HUZZAH FOR EBONY!!!

[catlady_de_los_angeles]

Ebony, what a great essay. I cannot begin to understand how 
frustrated you must get with the people who refuse to listen to this 
information and then get rude to the people who tried to tell them... 
I mean, I know *how* frustrated *I* get, but to *me* it's just 
interesting, not personal, being as how I am white (by appearance and 
*modern* definition; the ignorant do not believe that at the 
beginning of the twentieth century, people of Jewish 'ethnic 
background' were NOT considered white).

On the other tentacle, I do get *passionately* pissed off whenever 
anyone proclaims that all white people automatically assume that all 
their black co-workers are unworthy beneficiaries of affirmative 
action. *I* have NEVER assumed such a thing IN MY WHOLE LIFE. (On the 
contrary, I do assume that the reason so many of our hardworking, 
talented, underpaid OAs (at my job) are black is, they don't have a 
better job than OA because they were held back by racism.) I have 
always assumed that all my co-workers are competent colleagues, and 
usually been proved correct. Most turn out to be better than merely 
competent! Occasionally ones turns out to be less than competent. 
Usually such disappointments are white men. Three of them, all in one 
department, were very pretty young black women. After two years of 
observation, I decided that they had gotten their jobs by sleeping 
with their boss, a white man. Alas. I would have slept with him with 
no payment at all!

Okay, so what COULD be done, if there was good will on all sides (not 
that there is, but IF)? Meritocracy seems to be the fairest of the 
options that are useful to the EMPLOYER: heesh could hire only people 
who give himer a kickback from salary or only people who sleep with 
himer or only people who go to the same church, but none of those 
methods will get the work done as adequately as if the employees were 
selected by merit. Even, it is DAMN hard to measure merit; judgments 
of merit are alway influenced by subjectivity.

Must go now to watch JKR bio on TV. Love you.

But people need at least an entry ticket into the competition of 
merit. That means