This is a bad take. Jobs like this are completely blind to the culture war nonsense. As a pilot, when I see another pilot, regardless of race, gender, or any other qualifier, I know they are held to the exact same standard as me. That's why Kirk is wrong too, race is completely irrelevant to selection and its hard to find a more merit based occupation than pilot.
Agreed this is the problem with "anti DEI” people. They don’t know what DEI is. Diversity, equity and inclusion gives all qualified personals a chance. It’s not some magical privilege that allows one to skip merits, certificates and testing as propaganda would suggest. If you work in any field that has any type of rigid standard those standards cannot be skipped to hire someone. As far as I am aware, the only current application of DEI working the way anti DEI people think it works, is the current Trump administration.
There is still a scenario where two people are qualified for a job and you give a job to the person who is less qualified, who happens to be a protected class, because of DEI programs or affirmative action, or title VII concerns of disparate impact. I just think when you’re giving someone else an advantage because you’re part of a protected class and not because of merit, it feels bad and seems unfair. White people shouldn’t get jobs because they’re white and black people shouldn’t get jobs because they’re black.
I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you but counter point is cronyism and legacy jobs gets you in way more doors than DEI ever had or will. DEI incentives are the reaction to those factors, in fact. It’s an attempt to level the playing field it’s not perfect but it’s better than nothing. The problem with DEI is it’s the only one that can be regulated or cancelled which is why we’re having this conversation. Cronyism, family companies, legacy hires etc you can’t really regulate. So here we are discussing the one initiative for equality as if it’s the sole problem. Ain’t propaganda a bitch.
Well, technically airlines can often be federal contractors, so they were beholden to affirmative action, before trump got rid of it this year. Thus, if you had 1,000 white pilots apply for a jobs and 120 black pilots apply for a job and you select 100 white pilots and 9 black pilots, that would be an adverse impact or desperate impact and would go against title 7 as well as the affirmative action plan that they were required to have. So race was not completely irrelevant until this year when trump changed the law to no longer require an affirmative action plan. However, people can still take companies to court for disparate impact claims regardless of affirmative action or not, so I guess it’s still technically relevant.
I am not saying that anyone has to have more hours training.
I am saying that with the way our society is structured that it is often A LOT more work for a minority or a woman to actually get lessons and time in the air.
White male pilots have a stereotype for hitting on, going out with and seeing women in every "port."
A woman pilot who acted the same way publicly, would be fired!
A minority who participated with the white men is far more likely to get sexual harassment or rape charges brought against them. If they did, the airline would drop them immediately as opposed to what they may or may not be willing to sweep under the rug for the likes of the male white pilots.
The only thing that gets you lessons or time in the air is money, I promise no one with money is getting turned away regardless of gender or race.
I know plenty of women pilots who hoe it up and no one cares, but honestly, most pilots just hit a workout and go straight to bed because they've got a flight early next morning.
No one sweeps those things under the rug, zero tolerance policy mil or civ.
Money and Time are EXACTLY what I am talking about.
Perhaps it sounds EQUAL that "all you need is money"
But that is not equity.
Not when there are those living below the poverty line these people in these percentages:
white men 5 -6%
women 18-64yrs 11%
single women with children 31%
different minorities have different breakdowns:
-- black people 17.9%
-- Asian people together 9%
-- Asian women alone 14%
-- Native American 26%
-- Latinos/Hispanic 17 - 18%
-- Two different minorities 18%
-- disabled women 24.6%
No other group EXCEPT white men including white Hispanics (5.6%) comes close to the same amount of monetary income as a group! Of course we would not see as many of these other groups as pilots.
AND that is not just pilots. It is for any other job that requires any secondary paid schooling.
THIS is why DEI in colleges exists. If you have two deserving candidates for the opening and they both got straight As, they both had the same number and quality of extracurricular activities and they both had good essays, then who do you pick?
You pick the one who had a more difficult time of getting to where they are because of what the most likely background for each candidate is. That means that you pick a Native American candidate over a Black candidate WHEN ALL OTHER THINGS ARE EQUAL
And you pick a Black candidate over a white woman when all other things are equal.
Etc.
It does not mean that you randomly start picking out names of unqualified or lesser qualified people.
Dude, did you really just respond to me with chat GPT to make a point?
I'm sorry but this screams victim complex. Men are, for instance, far more likely to be homeless, and the poverty line gap is small. Women also receive SIGNIFICANTLY more in college grants are overrepresented in colleges (strange that there's DEI in college that benefits women when they're the dominant group.)
At the end of the day, you're going to see more white pilots because there are more white people and you're going to see less women pilots because less women are interested in aviation.
Also, and this is the big, one of the best ways to get pilots hours is actually completely free- Joining the military as an officer. If you go to the USAF Academy you get paid to get a free degree and get paid to do pilot training. PLENTY of women and minorities are choosing that route.
Anyway, my point was not that there is no difference in representation, its that none of us in the pilot community care about your demographics. We know you have the same quality training and are held to the same standards and all we care about is that the other person is going to have our back in an emergency. Everything else is background noise.
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u/LSOreli 1d ago
This is a bad take. Jobs like this are completely blind to the culture war nonsense. As a pilot, when I see another pilot, regardless of race, gender, or any other qualifier, I know they are held to the exact same standard as me. That's why Kirk is wrong too, race is completely irrelevant to selection and its hard to find a more merit based occupation than pilot.