[xdennis]

The left and the right live in completely separate bubbles. You may not be aware of this story, but the right is.

See https://www.faa.gov/pwdp . The Federal Aviation Administration has set a target of hiring people with "severe intellectual disability".

> The Secretary of Transportation has set a hiring goal of three (3) percent per fiscal year for individuals with targeted (severe) disabilities.

> Targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring. The targeted disabilities are:

    Hearing (total deafness in both ears)
    Vision (Blind)
    Missing Extremities
    Partial Paralysis
    Complete Paralysis, Epilepsy
    Severe intellectual disability
    Psychiatric disability
    Dwarfism

Edit: If you're into podcasts, listen to this (partial) episode of Blocked and Reported about a different FAA scandal about flight controllers training (the tests were changed to promote trainees who hate science and love risk): https://www.blockedandreported.org/p/premium-the-faas-bizarr...

[zerocrates]

By posting this policy you're implying it's obviously a problem... mark me down as undisturbed that there's a light thumb on the scale in favor of hiring blind/deaf/etc/etc/etc employees for what I'm going to reasonably presume are overwhelmingly office jobs sitting at a computer. To the extent they're even getting hired at all.

Of course the disabilities you'd primarily draw attention to would be instead "severe intellectual disability" and "psychiatric disability," I imagine. This program doesn't remove the qualifications for jobs: blind people are not flying planes. People with severe intellectual disabilities are not inspecting them.

Speaking of left/right divides, it seems to me that taking these kinds of policies at or beyond face value is another one of those. The anti-DEI crowd has also decried Boeing having a target to hire more black employees, a policy from 2021 that's resulted in the share of black employees rising from 6.4% to... 7.1%. Definitely a smoking gun. I can go on Twitter to hear about how that 0.7% combines with the lower IQ of HBCU graduates to explain the company's problems.

[fmobus]

Surely the FAA has plenty of roles where people with those disabilities could work. It's not like they are trying to add a deaf person to be ATC communication coordinator or a paraplegic to be an emergency firefighter.

[klyrs]

You're wrong about the left and right being in bubbles. I read commentary, thinkpieces, and yellow rubbish from both. This isn't the first time I've seen mention of that hiring goal, but I will note that comments like yours are typically the setup for a motte & bailey. But let's assume good faith.

Tell me. Of the targeted disabilities you have listed, which do you think employers should discriminate against, when it does not interfere with a qualified candidate's bona fide job requirements?