10 ms·

Do you think it could possibly be that the black city college might be a lower ranked school than Georgia Tech? Or did Georgia Tech not have any women or minori

Do you think it could possibly be that the black city college might be a lower ranked school than Georgia Tech? Or did Georgia Tech not have any women or minorities? I went to a lower ranked school that was the most diverse in the state, and I've also taken classes at Stanford and Berkeley. There is no question that the students at Stanford and Berkeley were way more motivated, worked a lot harder and were academically much stronger than the students at my school. So I would expect those schools to get a lot more recruiting attention than my school. That doesn't mean the students at my school can't be successful, but it did mean that you had to put in a lot more work than the median student at the lower-ranked school to be successful.

tptacek 6y ago
The subtext of the story is that the HBCU was visited to check a checkbox, but the students at that school were treated with such disrespect that the underlying bias was clear. Nobody has any trouble understanding that Duke is a higher-priority recruiting target than A&T.
- thereisnospork 6y ago
  While perhaps not the most professional on the recruiters' part it's hardly racist to half-ass a 'check the checkbox' assignment. Unlike the racist tokenism and just outright disrespectful facade of visiting a school when there is little to no (apparent) interest in hiring from.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - vore 6y ago
    It's definitely a little racist to half ass it so hard you're serving leftovers from another school. I don't think I really agree that visiting HBCUs is racist tokenism unless it is 100% just to get diversity brownie points and nothing else: it's still better than not visiting them entirely and to provide opportunities to underrepresented minorities for which, while the intent is to put them into the corporate grinder, having a high-paying tech job is still a material benefit.
    - KMag 6y ago
      > It's definitely a little racist to half ass it so hard ... Without seeing how they treated students at a similarly ranked non-HBCU, it's difficult to distinguish racism from colorblind elitism. It's probably a bit of both racism and elitism, but without a comparably ranked school for comparison, I wouldn't be comfortable using the word "definitely".
      - bigiain 6y ago
        > colorblind elitism. Seriously? Did you _really_ just type that??? boggle!
        KMag 6y ago
        Are you asserting that all elitism is inherently racist, or just that it's an absolutely impossible explanation in this case?
        stale2002 6y ago
        It feels like you are really reaching to find an alternative explanation, when the original expansion feels pretty clear.
        KMag 6y ago
        I didn't say it's not racist. I said there are non-racist explanations for the observed behavior.
        stale2002 6y ago
        > I didn't say it's not racist Ok. If you are going to agree that the situation is almost certainly the result of at least implicit racism, and the alternatives are pretty unlikely then cool. You agree.
        6y ago
  - xhfhope 6y ago
    This comment right here. If society wants to mandate the facade, there will be leftovers.
  - onion2k 6y ago
    While perhaps not the most professional on the recruiters' part it's hardly racist to half-ass a 'check the checkbox' assignment. This is exactly why you can't reasonably accept treating one group of people differently - it might be a lazy recruiter half-ass'ing their job, but it might also be actual real racism. There's no way to tell by looking. The outcome is the same. If you're willing to give them a pass you might just be enabling a racist.
    - concordDance 6y ago
      Conversely, if you insist on equal outcomes: A. What you'll have to do will depend in how finely you divide your population. E.g. recent african immigrant vs. Slave descended are quite different demographics with different life trajectories and you'll be able to tell one from another very easily. There will be huge political fights over these categories. B. If you do hire based on population demographics then two things will happen: You'll get a bit more inefficient workplace due to unperforming workers. But more importantly, you'll be surrounding people with a bunch of Xers (whichever the underperfoming demographics is. Hillbillies? African Americans? Republicans? Left handed folk?) who are underperforming. This will cause a strong association in their mind that X=less capable. Xism will then increase. The influx of women to my workplace really didn't help my colleague's sexism.
      - onion2k 6y ago
        This will cause a strong association in their mind that X=less capable. Xism will then increase. You think your employer shouldn't aim to be increase the diversity of your team because that'd make you racist?
        concordDance 6y ago
        Not me personally (I keep stats and selection bias ib mind), but in general yes.
- KMag 6y ago
  I think the GP is trying to say there's obvious bias and disrespect, but it's not obvious that the disrespect was primarily due to racism or primarily due to school ranking. No school of comparable ranking to A&T but a more Duke-like racial makeup was visited in this instance. There was racism and/or elitism displayed, but there isn't enough information in this story to rule out elitism being the primary driver for the lack of respect. Certainly the students should have been treated with much more respect. Multiple people clearly confused priority and respect. The two student bodies should have been treated with equal respect, but we can understand why they might not get equal priority. However, there's not enough evidence to rule out plain elitism for the lack of respect.
  - freeone3000 6y ago
    Why bother going to NC A&T if you didn't want the students from there? It's performative at best. Why choose that college in particular? For a diversity quota?
    - tomp 6y ago
      Better half-assing it than not going at all, right?
      - KMag 6y ago
        I'm of the opinion it's better that they go, but reasonable people disagree. There are certainly potential economic benefits to the students at A&T at the time, but it could be argued that longer-term cultural progress is hindered by such token displays.
    - KMag 6y ago
      Often these sorts of inconsistent decision making occur because multiple people making decisions disagree. Maybe some person high up in HR in change of recruiting scheduling decided Duke and A&T would be visited on these days. Maybe the person in charge of planning the details felt very strongly they were better off putting whatever resources earmarked for A&T toward events with minority-focused engineering student groups at Duke, and so raided the budget without going head-to-head with the person in charge of recruiting scheduling.
ljhsiung 6y ago
If a company visits a school, I 1000% expect the same treatment as any other school. To provide special treatment is elitist at best, and racist and exploitative for PR points at worst. And if the entire school doesn't pass the "hiring filter", stop going, and stop making false claims.
- bigiain 6y ago
  Or, you know, like people have pointed out the Cisco has done when other people were speculating this might have been them - invest/donate to the school in ways that improve their graduate's outcomes... "Cisco, at least at a time did invest in A&T and NC State, far more so than UNC which it didn’t recruit from for a period."
dmurray 6y ago
Right. So much of the "racism" that gets exposed in the US is discrimination against poor or less educated people, which needs to be cast as racism to keep the outrage machine flowing. You should tend to discount any race-based statistics that don't correct for economic status. Of course, there are no examples of elite black-dominated universities abutting poor white technical colleges, so it's not possible to look for an anecdote in the opposite direction here. There's plenty of historic and systemic racism that keeps black people poorer and less educated. That's where people's outrage should be focused.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
What do you really think about the matter at hand? It sounds like you're playing devil's advocate, but you're not expressing how you feel about the unfair treatment itself.

tptacek 6y ago

The subtext of the story is that the HBCU was visited to check a checkbox, but the students at that school were treated with such disrespect that the underlying bias was clear. Nobody has any trouble understanding that Duke is a higher-priority recruiting target than A&T.

thereisnospork 6y ago
While perhaps not the most professional on the recruiters' part it's hardly racist to half-ass a 'check the checkbox' assignment. Unlike the racist tokenism and just outright disrespectful facade of visiting a school when there is little to no (apparent) interest in hiring from.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- vore 6y ago
  It's definitely a little racist to half ass it so hard you're serving leftovers from another school. I don't think I really agree that visiting HBCUs is racist tokenism unless it is 100% just to get diversity brownie points and nothing else: it's still better than not visiting them entirely and to provide opportunities to underrepresented minorities for which, while the intent is to put them into the corporate grinder, having a high-paying tech job is still a material benefit.
  - KMag 6y ago
    > It's definitely a little racist to half ass it so hard ... Without seeing how they treated students at a similarly ranked non-HBCU, it's difficult to distinguish racism from colorblind elitism. It's probably a bit of both racism and elitism, but without a comparably ranked school for comparison, I wouldn't be comfortable using the word "definitely".
    - bigiain 6y ago
      > colorblind elitism. Seriously? Did you _really_ just type that??? boggle!
      - KMag 6y ago
        Are you asserting that all elitism is inherently racist, or just that it's an absolutely impossible explanation in this case?
        stale2002 6y ago
        It feels like you are really reaching to find an alternative explanation, when the original expansion feels pretty clear.
        KMag 6y ago
        I didn't say it's not racist. I said there are non-racist explanations for the observed behavior.
        stale2002 6y ago
        > I didn't say it's not racist Ok. If you are going to agree that the situation is almost certainly the result of at least implicit racism, and the alternatives are pretty unlikely then cool. You agree.
        6y ago
- xhfhope 6y ago
  This comment right here. If society wants to mandate the facade, there will be leftovers.
- onion2k 6y ago
  While perhaps not the most professional on the recruiters' part it's hardly racist to half-ass a 'check the checkbox' assignment. This is exactly why you can't reasonably accept treating one group of people differently - it might be a lazy recruiter half-ass'ing their job, but it might also be actual real racism. There's no way to tell by looking. The outcome is the same. If you're willing to give them a pass you might just be enabling a racist.
  - concordDance 6y ago
    Conversely, if you insist on equal outcomes: A. What you'll have to do will depend in how finely you divide your population. E.g. recent african immigrant vs. Slave descended are quite different demographics with different life trajectories and you'll be able to tell one from another very easily. There will be huge political fights over these categories. B. If you do hire based on population demographics then two things will happen: You'll get a bit more inefficient workplace due to unperforming workers. But more importantly, you'll be surrounding people with a bunch of Xers (whichever the underperfoming demographics is. Hillbillies? African Americans? Republicans? Left handed folk?) who are underperforming. This will cause a strong association in their mind that X=less capable. Xism will then increase. The influx of women to my workplace really didn't help my colleague's sexism.
    - onion2k 6y ago
      This will cause a strong association in their mind that X=less capable. Xism will then increase. You think your employer shouldn't aim to be increase the diversity of your team because that'd make you racist?
      - concordDance 6y ago
        Not me personally (I keep stats and selection bias ib mind), but in general yes.
KMag 6y ago
I think the GP is trying to say there's obvious bias and disrespect, but it's not obvious that the disrespect was primarily due to racism or primarily due to school ranking. No school of comparable ranking to A&T but a more Duke-like racial makeup was visited in this instance. There was racism and/or elitism displayed, but there isn't enough information in this story to rule out elitism being the primary driver for the lack of respect. Certainly the students should have been treated with much more respect. Multiple people clearly confused priority and respect. The two student bodies should have been treated with equal respect, but we can understand why they might not get equal priority. However, there's not enough evidence to rule out plain elitism for the lack of respect.
- freeone3000 6y ago
  Why bother going to NC A&T if you didn't want the students from there? It's performative at best. Why choose that college in particular? For a diversity quota?
  - tomp 6y ago
    Better half-assing it than not going at all, right?
    - KMag 6y ago
      I'm of the opinion it's better that they go, but reasonable people disagree. There are certainly potential economic benefits to the students at A&T at the time, but it could be argued that longer-term cultural progress is hindered by such token displays.
  - KMag 6y ago
    Often these sorts of inconsistent decision making occur because multiple people making decisions disagree. Maybe some person high up in HR in change of recruiting scheduling decided Duke and A&T would be visited on these days. Maybe the person in charge of planning the details felt very strongly they were better off putting whatever resources earmarked for A&T toward events with minority-focused engineering student groups at Duke, and so raided the budget without going head-to-head with the person in charge of recruiting scheduling.

ljhsiung 6y ago

If a company visits a school, I 1000% expect the same treatment as any other school. To provide special treatment is elitist at best, and racist and exploitative for PR points at worst. And if the entire school doesn't pass the "hiring filter", stop going, and stop making false claims.

bigiain 6y ago
Or, you know, like people have pointed out the Cisco has done when other people were speculating this might have been them - invest/donate to the school in ways that improve their graduate's outcomes... "Cisco, at least at a time did invest in A&T and NC State, far more so than UNC which it didn’t recruit from for a period."

dmurray 6y ago

Right. So much of the "racism" that gets exposed in the US is discrimination against poor or less educated people, which needs to be cast as racism to keep the outrage machine flowing. You should tend to discount any race-based statistics that don't correct for economic status. Of course, there are no examples of elite black-dominated universities abutting poor white technical colleges, so it's not possible to look for an anecdote in the opposite direction here. There's plenty of historic and systemic racism that keeps black people poorer and less educated. That's where people's outrage should be focused.

Cthulhu_ 6y ago

What do you really think about the matter at hand? It sounds like you're playing devil's advocate, but you're not expressing how you feel about the unfair treatment itself.