The problem is that people are horrible narrators about their own issues/past. They like to leave out critical information.
The idea of a company in the 80's going around that they are promoting Asians to positions over white people, sounds as far fetched as finding oil in my backyard. The reverse is way more likely in that time periode.
More then likely, he was not qualified for the job. But people often have a hard time accepting this, and feel entitled for position. Often by virtue of working somewhere longer. When passed over for promotion, then they create narratives its not themselves who is the issue, but it must be somebody else their fault.
So when you 20, 30, 40 years later tell the story, are you going to say "well, i was not qualified" or are you going to double down that you got passed over for a promotion, because "somebody had it out for me", or as "DEI hire" as that was the trending topic in conservative circles. What is a little lie to make yourself feel better, and have the world perceive you as the victim of horrible DEI hiring practices ... in the 80s!!!
If people think racism is rampaging today, they really did not live in the 80's... So yea, if it smell funny, you know there is bull.... involved.
If you assume Adams is lying, that’s your call. But if the question is what he believes happened, the obvious evidence is his own account. I’ve listened to him for years and find it credible. Also, for a long time there was a strong taboo against white men complaining about discrimination, which makes it easy to imagine it never happened—regardless of whether it did.
Note that here, Philip Morris explicitly said they used race-norming to hire minorities at the expense of people who performed better, but belong to the wrong race.
In this case, a test acknowledged as meritocratic caused too many minorities to be excluded, as nearly all the top performers were white. The fire department was sued, and ordered by a judge to hire at least 40% minorities -well above the applicant rate. They hired 55% minorities. Eventually SCOTUS ruled there was nothing wrong with the test - meaning for years, white applicants were discriminated against.
Here's another example, which obviously not only shows political and legal pressure to promote minorities specifically (even mentioning specific quotas!), but documents specific instances of policies that succeeded in doing so anti-meritocratically:
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-GGD-95-85/pdf...
He has been proven to be an extremely unreliably narrator on multiple occasions and is prone to changing his story. I think he has always had such inclinations, but other folks kept him restrained and I’m not sure what happened there in the end.
I’m reminded that he is on the record as having initially said that he enjoyed working on the Dilbert TV show, but it was too much work and had the misfortune of being moved one of those “death” time slots. Then at some point he started baselessly claiming it was killed due to DEI.
Also, he has a very bizarre history of sockpuppeting that just raises more questions. He was called out by Metafilter for this and acted like he was playing some kind of 4D chess with them [1].
Or perhaps it was killed due to DEI but he didn't feel comfortable being honest about it at the time because there is a powerful taboo against white men claiming discrimination.
If we’re talking about what he believes, I’m not sure how else you’d determine that besides listening to what he’s said.
The problem is that people are horrible narrators about their own issues/past. They like to leave out critical information.
The idea of a company in the 80's going around that they are promoting Asians to positions over white people, sounds as far fetched as finding oil in my backyard. The reverse is way more likely in that time periode.
More then likely, he was not qualified for the job. But people often have a hard time accepting this, and feel entitled for position. Often by virtue of working somewhere longer. When passed over for promotion, then they create narratives its not themselves who is the issue, but it must be somebody else their fault.
So when you 20, 30, 40 years later tell the story, are you going to say "well, i was not qualified" or are you going to double down that you got passed over for a promotion, because "somebody had it out for me", or as "DEI hire" as that was the trending topic in conservative circles. What is a little lie to make yourself feel better, and have the world perceive you as the victim of horrible DEI hiring practices ... in the 80s!!!
If people think racism is rampaging today, they really did not live in the 80's... So yea, if it smell funny, you know there is bull.... involved.
If you assume Adams is lying, that’s your call. But if the question is what he believes happened, the obvious evidence is his own account. I’ve listened to him for years and find it credible. Also, for a long time there was a strong taboo against white men complaining about discrimination, which makes it easy to imagine it never happened—regardless of whether it did.
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There are many well-documented cases of this sort of thing happening in the 1980s and even earlier.
https://ia800108.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/24...
Note that here, Philip Morris explicitly said they used race-norming to hire minorities at the expense of people who performed better, but belong to the wrong race.
In some cases, it was court ordered: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-04-07-mn-22054-...
In this case, a test acknowledged as meritocratic caused too many minorities to be excluded, as nearly all the top performers were white. The fire department was sued, and ordered by a judge to hire at least 40% minorities -well above the applicant rate. They hired 55% minorities. Eventually SCOTUS ruled there was nothing wrong with the test - meaning for years, white applicants were discriminated against.
Here's another example, which obviously not only shows political and legal pressure to promote minorities specifically (even mentioning specific quotas!), but documents specific instances of policies that succeeded in doing so anti-meritocratically: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-GGD-95-85/pdf...
We're not talking about what he believes, we're talking about a) why he didn't get a promotion and b) why he was dropped from syndication.
> a) why he didn't get a promotion
What evidence is there to go on that's better than his own account?
> b) why he was dropped from syndication.
That is well-understood https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_bv1jfYYu4
He has been proven to be an extremely unreliably narrator on multiple occasions and is prone to changing his story. I think he has always had such inclinations, but other folks kept him restrained and I’m not sure what happened there in the end.
I’m reminded that he is on the record as having initially said that he enjoyed working on the Dilbert TV show, but it was too much work and had the misfortune of being moved one of those “death” time slots. Then at some point he started baselessly claiming it was killed due to DEI.
Also, he has a very bizarre history of sockpuppeting that just raises more questions. He was called out by Metafilter for this and acted like he was playing some kind of 4D chess with them [1].
[1] https://mefiwiki.com/wiki/Scott_Adams,_plannedchaos
Or perhaps it was killed due to DEI but he didn't feel comfortable being honest about it at the time because there is a powerful taboo against white men claiming discrimination.
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Why wouldn't we take his word for it? We take people's word for much more serious and dangerous claims than these personal autobiographical reports.
I believe the correct statement is "believe victims"