Racial Redress in the Comtrol Tower - WSJ

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Still wondering why a 5 year old story is being rehashed again but anyway, there’s another thread going on this.

It’s funny, I stopped by a CTI program in Eastman, Ga one day. The tower sim had a woman on local, a woman on ground and a woman on coordinator. The instructor teaching them was a black woman.

The FAA is trying to create diversity but they were already getting plenty of it with the CTI / military preference. Whatever short falls you get in hiring, then go OTS but keep it merit based. Diversity will happen on its own, if it doesn’t, don’t force it.
 
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Seen it in the Air Force when I controlled. Doesn't work.
 
What a ridiculous assertion. There are countless fantastic African American controllers and the idea that affirmative action means that they are of lower quality is simply a joke.

You must have read a different article than the one I read.
 
You must have read a different article than the one I read.

The WSJ is a joke .

Using some aberrational example that may or may not have alternate factors is the perfect anecdote to fit an agenda, but doesn't actually tell whether controllers who were hired were actually competent .
 
When we evolve as a species to the point to where a majority of humans are able to talk about fairness and equality without involving race, gender or ethnicity, and without dredging up and reopening old wounds and perceived injustices , we will be able to get beyond this. Until then, enforced "diversity" is an irretrievably flawed concept.
 
That sounds cute, but actual reality and hard statistics say that racism is alive and well.
 
The WSJ is a joke .

Using some aberrational example that may or may not have alternate factors is the perfect anecdote to fit an agenda, but doesn't actually tell whether controllers who were hired were actually competent .

Well I can tell you I’ve had several controller friends share these articles on FB in recent years so there is some truth to it. A few even said they can’t wait to retire at 56 because they’re sick and tired of dealing with lazy, incompetent controllers. Has nothing to do with racism. Really has nothing to do with the minorities at all. It’s just poor QC on hiring and training.

This just isn’t the OTS hiring and changing the test bio either. One of the things I hear from friends is the FAA’s pushing Just Culture and the Compliance Philosophy. It’s erroded at the fabric of a job that used to highly regarded and controllers strived for perfection. I hear stories now from friends that have coworkers with multiple Operational Deviations but yet are allowed to keep working. Students that show up late, looking like crap and then go home on their lunch break to sleep. Students that spend more time on their iPhones than they do studying their ATC craft. Students taking forever to get facility rated. Believe me, I hear it all.

Now, I imagine some of that is just “back in my day...” but from what I’ve observed in the workplace, I think it’s just a trend in society as whole. Rarely do I interact with people that are truly dedicated to the job they’re doing. Perhaps I just keep company with friends that have unusually high standards. I don’t know.
 
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@1120A what is your background, ATC? Pilot? Why are you so defensive?
 
The WSJ is a joke .

Using some aberrational example that may or may not have alternate factors is the perfect anecdote to fit an agenda, but doesn't actually tell whether controllers who were hired were actually competent .
I don't think there was any mention of whether the controllers who WERE hired are or are not any less competent than the rest.

What the article does state is that applicants are being denied the ability to compete for jobs based on their race, based on US government policy. In what alternate reality is that OK?

Racism is racism, no matter what race you're discriminating against.
 
@1120A what is your background, ATC? Pilot? Why are you so defensive?

I'm a pilot, a civil rights lawyer and have been around ATC for nearly 3 decades - as my uncle retired as a controller 2 years ago after 28 years.

I don't think there was any mention of whether the controllers who WERE hired are or are not any less competent than the rest.

What the article does state is that applicants are being denied the ability to compete for jobs based on their race, based on US government policy. In what alternate reality is that OK?

Racism is racism, no matter what race you're discriminating against.

And you are stastat something that simply isn't a reality.
 
And you are stastat something that simply isn't a reality.
How so? Unless I failed in my reading comprehension or the WSJ printed a complete falsehood. I'm certainly open to correction if either of those things are true.
 
I'm a pilot, a civil rights lawyer and have been around ATC for nearly 3 decades - as my uncle retired as a controller 2 years ago after 28 years.
.

Thank you.
 
I am curious of this "BQ". It would be interesting to see the questions and how it is graded.
 
The article says this has been going on since 2013. I sure can't tell while flying anything about who's talking except perhaps m/f. Doesn't matter to me.
 
Diversity...lol
Affirmative action...lol
 
That sounds cute, but actual reality and hard statistics say that racism is alive and well.

Never said it wasn't. Racism will continue to be a thing until it isn't. Like my grandma told me long ago, the laws are already on the books. Injustice must be dealt with one case at a time. When it isn't, it becomes "us vs. them" , and everyone is the loser!
 
Without seeing the BQ test, I'm not sure what this has to do with race... Applicants were asked about their upbringing, family hardship and the like. Can't a white guy have family hardships, less than optimal upbringing and the like? Or are we saying that if you're a white guy you had it easy as a kid? I think this is a matter of sub-standard applicants of all races and ethnicities. To say otherwise is, in itself, racist... Just say'n...
 
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Race, gender, religions, handicaps, veteran status, family hardships, etc. have absolutely no place in hiring decisions. The only factor that has a place in the decision is the ability to do the job. Measuring that ability can be done by looking at prior experience, education, aptitude tests, etc. Demographics are worthless in determining ability.
 
Racism is racism, no matter what race you're discriminating against.
Can't agree more. That is the proper definition.
But there will be MANY who will argue with you and imply (without any actual understanding) that racism is unidirectional. I stay away.
 
Race, gender, religions, handicaps, veteran status, family hardships, etc. have absolutely no place in hiring decisions.
Amen.
Too bad most people bring their status and personal life agenda into the workplace anyway. Lots of my co-workers want to be buddy-buddy. I don't. We need to work together. Drinking after work while discussing bad movies won't make our work process more efficient. Professionalism and skills will. *sigh*

Back on topic: So I can't imagine controllers bringing their personal life into their job. That would not work well. They need to control air traffic without life distractions. "Bugsmasher 123, I had a flat on the way to work, am angry and won't give you prompt landing clearance, go circle some more, call me when I am in a better mood". Not gonna cut it.
No matter what the WSJ monkeys say, most controllers I've talked to are professional and competent. And I have no idea what they look like, what race, ethnicity or religion. That should not affect their job skills. What matters to me is that they keep us safe and in line.
 
"Johnson said in a written statement that minorities are under-represented in aviation"

What BS.
 
I think that we, as a society, are to the point where we don't want discrimination/racism/etc to exist. Outside certain trailer parks, most people find racism extremely distasteful and will go out of their way to not be perceived as racist in many cases. Yet at the same time we have this situation where certain groups are on a lower footing because of a combination of economic and social problems created by people of previous generations. The stereotypes that we subconsciously judge people by make it worse. It's incredibly unfair to those people lower on that totem pole but at the same time those who caused the situation are mostly long dead and buried. It is unfair to say that it's really anyone's fault or responsibility.... but the problem exists and we are going to have to deal with it somehow.

My take is if you want to lift a person up you don't do that by lowering standards so they can pass. You work from the ground up and build that person up so they can reach that bar. You don't pull punches, you don't lower expectations, and you certainly don't lower the standards of achievement or conduct. In my life I've never truly improved myself as a person- whether we're talking physically, intellectually, or in terms of FAA certificates/endorsements without having to work at it and suffer through things. If I'd been handed any of that stuff, it would have diminished the achievement. Sure some folks had it easier. Some flew with a friend or family member for years and had an idea about how to fly- I started cold with only what I could find on the internet or learn from a CFI. That's life, it's not fair.

When you lower the bar for certain people for whatever reason you breed resentment and I truly believe that's a big part of the recent increase in racist sentiments we've all been seeing. Lifting people up is hard, it's expensive, it takes a very long time, and some will always fail. However the end result is a heck of a lot better than dragging everyone else down to the lowest common denominator in the name of fairness.
 
There's a huge fallacy at play here. Somehow, it seems, there's an underlying assumption that the capacity to be a good air traffic controller is rare. That the capacity to be a good pilot is rare. That most positions we could choose from require rare and fantastic in-born talents.

If you look around with a critical eye, you will quickly find that that is just false. Most people we each run into each day do something well. Not everything, of course, but often several somethings. That's a large hint that what makes us special and capable isn't some capacity that is rare. Instead, it's the opportunity that is presented to you that mostly governs what you're good at. And we, in this group, playing with obscenely expensive toys, are selected mostly from those that have had ample opportunity.

So there's a bit of an echo chamber.

Bringing up the "bar" every time minority hiring comes up is implicitly biased. It's a claim, however subtle, that minorities cannot meet the bar that us white males can. Guess what? They can and do. The "bar" is not what is keeping out the underrepresented.

Equal opportunity laws are, today, an admittedly blunt tool. They direct that, if you have two capable people to select from for a position, pick the underrepresented one until they're not underrepresented any more. There is plenty of talent out there. There is no need to lower any bar. There is a need to even out opportunity.

Where I'd like to see effort paid is to more accurately measuring opportunity. The current lever of race or gender is a bit blunt, as noted.

And, full disclosure, an evening of the playing field would have done me no favors. I'm white, I'm male, I'm straight. I come from two college educated parents who stayed together till death did them part. I grew up middle to upper-middle class. One of my parents had ancestors come over on the Mayflower. I'm able to play here because I had all that and because I worked hard and made some lucky decisions. I hold no guilt over what I have. I would just like to see our society not withhold what I had from anyone.

Also, full disclosure, I didn't read the article because it's behind a paywall and I don't subscribe to the WSJ. So, this is in response to what's in this thread, not the article.
 
Bringing up the "bar" every time minority hiring comes up is implicitly biased. It's a claim, however subtle, that minorities cannot meet the bar that us white males can. Guess what? They can and do. The "bar" is not what is keeping out the underrepresented.
We disagree on your first point, I think. Some people seem to think that anywhere there is a preponderance of one group (ethnic, gender, whatever) it's due to racism, sexism, or whatever-phobia. I think that's generally not the case.

I have encountered very few biased people in the past couple of decades. A few were WASP, many not. I was at lunch with a group of coworkers one day -- all educated, well paid professionals. I was listening to a minority coworker tell me that all white people are racist, even if we don't think we are, we just can't help it. We just manipulate "the system" against minorities. Apparently the irony was lost on him.

Equal opportunity laws are, today, an admittedly blunt tool. They direct that, if you have two capable people to select from for a position, pick the underrepresented one until they're not underrepresented any more. There is plenty of talent out there. There is no need to lower any bar. There is a need to even out opportunity.
Opportunity does not guarantee selection, of course. And what if I have two capable candidates, but one is more capable? For example, I am looking for someone with a minimum of two years of experience, and some formal training in the product. One applicant is a white male with a decade of experience, more training and a proven track record at similar companies. The other meets the minimum requirements, but isn't anywhere near as qualified. Must I then still select the minority candidate over the one who will likely require less training and supervision?
Also, full disclosure, I didn't read the article because it's behind a paywall and I don't subscribe to the WSJ. So, this is in response to what's in this thread, not the article.
Perhaps you should. The article described someone who was well qualified and had gone through all the processes required for the job, at considerable personal expense, and was denied the opportunity to compete based solely on his ethnicity. Regardless of what you think about how things are, I challenge anyone to explain how discrimination based on ethnicity is a good thing.

I'm 100% in favor of leveling the playing field. Not tilting it opposite the way we may think it's been tilted before and hoping things will average out over time. We can't do anything to change what has happened in the past. All we can do is make sure we improve the future.
 
There's a huge fallacy at play here. Somehow, it seems, there's an underlying assumption that the capacity to be a good air traffic controller is rare. That the capacity to be a good pilot is rare. That most positions we could choose from require rare and fantastic in-born talents.

If you look around with a critical eye, you will quickly find that that is just false. Most people we each run into each day do something well. Not everything, of course, but often several somethings. That's a large hint that what makes us special and capable isn't some capacity that is rare. Instead, it's the opportunity that is presented to you that mostly governs what you're good at. And we, in this group, playing with obscenely expensive toys, are selected mostly from those that have had ample opportunity.

So there's a bit of an echo chamber.

Bringing up the "bar" every time minority hiring comes up is implicitly biased. It's a claim, however subtle, that minorities cannot meet the bar that us white males can. Guess what? They can and do. The "bar" is not what is keeping out the underrepresented.

Equal opportunity laws are, today, an admittedly blunt tool. They direct that, if you have two capable people to select from for a position, pick the underrepresented one until they're not underrepresented any more. There is plenty of talent out there. There is no need to lower any bar. There is a need to even out opportunity.

Where I'd like to see effort paid is to more accurately measuring opportunity. The current lever of race or gender is a bit blunt, as noted.

And, full disclosure, an evening of the playing field would have done me no favors. I'm white, I'm male, I'm straight. I come from two college educated parents who stayed together till death did them part. I grew up middle to upper-middle class. One of my parents had ancestors come over on the Mayflower. I'm able to play here because I had all that and because I worked hard and made some lucky decisions. I hold no guilt over what I have. I would just like to see our society not withhold what I had from anyone.

Also, full disclosure, I didn't read the article because it's behind a paywall and I don't subscribe to the WSJ. So, this is in response to what's in this thread, not the article.

I suppose “good” at being a pilot or controller would be subjective depending on your definition. I’ve done both for a living and like any job, the ones that are truly outstanding are in the minority. Just like any job, you have rockstars, ****bags and everything in between.

I’d agree with you in that those that choose ATC as a career aren’t blessed with any special talent but it is a vocation that should require a certain threshold of experience prior to acceptance. They have a high enough washout rate in school and OJT as it is, getting the wrong kind of candidate will only increase those chances. In this case, the experience needed to reduce the chances of a candidate not cutting it, is found in either former military ATC or CTI. If I ran a restaurant business and needed to hire a cook, I wouldn’t go looking off the street for one, I’d go looking for former cooks or those who have been to culinary school first. That’s just business 101.

To hire someone without experience, based on race or sex isn’t leveling the playing field, that’s just providing an unfair opportunity to those who who haven’t paid their dues. Grants are available all the time for CTI programs and with a high enough ASVAB GT score, ATC in the military is as well. No excuses.

Diversity can be a force multiplier in business, but a govt job, especially one that’s safety related, forcing diversity has no tangible benefit.
 
In the software industry we are often accused of women not being representative - and they’re absolutely not. Now some of that is that it’s a tense environment filled with sexually frustrated geeks and it sucks for women to work there - we need to fix that. But when it comes to hiring I don’t know how much more we can do.

In my company when we get a resume of a women we will grant an interview virtually 100% of the time. 90% of men will be dropped during pre-screening but we let all women through. Even with a that we still get 10 times more men than women who go through to the interview process.

When we interview, women still needs to meet the same bar (maybe slightly lower), but mostly we’re just a little more patient - e.g we won’t cut an interview short, everybody on the loop will finish out the interview even if it starts off badly.

Even with all that - in the last 20 years I was able to hire exactly 1 women (vs. 100s+ men). And she was a great hire who got far in her career.

Either the candidates are ridiculously under-qualified (and flat out lying on their resumes), or if they’re remotely qualified and we want them they would also get offers from one of the other companies across the street from us that can afford to pay 3 times as much as we do. (The software industry hiring pretty accurately reflect the percentage of women studying software engineering in college btw.)

I don’t know how much more we can really do - at the hiring level. There’s lots of things that can be done at a younger age, and then at the corporate culture level when we DO hire women so that it’s not so sexually charged, but at the hiring level - not so much.

And this is not a female vs male mentality thing. Both China and India have WAY higher female ratios in engineering than the US does. If we can just reach India’s level during my generation it would be a win.
 
And this is not a female vs male mentality thing. Both China and India have WAY higher female ratios in engineering than the US does. If we can just reach India’s level during my generation it would be a win.

In one of my first jobs I worked with a female spanish physicist and an italian computer scientist. They were both shaking their heads about the relative absence of females in their fields in german universities.
From being a dad to a daughter, I can tell you that it is not lacking for effort at the elementary school level to get girls interested in math and science. Not sure where things go wrong further down the line. There is hope though, one of the principal dancers at my daughters youth ballet company just graduated high-school and is off to a hard-science undergrad degree.
 
When you lower the bar for certain people for whatever reason you breed resentment and I truly believe that's a big part of the recent increase in racist sentiments we've all been seeing. Lifting people up is hard, it's expensive, it takes a very long time, and some will always fail. However the end result is a heck of a lot better than dragging everyone else down to the lowest common denominator in the name of fairness
Agree. But like you said, the long road takes a lot of work, while the short road of just literally bumping someone up or through is much easier, but does not have the long-term benefits that are sought, and often takes the individual responsibility out of the equation. I worked with a woman who was an immigrant from a non caucasian country, and the whole immigration thing really bothered her, because she did everything legally by the books and took her a very long time, and felt that it was unfair for other people not to have to do the same that she had to do. She was all for reform, because she understood the system was broken, but she wasn't in favor of just blanket amnesty

Some people seem to think that anywhere there is a preponderance of one group (ethnic, gender, whatever) it's due to racism, sexism, or whatever-phobia. I think that's generally not the case.
You are right. People do that because it's easier to blame some extrinsic third party element as opposed to maybe your own skill set or choices you have made in your life. We are all afforded and guaranteed the same protections, and when you feel that there's bias there are clear channel's to pursue that. We absolutely do not all have the same opportunities or skills, and some people do have a bigger hill to climb than others, but to fix that you have to fix the core cause of the issue.. which oftentimes starts with education and the home itself. I just recently filled out our company's employee satisfaction survey, and one of the questions asked for a rating from 0 to 10, about how much the company values diversity. I left it blank, and commented simply that I hope the company hires and promotes based on skills and qualifications solely without judging someone by skin color, etc. I'd be really curious to talk to the people who gave that question a rating, the reasoning behind their rating.

In my company when we get a resume of a women we will grant an interview virtually 100% of the time. 90% of men will be dropped during pre-screening but we let all women through. Even with a that we still get 10 times more men than women who go through to the interview process.
How is that fair though? Many places do the same thing to try and balance out the workforce, but how is that fair? Not directed at you personally, but more on the base of principle. Resumes should be considered outside of gender, names, Etc.

I don't think there should be anything wrong, or inherently evil, with the fact that some people have different interests than others. Most people's eyes glaze over when I start talking about pilot stuff or SQL and computer stuff. Which is fine, my eyes glaze over when other people bring up most sports
 
I'm wondering how many controllers here share my experience in the number of controllers vs race and gender. In my 26 years the majority of good controllers* are broken down in my own little off the top of my nugget percentage.

White male - 70%
Black male - 10%
White female - 7%
Black female - 1%
other minorities - 12%

* good, meaning if I were the watch supervisor, I would have no problem going downstairs to the restroom with a book or magazine IFYKWIM. The numbers you see are my own experience and do not reflect all of ATC. But again, I'm wondering what the break down for other controllers has been. This observation of mine has no bearing on how they were hired or what their ASVAB test scores were, it simply breaks down who I've worked with in the past 26 years as a controller.
 
I don't think there should be anything wrong, or inherently evil, with the fact that some people have different interests than others.
I also don't think there's anything wrong with subgroups of people tending to have different interests than other subgroups. There is also nothing wrong with individuals in these subgroups being outliers. As long as everyone is aware that different opportunities are available to them, I see no reason for all this social engineering.
 
As long as everyone is aware that different opportunities are available to them, I see no reason for all this social engineering.
For sure, and I think that's the million-dollar question; that is how do you level out the playing field, so to speak, or make it more fair, that someone who might be just as skilled as you might not be able to do the things you did because they come from a bad situation.. there's a fine line in there somewhere, between the relative Utopia we have and creating some sort of communist or socialist environment, which history has shown tends to long run have an adverse net effect
 
For sure, and I think that's the million-dollar question; that is how do you level out the playing field, so to speak, or make it more fair, that someone who might be just as skilled as you might not be able to do the things you did because they come from a bad situation.. there's a fine line in there somewhere, between the relative Utopia we have and creating some sort of communist or socialist environment, which history has shown tends to long run have an adverse net effect
What we have in this country is a mixture of capitalism and socialism. All government functions are inherently collective in nature, and as such there has always been a mixture. Finding the right balance, now that has been the hard part (and certainly the most contentious).
 
In my company when we get a resume of a women we will grant an interview virtually 100% of the time. 90% of men will be dropped during pre-screening but we let all women through. Even with a that we still get 10 times more men than women who go through to the interview process.

How is that fair though? Many places do the same thing to try and balance out the workforce, but how is that fair? Not directed at you personally, but more on the base of principle. Resumes should be considered outside of gender, names, Etc.

1. Since when are company hiring decisions "fair?"

2. The number of women he has hired through that process is well below 1% of the number of men, so it doesn't look to me like we're talking about a significant injustice here. What degree of action do you think private companies should be allowed to take to encourage under-represented groups to enter a workforce? Zero?
 
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