5 ms·

That is an interesting story. What would be really interesting, though, is to read about the company that saw through this kind of prejudice -- that hired the e

by _h4xr 19y ago

That is an interesting story. What would be really interesting, though, is to read about the company that saw through this kind of prejudice -- that hired the equally-qualified minority workers at wages depressed by such prejudice, and then made a killing. It happened with women -- Greenspan Townsend hired lots of female economists, because they were underpriced -- but I've lived in St. Louis, and I do not recall any successful businesses that emphasized hiring minorities, outside of sports and entertainment. This reminds me of Blink, in which Malcolm Gladwell dwells on a similar habit of used car salesman. It is fortunate that Gladwell's career as a journalist has given him more insight into auto sales than all those guys who do it for a living -- but what's sad is that he can't convince jurist and economist Richard Posner that it's because car salesman are immoral, not because they are making intelligent deductions from available data (http://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/posner-blink.html http://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/posner-blink.html).

anewaccountname 19y ago
>What would be really interesting, though, is to read about the company that saw through this kind of prejudice -- that hired the equally-qualified minority workers at wages depressed by such prejudice, and then made a killing. It isn't that simple. I'm from South Carolina, and racism is all around. A company could do as you say and hire some killer black salesmen at a huge discount and it won't matter: they will sell less only because they are black. A computer repair shop could hire an all black staff of technicians, and leave white people as the people-facing storefront (not that this would be remotely legal or moral), and it wouldn't matter: there would literally be conversations all over the place about how you shouldn't take your computer to such and such's; they use "nigger" repairmen.
- _h4xr 19y ago
  Oh! So it's not a story about businesses being prejudice at all. It's a story about bad consumers! I get it. That makes sense. Why would anyone focus on the businesses, though, when they're making a perfectly rational decision -- perhaps because the media are making the perfectly rational decision to outrage their audience using weak arguments that, as an added bonus, blame the big bad businessman instead of the average consumer. I also don't understand how you can say that when I cite the obvious example of Greenspan hiring women. How did he survive when everyone was complaining about his bitch of a research assistant? How do companies that hire other minorities do it? Surely someone out there should start opening white-owned laundromats, to capture the valuable racist demographic which has somehow been convinced to patronize the many Korean-owned laundry companies in the US. I would argue the same about a gentiles-only investment bank, but even if banks like that did appeal to prejudice, they didn't do it especially well. If that's your theory, what's your answer: how is it that racism explains how one ethnic group fails, but fails to explain how other ethnic groups are more successful than the racist whites who are allegedly holding them down?
  - _h4xr 19y ago
    Prejudiced.

by _h4xr 19y ago

anewaccountname 19y ago

>What would be really interesting, though, is to read about the company that saw through this kind of prejudice -- that hired the equally-qualified minority workers at wages depressed by such prejudice, and then made a killing. It isn't that simple. I'm from South Carolina, and racism is all around. A company could do as you say and hire some killer black salesmen at a huge discount and it won't matter: they will sell less only because they are black. A computer repair shop could hire an all black staff of technicians, and leave white people as the people-facing storefront (not that this would be remotely legal or moral), and it wouldn't matter: there would literally be conversations all over the place about how you shouldn't take your computer to such and such's; they use "nigger" repairmen.

_h4xr 19y ago
Oh! So it's not a story about businesses being prejudice at all. It's a story about bad consumers! I get it. That makes sense. Why would anyone focus on the businesses, though, when they're making a perfectly rational decision -- perhaps because the media are making the perfectly rational decision to outrage their audience using weak arguments that, as an added bonus, blame the big bad businessman instead of the average consumer. I also don't understand how you can say that when I cite the obvious example of Greenspan hiring women. How did he survive when everyone was complaining about his bitch of a research assistant? How do companies that hire other minorities do it? Surely someone out there should start opening white-owned laundromats, to capture the valuable racist demographic which has somehow been convinced to patronize the many Korean-owned laundry companies in the US. I would argue the same about a gentiles-only investment bank, but even if banks like that did appeal to prejudice, they didn't do it especially well. If that's your theory, what's your answer: how is it that racism explains how one ethnic group fails, but fails to explain how other ethnic groups are more successful than the racist whites who are allegedly holding them down?
- _h4xr 19y ago
  Prejudiced.