Food for Thought - Racism in the Workplace: Statistics versus Intent

I was reading this article over at Business Week about some things managers need to keep in mind when hiring or laying off staff. The first point the author makes really caught my eye as being somewhat interesting. The author notes that, according to law, if you fire an ethnic minority worker, for reasons entirely irrelevant of the background, you could still find yourself in legal trouble "disparate impact" issues. Specifically, firing an ethnic minority affects the statistical make-up of ethnicities in your company; therefore in certain situations this could be considered a form of discrimination.

The question I want to pose to you, oh faithful reader, is the following: is this indeed a form of discrimination? Or merely more American, over sensitive, P.C. nonsense? If a worker is incompetent at their job, and deserves to be fired, surely their ethnic background should not have anything to do with the decision. But wait, dig a little deeper. If the laying off of a singular ethnic minority worker affects the company’s ethnic make-up so deeply, does this imply a fundamental discriminatory policy towards hiring workers?

Food for thought; let's hear you sound off in the comments.

- Manuel

Smart Man, Smart Words II

Brooding on the past seems counter productive, and given the right circumstances, destructive. Focusing too much on the future leaves you blind to the here and now. I think this quote captures that message:

Smart Man, Smart Words

My friend Ed always has quotes up on his blog, and I'm going to take a page out of his book and put one up here. It just really caught my eye as being truly insightful and I felt like sharing it with others.

Technological mistakes can be costly

I was reading the headlines over at CNN and came across this story ($23 quadrillion charge) which I thought was pretty comical.

It appears that this poor guy (no pun intended) was just checking his balance, nothing out of the ordinary, until he noticed this ridiculous, astronomical charge. However, what I think is most comical is that, instead of assuming it was a mistake, the guy actually believed he somehow spent such an absurd amount of money in one go (at a petrol station no less). Then again, CNN may be trying to make this story out to be funnier that it truly is. Either way, the story is worth a chuckle or two.

-Manuel

Film Review: Rudo y Cursi (2008)

Following on from the theme of having no theme, my next post is a film review. I suppose it's important to note that I love movies; watching them, making them, discussing them....you get the idea. As such, I've been looking forwards to writing a review for a while but have been waiting for a really good film to get the ball rolling (the last film I saw before 'Rudo y Cursi' was 'Transformers 2'....don't even get me started on where that one went wrong).

First off, if you've seen 'Y Tu Mamá También' you'll be familiar with the cast (Diego Luna from 'Milk' and Gael García Bernal from 'The Motorcycle Diaries') and it really has to be said, these two are brilliant opposite each other. Here they play brothers from a random small village in Mexico. Turns out they're both amazing at football and both end up playing professionally...on different teams. The lads are totally convincing as brothers who have their fair share of luggage and manage to bring the audience to laughter, joy, anger and even despair without missing a beat.

The direction was a bit obvious but still without flaw. Carlos Cuarón follows in the footsteps of his big brother Alfonso ('Y Tu Mamá También', 'Children of Men'). His solid choice of shots can be equated to a comedian delivering the punch line and just the right time: it makes a decent scene into a great one. I won't get to technical into all the nitty gritty of good directing but suffices to say that, as his first directorial outing 'Rudo y Cursi', while not a masterpiece, certainly makes me want to watch out for his next film.

It would be wrong to say that there aren't some major flaws with the film though. It changes in tone very drastically from comedy to drama to comedy to drama etc. Possibly just a problem that we could attribute to the directors lack of actual experience, but a problem none the less. Does it ruin the movie? Absolutely not, but something that Cuarón will have to watch out for in future. As a Spanish speaker, the dialogue makes a lot of sense to me, and as I've often seen with subtitles, I'm sure a lot of the subtleties and local sayings get lost in translation.

Worth a watch for football fans and avid cinema goers alike.

**** Four out of Five.

Manuel

Pierre Bourdieu's 'class tastes' in an Irish context

Well, I studied sociology for three years in UCD and as I leave I feel I can comment on it. Here I particularly want to discuss a theory that, since I first studied it, has impressed me but also left me feeling that something was missing. The theory I'm talking about in Bourdieu's views on class being the be all and end all factor in defining social tastes.

Bourdieu views class distinctions (in terms of their tastes) as being cause and consequence of the division of society. His idea of a habitus that we inculcate and subsequently reproduce makes a lot of sense...in 1970s (and potentially modern) France. If you study it in depth, it's fairly compelling stuff. But drawing upon Irish society as a counter example I think we can see that class plays a role in defining taste, but isn't the deciding factor. The most obvious examples are clothes, drinks and sports. Wearing track suit bottoms is completely acceptable today in Ireland, whereas a decade ago (maybe slightly longer) it was viewed by many as being 'lower class'. It is typical to see guys wearing a shirt with a collar and track suit bottoms. Similarly, you often see people from lower classes dressing with a 'posh' fashion sense. I'm not making any judgement here on the character of any of these people, just stating a phenomenon I notice more and more. You can also see this when it comes to drinks and sports.

I used to work in a very typical Irish pub here in Dublin, and I met a lot of people there. From the lower classes to the very wealthy, I met (and befriended) tons of interesting characters. What I noticed is that people don't drink based on supposed class tastes as Bourdieu indicates. A man with fewer economic means might drink the same whisky as the rich entrepreneur with his own company. Sporting events is another perfect example. Golf, traditionally a game for the higher echelons of society, whilst boxing used to be a working class sport. Now, both are enjoyed by all levels of society. This strongly goes against Bourdieu's assumptions that class defines taste (unless we assume that class tastes have blended together in which case the whole theory is rather pointless - however I won't make this assumption).

Really the point of this argument isn't to attempt to debunk Bourdieu (which would be no small feat) but rather to shed on light on the fact that nowadays class distinction isn't as prominent a factor in society as it once was. Yes, of course it still predetermines a lot of the decisions one will make in life (thus Bourdieu's theory is still very valid) but these decisions aren't rigid and unchanging. A rethinking and consequent expansion of Bourdieu's views is necessary in order to truly understand social tastes.

Manuel