Before I begin on another rant (yes, I’m mad about another thing), I’d like to give a little update on my life. Sounds exciting, no? Well, on Tuesday, I went in to talk with this company about doing a little internship thingy with them over the summer. They want someone to design their corporate website, and my work on my own site and the upcoming Burlington-Edison band website apparently impressed them enough to ask me. The problem: I don’t seem to get anything in return. Originally, this type of internship was meant to give students at Skagit Valley College (a community college across the river in Mount Vernon) credit towards one thing or another. Since I don’t attend there (I don’t even do Running Start), I don’t get the credit. And yes, I did check out possible internship->credit programs at UW, but you have to do the internship whilst attending the university, and I don’t plan on doing this any longer than the summer, if even that (it really shouldn’t take me that long to make a website). And I don’t get paid, either. As it is, the company’s only a two and a half man operation (two brothers run the gig and there’s a semi-part-time guy who comes in every so often to drink coffee), and they’ve got boxes all over the place from their freight salvage operation, so I doubt they really can afford to pay me in anything other than coffee and high-speed Internet. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, except for the fact that I hate coffee. Meh.
In other news, I’m going down to UW tomorrow for the Husky Experience 2006. I get to miss a day of school to hear a bunch of things I probably already knew! Isn’t that fun? Ah, anyways, I probably will learn a bunch of interesting things that I didn’t learn on the campus tour I never took. Heh, I know more about Western than I do about UW, and I’m actually going to the latter. Oh the irony. Or is it irony? Perhaps it’s an extended feminine metaphorical simile indicating the underlying cause of the blog post…agh! AP English is invading my head! Must…escape…!
…I’m back. Now, onto the rant! My target for tonight is good ol’ affirmative action (or as the Brits call it: positive discrimination). To put it in a nutshell (this is for you folks who like to read Cliffs Notes and such), I hate it. I’m white and male, therefore I’m automatically screwed over. Oh, and I’m middle-class (well, lower middle-class, but hey, who’s keeping track?) so that screws me over for a few things, too, namely scholarships.
In essence, affirmative action forces people (say, businesses and colleges) to adhere to a completely insane policy of hiring/admitting a certain number of “underrepresented” groups, such as minorities (blacks, Hispanics, Pacific Islanders, good Scottish tennis players, etc.) and women in order to make up for some historical or overexaggerated socioeconomical differences. I’m really not quite sure why this policy even exists other than to piss people off. Some companies even have quotas as to how many women or minorities they must hire to avoid being labeled racist or sexist. So they are forced to hire underqualified people just to meet the quota. In other words, a Hispanic woman newly immigrated to the country and without an ounce of understanding of the English language or any experience in a work environment whatsoever is more likely to be hired than a perfectly qualified white guy. Okay, that’s a little bit exaggerated. For the most part, qualified individuals are hired over unqualified people. But if a woman or a minority is put in the same applicant group as a white man, and the two people are perfectly identical in skills and abilities suited for the job they’re applying for, the woman or minority will most likely get picked for the sole reason that they’re a woman or minority. Sickening.
Now, I’m not racist, nor am I blind. I realize there are differences between racial groups. Heck, I get that racism still exists in some places. Just a little ways east down Highway 20, there’s a town called Concrete where I’ve seen blacks get chased out of stores for the color of their skin. And with that kind of attitude, I doubt any of those storeowners would hire a black man or a Hispanic immigrant. But what of it? It’s their store; let them run it how they want. Obviously, they wouldn’t appreciate it if the government stepped in and told them they had to hire a certain number of minorities, or something along those lines. Luckily, though, racists are a lot less prevalent now than, say, forty years ago. Good riddance, I say. Anyways, affirmative action merely reinforces the aforementioned differences. Basically, it’s saying that women and minorities can’t get employment or get into college solely on the basis of their qualifications. Instead, they need a little boost because they’re “underrepresented.” Positive discrimination indeed.
Yeah, anyways, I don’t quite remember where I was going with this rant. I’m tired and annoyed at all the kids in marching band who couldn’t stay focused during practice tonight (or at any practice, for that matter). As I keep telling Q, we need a big bottle of Prozac in his office…or tranquilizer darts! Even better! And we could give the gun to Alvin…excellent…
Yes…er, I highly doubt if any of you will understand that. Well, Becca probably would. She knows Alvin. And she knows Francis. That says it all right there.
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