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Let's say your company has a workforce where the minorities are only 5% but they are let's say 30% of the population. Would that be fair to assume that Color-bl

Let's say your company has a workforce where the minorities are only 5% but they are let's say 30% of the population. Would that be fair to assume that Color-blindness has failed? Or perhaps there is some kind of biais that was missed and the policies were not as color blind as they pretended to be? In that case, in order to address it, would you rather entirely ignore the issue of race (and fail again) or perhaps have policies that want to address this inequality? Lots of people agree that color blindness would be the ideal world, but seeing that the world is not color blind, trying to advocate for it seems like a way to continue pushing an injustice instead of addressing it.

sokoloff 6y ago
I think it can depend on the population that you're comparing against. If the company is a law firm, the positions being compared are entry-level lawyers, and a requirement for the role is holding a law degree, then when evaluating the law firm's hiring practices you should probably compare against the population who hold the qualifications for the role (law degree holders). If there are biases upstream of that point in the process (such as "those with a social security number ending in 9 are admitted to law school at one-sixth the expected rate"), then I'd expect an unbiased hiring process to result in that same discrepancy in those hired (presuming here that social security digits are entirely uncorrelated with performance in law school and the practice of law). Should the law firm work to try to eliminate that upstream bias? Sure. Should the law firm work to hire in a biased way such that they end up with an evenly distributed outcome? I personally don't think so, but I understand others who think they should.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  In other words, statistically biased outcomes cannot be attributed to the place where the statistic was measured, without further evidence upstream.
betwixthewires 6y ago
It would be fair to propose that color blindness has failed, and test that hypothesis. If there is some other bias present, the solution is to rectify that bias, not force diversity hire. Forcing diversity hire is a lazy solution, a way to *not" actually fix the cause of the problem.

sokoloff 6y ago

I think it can depend on the population that you're comparing against. If the company is a law firm, the positions being compared are entry-level lawyers, and a requirement for the role is holding a law degree, then when evaluating the law firm's hiring practices you should probably compare against the population who hold the qualifications for the role (law degree holders). If there are biases upstream of that point in the process (such as "those with a social security number ending in 9 are admitted to law school at one-sixth the expected rate"), then I'd expect an unbiased hiring process to result in that same discrepancy in those hired (presuming here that social security digits are entirely uncorrelated with performance in law school and the practice of law). Should the law firm work to try to eliminate that upstream bias? Sure. Should the law firm work to hire in a biased way such that they end up with an evenly distributed outcome? I personally don't think so, but I understand others who think they should.

nitrogen 6y ago
In other words, statistically biased outcomes cannot be attributed to the place where the statistic was measured, without further evidence upstream.

betwixthewires 6y ago

It would be fair to propose that color blindness has failed, and test that hypothesis. If there is some other bias present, the solution is to rectify that bias, not force diversity hire. Forcing diversity hire is a lazy solution, a way to *not" actually fix the cause of the problem.