Wednesday, September 2, 2009

White South African gets refugee status

I'm going to be a little politically incorrect this morning, call it inspiration from the last post.

When you think of a refugee, one normally doesn't think of a white person. One thinks of someone from a war torn region of the world, like the middle east, southeast Asia, or the interior parts of Africa. One would assume, as evidenced by this article, that whites are dominant the world over, and would (should?) never be considered disadvantaged.

The fact is that there ARE some regions, and indeed, some countries in the world where whites are in the minority, and their rights are being trod upon by the ruling majority. South Africa is one of those countries.

Founded as a colony of the Dutch, and later given over to British rule in the 19th Century, whites in South Africa did enjoy first world status under racial segregation and apartheid. Since the early 1990s when apartheid was abolished however, racial equity policies have increasingly forced whites into poverty while bringing some blacks into the middle class. It is these policies which emphasize race rather than ability, which remove your freedom to hire the most qualified which make me believe this refugee claim, and many others who have immigrated here from South Africa through the proper channels.

I'm going to be clear however. I don't agree with discrimination, regardless of who is doing the discrimination. I don't agree with a "preference" policy with respect to hiring unless two candidates are fully equal but for one being from a disadvantaged background. When I hire in my business, I don't hire based on race - that doesn't even enter into my mind when I'm interviewing - I hire based on whether the person I see can do the job I need them to do. Simple as that. I think that if we truly want to lift up the disadvantaged, we should do things to eliminate training and qualification differences rather than saying "you're not quite as good as that guy, but I'm going to hire you anyways because of your race". By eliminating the gap, you increase competition for jobs and make it harder for an employer to discriminate on their own.

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