4 ms·

What if reality happens to be 'racist?' What if there naturally happens to be a gender / race to performance correlation at their company at this time? Do you t

What if reality happens to be 'racist?' What if there naturally happens to be a gender / race to performance correlation at their company at this time? Do you think they will perform their review and stand behind their 'racist' findings? Or do you think they will give more benefit of the doubt to certain people until their layoff gender / race distribution more closely matches their idealized a priori distribution? I think that's the debate here.

rimunroe 4y ago
If someone manages to prove the racists are right then that will be a very weird world to live in and I have no idea how to speculate about it. I’d expect it’s about as likely as someone proving god exists, but I’ve seen overwhelming evidence that people are racist and that that racism permeates society.
- twiceaday 4y ago
  Sometimes the underperformers in a company just happen to skew a particular race. Publicly announcing such a layoff demographic would naturally allow for accusations of racism. That is what I am calling reality being racist. The summary facts of the situation can be called racist and it can be very difficult to defend that accusation without sharing huge amounts of internal data. So companies don't simply stay away from racism, they stay away from decisions that could be called racist. The difference between these two strategies is the problem. Touting anti-racism makes the problem worse, because it widens the gap between the two strategies by weaponizing accusations of racism for any action that remotely allows them. "This company tried to win brownie points by claiming it is not racist but look at this clearly racist thing they did."
  - rimunroe 4y ago
    Honestly I have some trouble following your comment. While not conceding your assertion about underperformers naturally skewing to a particular race, I'd like to point out that a company saying they're going to view things through an anti-racist lens likely means as little as checking to see if there's a disparity in who is being let go, and, if there is, double checking to make sure they're not choosing who to let go in a biased manner.

rimunroe 4y ago

If someone manages to prove the racists are right then that will be a very weird world to live in and I have no idea how to speculate about it. I’d expect it’s about as likely as someone proving god exists, but I’ve seen overwhelming evidence that people are racist and that that racism permeates society.

twiceaday 4y ago
Sometimes the underperformers in a company just happen to skew a particular race. Publicly announcing such a layoff demographic would naturally allow for accusations of racism. That is what I am calling reality being racist. The summary facts of the situation can be called racist and it can be very difficult to defend that accusation without sharing huge amounts of internal data. So companies don't simply stay away from racism, they stay away from decisions that could be called racist. The difference between these two strategies is the problem. Touting anti-racism makes the problem worse, because it widens the gap between the two strategies by weaponizing accusations of racism for any action that remotely allows them. "This company tried to win brownie points by claiming it is not racist but look at this clearly racist thing they did."
- rimunroe 4y ago
  Honestly I have some trouble following your comment. While not conceding your assertion about underperformers naturally skewing to a particular race, I'd like to point out that a company saying they're going to view things through an anti-racist lens likely means as little as checking to see if there's a disparity in who is being let go, and, if there is, double checking to make sure they're not choosing who to let go in a biased manner.