Elon Musk is unsurprisingly out of touch with the struggles faced by discriminated groups in the workforce.
With a reply reading “Is this legal in Canada?”, the CEO of Tesla Motors and X, Elon Musk, gives his two cents on a job posting by the University of British Columbia (UBC) that was specifically oriented toward applicants from minoritized or discriminated groups.
In an instance of preferential hiring, the posting calls for applicants from designated groups to conduct oral cancer research under the University’s Faculty of Dentistry. These groups include Indigenous peoples, people with disabilities, racialized people, women, and those from minoritized gender identities.
Given that the enforced guidelines align with B.C.’s Human Rights Code, Musk’s reply to the thread on X boils down to a rhetorical question that prods at the legitimacy of preferential hiring. If anything, his question suggests there’s something inherently wrong about giving preference to certain people over others, that is, over-privileged folks.
Musk seems to be missing the point of this practice. The purpose and design of affirmative action is to eliminate present and future discrimination among a pool of applicants. Therefore, a crucial part of this goal includes combatting systemic injustices and unfair conditions set by historical hiring practices that disproportionally benefitted men, heterosexual individuals, white, and able-bodied workers.
In fact, directly disclosing the applicants who are encouraged to apply is an efficient way to achieve an equitable playing field. Occupational fields, especially research, can only benefit from having a diverse range of voices, in place of the homogenous roster of workers that has dominated these fields for the longest time.
It’s counter-productive to view preferential hiring as an effort to exclude those who aren’t from the aforementioned groups, as it negates the fact that individuals who are now getting a chance to be hired were disproportionately excluded in the workplace in the past.
Unfounded connotations or assumptions of the under-qualifications of minority groups in the workforce is a common counterargument to affirmative action efforts, which is all the more reason why these practices are needed.
A critique like Musk’s shines negativity and shallowness onto this progressive action: it frames privileged folk as the ones being denied job opportunities, while the rest get a leg up. In actuality, the eligibility requirements and job criteria are identical; nobody is getting an advantage.
Ultimately, Musk’s attempt to question Canadian policy is one that lacks depth, education, and any sense of self-reflection. Being the owner of the platform that he speaks on is just an instance in which he is oblivious to his privilege in the very system he criticizes.
In the end, anyone can speak about workplace policies, whether they relate to them or not, but it’s best to think critically before doing so.
—Journal Editorial Board
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