no more United Airlines for me
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Started by GunterK - April 8, 2021, 11:01 p.m.

When we board a commercial flight, we dont think much about the pilot. But, subconsciously, we expect him/her to be a skilled aviator, with lots of flying experience.

When airlines hire new pilots, they like to take exAirForce jockeys, and when they train pilots from scratch, they give them aptitude tests.

United Airlines now stated that they will follow diversity guidelines when hiring new pilots. In other words, they don't care much about making sure their passengers get the best pilots the industry has to offer... now they care about being "woke"

Next time, I will pick another airline, if possible.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9449721/PIERS-MORGAN-corporate-woke-warriors-United-Airlines-blind-pilots.html

Comments
By metmike - April 9, 2021, 12:22 a.m.
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Great point here Gunter.

It's good to try to balance the racial diversity of employees in many industries...........as long as it doesn't harm the people being promoted and especially doesn't harm the people that they serve or weaken the quality or skill of the realm they represent.

If we are going to do this with pilots, that have the lives of thousands of people at risk when they are using their top notch skills to fly air planes............then to be fair and consistent, why not do it with the NBA and NFL to balance the sport with more minority whites?

Everybody knows how dumb that would be. Only the BEST athletes on the planet are able to perform at that elite level and the color of your skin should not matter.

I have been around competitive chess for 27 years. Chess tournaments do NOT discriminate based on skin color or gender. Men and women, blacks and whites all compete together. When I take teams to state championship tournaments, at the high school level, 95% of the hundreds of high school aged competitors are................males.

There are quite a few Asians and Indians but very few blacks.

Should we make the standards to qualify less for women and blacks?

They would get crushed in tournament play........bad for them, bad for the tournaments.  The entire purpose is to determine who the best chess players are.....not to see how many blacks or women we can get in the tournament. 

I try to encourage girls to play chess as much as boys in our program. Turns out that MANY more boys like playing chess because the male brain is different than the female brain. NOT superior but different. More analytical and often more competitive in realms where they use armies or chess pieces to defeat an opponent by out strategizing them in a game..........or in real life on a battle field.

By metmike - April 9, 2021, 12:56 a.m.
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I read all the time that the reason for this disparity in chess playing is entirely cultural or based on society and has nothing to do with biology. If we just encouraged more girls to play chess, the numbers would gradually be balanced. 

As a coach to 3,500 K-12 children, I can tell you that is total rubbish.

Myself, parents and teachers have encouraged girls to play chess for the last 2+ decades and the older the child, the greater the disparity between male and female players.

As adults its massive. Out of the top 100 players in the world right now, only 1 is a woman and she's ranked 86th.

It's politically incorrect to say that the male brain is different than the female brain. There are several bs studies from liberal social scientists that bend over backwards with fake explanations to avoid pointing to biology. 

NOT superior but different and you will NEVER defeat biology and you can't abolish something innate to gender that defines how a person's brain works.......even if liberal scientists try to pretend it doesn't exist.


Most violent criminals are men too. Is this just because of society?


There are a dozen realms where men greatly outnumber women BECAUSE OF BIOLOGY.

Testosterone causes more aggression for one thing. 

Are there differences between blacks and whites?


Now that one is much more  controversial and much tougher to answer clearly because blacks come from lower educational opportunities which often distorts the results of aptitude testing in favor of people that have MORE educational opportunities but there ARE differences in whites, blacks and Asians that go beyond just skin, hair and eye color........or athletic  or singing ability. 

Blacks have physical advantages in some sports, especially power sports and there is likely a physical trait that affects singing/ vocal chords which gives them an advantage. 

Stating that and facts similar to that is likely to get you into trouble and called a racist in todays world.

Think of how silly it is though, to see numerous different outside, physical differences betweeen different races but to assume that........everything on the inside is exactly the same for every race.




By TimNew - April 9, 2021, 4:12 a.m.
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You can't have racial quotas unless you are racist.   When you make decisions based on race,  you are racist.  I don't know how many ways to put this.   So, apparently, we have "approved" forms of racism provided the race falls into the "super special designated victims group" in a "super special approved industry"

I'd still not respect it if it were  applied across the board but I'd respect the consistency,   Let me know when NBA players are sufficiently diverse.  Or are we saying the quality of play in the NBA is more important than airline passenger saftey?    Or, maybe we are saying something else.

By WxFollower - April 9, 2021, 11:46 a.m.
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 Some good points are in this thread regarding United, the NBA, and chess. The cited article by Piers Morgan has some valid concerns that should be considered in my opinion. I feel I’m as anti-bigotry as just about anyone as bigotry and hatred for no good reason piss me off bigtime. I’ve experienced the ugly hatred personally and it is emotionally very painful and scary. But the examples stated in here illustrate situations where having quotas would be detrimental to having highest quality/skill and thus would be inappropriate imo.

By TimNew - April 9, 2021, 11:58 a.m.
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The only fair thing is equal opportunity.   Any quotas are the exact opposite of equal opportunity. 

If someone is making decisions based on race, for any reason,  they are wrong.

By metmike - April 9, 2021, 12:54 p.m.
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Thanks for the great comments.

The solution is not to lower the standards but to strengthen the support system of the people that you want to help so they can meet the high standards.

By far, blacks come from a higher % of disadvantaged backgrounds. It's been awhile since I sent a metmike epistle on how we can address that to improve the situation.............which is the ONLY way to produce authentic progress for the less fortunate. 

I'll go back and fetch a previous post on this.

We can't ignore a 6 times higher rate of violent crime by blacks vs whites too. The exact same things that help  people to meet higher standards in top level jobs causes the incidence of crime, especially violent crime to plunge.

By metmike - April 9, 2021, 1:14 p.m.
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In chess, we do have women's tournaments, which I think are an excellent idea, to level the playing field for women, just like womens basketball and other sports, where men have an unfair advantage.

To a non chess person, doing this in chess, may seem odd but trust me, the men have an unbelievable advantage because of the way the male brain works.

I've had several brilliant female chess players and am NOT a male chauvinist but one only has to look at the top 100 chess players in the world, with just 1 woman to see it. 

It is biology driven!

It would be impossible to tell with blacks and whites in chess because there is alot of culture there. Just here in Evansville, we only have 1 inner city school that does chess and they usually only have only 10 kids in the program. I live in a mostly white community with 5 schools and 200 kids but most of them come from advantaged/privileged backgrounds that push chess.................which sure makes being a chess coach wonderful for me.

Not only do a get a bunch of bright kids...... the parents are extremely supportive and when I run a chess tournament, there are always more volunteers/workers than I need.

The inner city chess coach, at Cedar Hall, has to rent a bus to take his kids to our tournament because he can't even get the parents to come to their kids tournament. At my advantaged schools,  I always get at least 1 parent for each kid, often both AND they will volunteer to work at the concession stand or help run the tournament!!!

This sort of thing has ZERO to do with race. It's purely cultural. The environment you are raised in(by your parents) determines this. What you learn growing up. This is what can be changed in the inner cities/urban settings that have always had a high % of blacks that have BAD environments growing up. 


By TimNew - April 9, 2021, 2 p.m.
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Where we start out does not determine where we end up.  Bad situtaions turn out very successful people and perfect situations turn out bums.

That being said,   upbringing is certainy a factor and can be a real disadvantage.

But the one demographic that is by far the most common on things like highschool dropouts,  criminal activity, chronic drug use,  etc,  etc  is single parent homes.  And black families are heavily represented in that demographic.  That's what we need to understand/address.

Affirmitave action type solutions are attempting to lower the water instead of raising the bridge.  Unfair and ineffective and too far after the fact to have a significant impact while creating resentment and other problems.  So setting aside the already overpowering ethical objections,  it's a terrible solution.

By metmike - April 10, 2021, 12:15 p.m.
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Great points Tim!!