B&H settles EEOC bias lawsuit for $4.3 million.

[colker]

Originally Posted by Chriscrawfordphoto

Exactly. I don't believe in God or any other superstition either, yet I too was called a Puritan. Our accuser needs a history lesson. Slavery was abolished in the 19th century, not the 17th or 18th, and if slavery was so inefficient, then why was it so widely used for agricultural labor in the American south and in Hispanic America. Why not just hire free men and pay them low wages?

what one believes or not is private matter. none of anyone's business.
otoh the best poetry and literature learned from the bible. (Dylan? Leonard Cohen? Dostoyevsky? the Bible rules)
Dismissing the Bible as superstition is just... nevermind. anyway...
no one is accusing. no need to. it just IS puritanism which is far deeper than religious practices. it's a way of thinking far ingrained in th american psyche. no need to be ashamed.

[colker]

Originally Posted by endustry

"Why not just hire free men and pay them low wages?"

They did. They were called the Irish. If one, say, needed a snake-infested swamp filled in it made more sense to hire some Irish. If one died, you simply hired another. Slaves on the other hand were valuable possessions not so easily replaceable.

bingo. slavery was less lucrative than modern capitalism.

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Originally Posted by colker

what one believes or not is private matter. none of anyone's business.
otoh the best poetry and literature learned from the bible. (Dylan? Leonard Cohen? Dostoyevsky? the Bible rules)
Dismissing the Bible as superstition is just... nevermind. anyway...
no one is accusing. no need to. it just IS puritanism which is far deeper than religious practices. it's a way of thinking far ingrained in th american psyche. no need to be ashamed.

Colker,

I'm Hispanic. My family came to the USA from Spain in the early 20th century. Puritanism is NOT part of the culture in which I was raised. I have nothing to be ashamed of. You're just digging yourself into a deeper hole. Stop already.

[Vic]

Originally Posted by climbing_vine

I've never been to NY and have only bought batteries, online, from B&H. I have no opinion about the case at hand. But the above is laughable.

1. Goldman Sachs was started by a Jew. Their most well-known employees of the past fifty years have been Jewish. There's plenty of others there to, but your assertion that they wouldn't "even consider interviewing" Jews is hilariously ignorant.

2. "The world has changed since then" only because of vigilant people fighting injustice. Do we really need to quote millenia of history demonstrating what happens when people think it can't happen anymore? Are you for real? Sorry, but the market doesn't solve every problem. Maybe we should have let people vote with their wallet on the slave trade. Just don't buy those cotton breeches, suh!

I stand corrected, I should have parsed my sentences more carefully. Of course Goldman, Salomon, Lehman, etc. were founded by Jews, and until the 1990's they hired only Jews, WASPS, and other white Christians, but no other ethnicities, and Goldman's first non-white partner was in 1991 or so, just for tokenism.

The other hiring rule applied to all the other white shoe firms, such as Dillon Read, First Boston, Morgan Stanley, etc., where Jews need not apply was the rule (forget about other ethnicities, brothers, hispanics, etc. applying, they'd laugh you out the door). In fact a Jewish classmate of mine told me that the fellow who interviewed him (the interviewer had a III after his name) asked him why he even bothered applying to the firm.

I won't even discuss the hiring of women in these testosterone-fillled places.

This is all ancient history to the young folks here, and most of the can't believe that the world was like that only a few decades ago.

As for your second statement, yes, the slave trade in the US was ended by the civil war, but blacks didn't get the vote until 1964. A lot of countries gained their independence by peaceful means, and war should only be a last resort.

The difference between the Civil War, Vietnam, and Iraq, is that in the Civil War, in two sentences (of the Gettysburg Address), Lincoln was able to state clearly why there was a need for the war, and what was the goal; whereas with Vietnam and Iraq, the public never got a straight answer, hence they were/are lost.

[majid]

I find this very disturbing, as well as the attitude of posters who seem to be in denial or cognitive dissonance, and minimizing the seriousness of the matter.

The posters who claim discrimination lawsuits are frivolous underestimate the difficulty of proving that in court. This lawsuit was filed by the EEOC, a federal government department, in any case, not just disgruntled employees. Given how many cases pass their desk, I doubt they assign any priority to the less than egregious ones. Those posters dismissing the EEOC as careerists and singing paeans to freedom of discrimination are contemptible. Do you really think an underpaid and under-appreciated civil service job is the most lucrative or political profile-boosting choice available to a lawyer?

This is also not an out-of-court settlement but one approved by a judge, which explains the delay between 2007 when the case was filed and the final settlement. There is also a consent decree for 5 years, and cannot be dismissed as simply B&H paying protection money to rid themselves of a nuisance.

I don't think Jewish businesses should be held to a higher standard than others. It is debatable whether a minority-owned business can be faulted for positive discrimination in favor of that same minority, but once you hire someone, you can't morally discriminate against him or her due to any factor other than job performance. Shame on you, B&H for behaving like Abercrombie & Filth!

The original poster is clearly not a troll and I thank him for bringing this to my attention. Calls to withhold judgment also fall flat for the reasons above. I am far from anti-B&H, having spent over $22K there in the last 10 years. I doubt I will continue shopping there, however, as discrimination of any kind is abhorrent, specially since I haven't seen any statement of contrition or any response on B&H's part. It's understandable that they may not want to publicize the settlement, but they should really consider entering full damage-control mode. I guess I will shift my business to Amazon, Calumet, Adorama and J&R.

[colker]

Originally Posted by Chriscrawfordphoto

Colker,

I'm Hispanic. My family came to the USA from Spain in the early 20th century. Puritanism is NOT part of the culture in which I was raised. I have nothing to be ashamed of. You're just digging yourself into a deeper hole. Stop already.

i like my hole, thank you very much. I am brazilian, i am an observer of how nationalities influence ways of thinking.
since you are living in the US, you are immersed in it's culture.
puritanism has wonderfull qualities and it's responsible for a lot of what's good about the US... as much as a lot of bad.

[colker]

Originally Posted by majid

I find this very disturbing, as well as the attitude of posters who seem to be in denial or cognitive dissonance, and minimizing the seriousness of the matter.

The posters who claim discrimination lawsuits are frivolous underestimate the difficulty of proving that in court. This lawsuit was filed by the EEOC, a federal government department, in any case, not just disgruntled employees. Given how many cases pass their desk, I doubt they assign any priority to the less than egregious ones. Those posters dismissing the EEOC as careerists and singing paeans to freedom of discrimination are contemptible. Do you really think an underpaid and under-appreciated civil service job is the most lucrative or political profile-boosting choice available to a lawyer?

This is also not an out-of-court settlement but one approved by a judge, which explains the delay between 2007 when the case was filed and the final settlement. There is also a consent decree for 5 years, and cannot be dismissed as simply B&H paying protection money to rid themselves of a nuisance.

I don't think Jewish businesses should be held to a higher standard than others. It is debatable whether a minority-owned business can be faulted for positive discrimination in favor of that same minority, but once you hire someone, you can't morally discriminate against him or her due to any factor other than job performance. Shame on you, B&H for behaving like Abercrombie & Filth!

The original poster is clearly not a troll and I thank him for bringing this to my attention. Calls to withhold judgment also fall flat for the reasons above. I am far from anti-B&H, having spent over $22K there in the last 10 years. I doubt I will continue shopping there, however, as discrimination of any kind is abhorrent, specially since I haven't seen any statement of contrition or any response on B&H's part. It's understandable that they may not want to publicize the settlement, but they should really consider entering full damage-control mode. I guess I will shift my business to Amazon, Calumet, Adorama and J&R.

this thread is a witch hunt. Salem would be proud.
if you pay 2x more and get 2x less somewhere else then we will see the strength of those principles.

[FallisPhoto]

Originally Posted by colker

actually they did.. slavery became an impediment to capitalism. that's how it ended.
what some call conscience is illusion for others.

False premise. Slavery never ended.

[nikonhswebmaster]

Originally Posted by colker

i like my hole, thank you very much. I am brazilian, i am an observer of how nationalities influence ways of thinking.
since you are living in the US, you are immersed in it's culture.
puritanism has wonderfull qualities and it's responsible for a lot of what's good about the US... as much as a lot of bad.

I think you are using "Puritan" in a very general way? The Puritans ended up having almost no influence on the US. The much more liberal thinking of protestants like the Presbyterians (whose church has elections and a constitution) had much more influence on how our government was organized - and more important on how we think about our leaders.

Clearly we live in a very plural society, despite the "red state - blue state" separation during elections. We have not lived under the "patron" mentality of much of South America, but still the Catholic church has had great influence on how we view education, and care for the less fortunate in our culture.

Your repeated categorization of a Puritan background is just not justified by reality.