill in reports on such stuff while
bidding for US Federal contracts. Which creates a dilemna ... we aren't
allowed to keep data on such things ... don't know what the resolution
on that was!

Quandry: How do you know if you meet the 'requirements' (for Equal Rights
etc) if you aren't allowed to keep figures that _show_ you as keeping the
right percentages of various groups?

It gets even messier. I wasn't allowed to ask "are you black?
hispanic??" Legally, I couldn't even ask "are you female?". I had to
guess. Then I filled out this data on a form that was kept separate from
the resumes and my non-EEOC assessments. The two sets of paperwork were
summarized in separate databases.


Unbelieveable. And typical government too.

Ayuh.
--
Kevin Willoughby lid

Imagine that, a FROG ON-OFF switch, hardly the work
for test pilots. -- Mike Collins