Equality of opportunity after centuries of slavery and then legal discrimination in a society that allows (and even outright promotes) inherited wealth and opportunity is not possible.
Imagine my ancestors stole all of your ancestors stuff and I still get to keep it all and anything I've built using it. We've stopped stealing your stuff now, though, so we have "equality of opportunity."
We'll have to agree to disagree about the invasiveness. In the case of the lawsuit in the original post, it's the search of all your electronic devices. I consider that to be quite invasive.
Furthermore, CBP and ICE both claimed their authority to search electronic devices at the border extended to US citizens, so much of the profiling was not just of people from certain countries, but from people whose ancestry was from certain countries.
Lastly, I can't and won't try to convince you that it's wrong to subject people of various backgrounds to different, worse treatment, whether it's "cruel and unusual" or unfair, or invasive, or even simply inconvenient. It sounds like you aren't usually subject to such treatment or else you would probably have a different outlook on it. I recommend talking or listening to some people who do, and what their experiences are like.
I don't have a source at the ready, but my understanding is that the existing law and/or case law determined that traveling domestically entitled one to such protection. Various federal agencies have determined via rule making that such protections do not extend to international ports of entry/airports for reasons of national security. Those determinations are what have been struck down in this case.
I'll (possibly inaccurately) assume this is in good faith. The most obvious reason that profiling is bad, even in your inaccurate and simplistic hypothetical scenario, is that just because all airplane terrorist attacks came from people of X country, does not imply that everyone from X country commits terrorist airplane attacks. Therefore you are unfairly and immorally forcing invasive searches on many innocent people of X country. If you have any empathy for the innocent people of X country, you will realize how horrible this is.
I also think it's an attempt to ward off a nascent unionization push.
Regarding a different, recent "olive branch" type proposal:
"The one thing they don’t want to give you is the thing that you need to get. This offer from Uber and Lyft is like a kidnapper offering you a softer blanket, as long as you agree not to ever escape. No thanks. These companies know very well that once their workers become actual employees, they will get a host of benefits automatically, and they can formally unionize to win themselves many more benefits and increased pay. These companies, which have never made a dollar even while exploiting their workers, fear this. So they offer some concessions." [1]
This is the strongest argument that can be made for universal programs when it comes to designing progressive public policy. Rich people have the time and resources to aggresively take advantage of any system that tries to implement means testing or scaled benefits. The winning play is to design programs where benefits are given completely independently of time, money, access or power, even if it means some people who do not need it will get some assistance.
I agree. I think the quoted professor-authors' point in the quoted passages is to make a book like SICP, designed to teach deeply rooted computer science concepts more approachable to beginners without going to the extreme of "How to build a webapp in 12 days". I support the effort, as I think it's a bummer that the choice as a beginner is often between a too-difficult SICP and overly abstract and non-theory-based tutorials.
I suppose it can be. The natural follow up is what you think it is about, say, engineering or law or finance or [insert field here] that men have a higher propensity toward? And why is it that nearly all of the most lucrative and powerful fields are the ones that men have a higher propensity towards? Trying to answer these gets prett hairy (and depending on your answers, very revealing about yourself) if you are trying to minimize the role of discrimination.
I think nursing may be a field where certain stereotypes, etc. keep the gender balance of the working population a certain way. And I think you correctly point out that men do have _access_ to the field of nursing so it’s not ad much of a problem per se. That said, the reason I think you can say men aren’t denied access is because you don’t have hordes of men revealing patterns of regular and constant discrimination, as you do in technological fields today, so I don’t think the comparison says what you wish it did.
Furthermore I think it’s telling that you being up nursing, a not particularly lucrative field, as a female dominated one. It’s not a secret that the most scrutiny is going to those fields that are the more lucrative/powerful as discrimination in such fields serves to keep wealth/influence concentrated in whiter, maler hands.
If women aren’t having the same access to more lucrative positions or fields that men are, then that is discrimination — in education or the workplace or both. Unless you believe that something about women drives them away from such positions/fields or makes them less qualified in such positions/fields, in which case you are in the Damore camp.
> So you tolerate that a complete sex shall be punished for former sins.
You are not inoculated from the past sins of gender discrimination. So simply because you did not discriminate does not mean you did not benefit from past discrimination. While this fact should not be used to hold you accountable, it should be used to pursue policies that offset that advantage.
A company offering a program for girls is not punishing boys. It's giving girls a boost that was given to boys of previous generations.
Simply giving equal opportunity after decades (longer, really) of inequality is not truly equal. As an analogy, imagine if a government gave extremely preferential treatment to one company over another for an extended period of time (lower taxes, looser regulation, etc.) and all of the sudden started treating the two companies the same. Would you expect them to have an equal chance of success? Surely the accumulated benefits of the one company would still provide a significant advantage that would have to be remedied before the companies have an equal chance of success.
Edit: I realize I assumed you are male, which your comment does not state. Mea culpa. Read this comment as directed at any male who opposes policies that promote gender equality in STEM education.
Unconscious (and conscious) biases on looks and personality and looks certainly do happen but the specific issue with pregnancy is gendered discrimination[1]. And while I agree that personally I wouldn't want to start a company while with a partner who is expecting, I don't think our systems that enable founding a company should enforce that, especially when there's no indication that such a standard is applied equally between genders. I also believe that there are significantly better indicators of someone's ability/willingness to put in the extraordinary amount of time to build a company than whether they have/will have children because I and many others have worked under great people who build companies and have families.
[1]Actually, there's a strong argument that biases based on appearance produce gendered discrimination, but that's another issue.
So similarly, potential investors should screen all men to make sure they and their partner aren't expecting children anytime soon? This would maybe be a defensible* position if it were applied equally, but it's not.
*But actually it's not really. In today's world, with varying family types and options for care, it is possible for people to have children and give their all to a company. For many (most?) people that isn't the best option, but it is possible.
Imagine my ancestors stole all of your ancestors stuff and I still get to keep it all and anything I've built using it. We've stopped stealing your stuff now, though, so we have "equality of opportunity."