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> How do you separate potential racism from cultural differences? By conducting studies where you study the effect of the race variable. This has been done man

> How do you separate potential racism from cultural differences? By conducting studies where you study the effect of the race variable. This has been done many times over in multiple countries and the results have shown that colored people and racial minorities are discriminated against. But despite the vast amount of empirical data, people still refuse to believe that racial discrimination is a factor in the job market. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-29/job-applicants-with-black-names-still-less-likely-to-get-the-interview#xj4y7vzkg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-29/job-appli... https://www.jstor.org/stable/40276548 https://www.jstor.org/stable/40276548 https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/lehr-2015-0003/html https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/lehr-2015-000...

mistermann 4y ago
It is perhaps worth mentioning that this is actually only a means for potentially learning what is going on, and that it can also lead one into a state of confident confusion/misunderstanding. Study results may only suggest something, which can often have the appearance of showing it.
sacrosancty 4y ago
- wahnfrieden 4y ago
  >innate qualities measured by IQ is contested/wrong
- Latty 4y ago
  IQ is a deeply questionable metric to start with (I have yet to see good evidence IQ tests measure anything more than "how good at IQ tests you are", and as a child I obsessed over them and got very good at them by learning how to approach them, which means it very much isn't measuring something innate), tests are often (and in the case of the historic ones actually cited in the "evidence", all) culturally biased, and the supposed evidence for IQ differences is deeply flawed. (The famous example of "The Bell Curve" citing absurd things like tests in English referencing British culture being given to people who didn't even speak English properly and had never been to Britain as accurate IQ tests). > It's clearly because of some more innate qualities measured by IQ. This is an absurd statement, because even if the IQ differences exist, you are jumping to a conclusion here: that difference in IQ is innate, and not a result of racism or other external factors, with your only justification being: > And the differences appear before school age, so it's hardly any opportunity for racism to cause it. One of the biggest factors for childhood success is how much time your parents spend with you when you are young. If historic racism means your family is poorer, it likely means your parents can spend less time with you. Just one example of many of how this argument just doesn't hold water.
  - Ferrotin 4y ago
    Lots of research has been done controlling for income, adoption studies, and such, showing your words to be completely untrue.
    - peter422 4y ago
      So you believe that IQ alone is the most predictive metric for a person’s ability to what? Seriously who cares about a couple of IQ points?
      - water-your-self 4y ago
        IQ is generally thrown out entirely. Im shocked to see it treated as a legitimate metric on hacker news
        peter422 4y ago
        Only on HN would the prevailing thought be that leet-code interviews are stupid but IQ is a magical, unbiased metric of a person’s ability and potential.
        paledot 4y ago
        Really? HN in 1822 would be filled with educated people seriously defending phrenology. 1922 HN would be falling over itself to defend eugenics. Apparently 2022 HN hasn't come very far from 1922. No one falls for pseudoscientific groupthink like communities of affluent, well-educated people.
        kansface 4y ago
        The military still uses it because it is highly predictive. They also have a hard cutoff at the bottom which wasn’t always the case (see McNamara’s Folly for the history of when the army accepted literally retarded people - it didn’t end well). We also see a very strong correlation between eg IQ and occupation. It is a legitimate metric of *something*.
mhuffman 4y ago
>despite the vast amount of empirical data Well, your examples seem pretty cherry-picked and not necessarily generally empirical (ie. lots of embedded subjectivity). Now your first link is more interesting and is usually the one that everyone pulls out as "absolute proof" that discrimination is live and well in modern hiring against Black people. I wonder, though, how much of this is in the bias of the experimenters when they selected "Black sounding names" and how much is just unfamiliarity with an "unusual" (and by this I mean rare) name and how much is the knee-jerk reaction to a name (basically real prejudice). For example the actual most common names for Black children in the US are – Jacob, Emma, Michael, Ava, William, Emily, etc. And I suspect they are not choosing those names on purpose. On the other hand, my ex's sister named their son "Air Jordan" (for his first name) and their daughter Cinnamon for her first name. And I personally have great uncles with the real first names of "Snapbean" and "Squawk" (I am not joking). None of these people are Black, but how do you imagine their resumes are accepted at large (or small) companies? So I am wondering how much is prejudice against the person and how much is prejudice against the name?
- throwbacktictac 4y ago
  I'm genuinely missing your point. It sou d like you're insinuating that the lack of a "normal" name is a good reason to disqualify someone from a job opportunity. That possibly implies that the resume screen uses someone's name as a discriminating factor and I don't think that it should be.
  - mhuffman 4y ago
    >I'm genuinely missing your point Yes, you are missing my point. I am not insinuating anything, I am stating directly that some people might be biased against unusual (to them) names. Names that are difficult to say, spell, etc. depending on the language, or just out-right stereotypical prejudice with a name (which is what these studies just assume). I am not saying that any of this is ok, people rarely get to pick their names. What I am saying is that it might not all be based on the color of people's skin.
    - 4y ago
darawk 4y ago
People love to cite this study as an example of absolute proof of discrimination, but it isn't. There is an obvious rational non-racist explanation for the outcome in question, and it is affirmative action. A black person, a white person, and an asian person with the exact same credentials mean extremely different things in terms of absolute rather than relative competence level, as a consequence of affirmative action policies. The filters they had to pass through are different, and therefore an Asian person who went to Harvard almost certainly is in the top 1% of the absolute test score distribution, whereas the same is not necessarily true for the others. Since job performance is correlated with absolute capability, and not group-relative capability, discrimination on the basis of race is rational in a society that employs affirmative action policies at prior points in the credentialism pipeline. Correcting and controlling for this would only be possible by designing resumes that don't reference achievements that have group-relative thresholds.
- okwubodu 4y ago
  > There is an obvious rational non-racist explanation for the outcome in question > A black person, a white person, and an asian person with the exact same credentials mean extremely different things in terms of absolute rather than relative competence level Say these sentences out loud.
  - darawk 4y ago
    I have. They do not refer to the capability of the groups, only their present level. It's entirely consistent with what I said that the current differences between the groups are a consequence of historical racism and inequity. That doesn't change the fact that the absolute level of current ability implied by the same credential differs between groups, when the credential is conferred via affirmative action.
- beowulfey 4y ago
  Take a moment to wonder at the implication of your observation. Why do you assume, if three people all went to the same university and had the same credentials, that one of those people is almost certainly at the top 1% of absolute test scores because of their race? Perhaps you may be experiencing subconscious biases without even realizing it? Based on your other comment, you would claim "Affirmative Action" is why you think this. But it is important to realize that by making this assumption at all you are expressing biased judgements on these three humans entirely based upon their race.

mistermann 4y ago

It is perhaps worth mentioning that this is actually only a means for potentially learning what is going on, and that it can also lead one into a state of confident confusion/misunderstanding. Study results may only suggest something, which can often have the appearance of showing it.

sacrosancty 4y ago

wahnfrieden 4y ago
>innate qualities measured by IQ is contested/wrong
Latty 4y ago
IQ is a deeply questionable metric to start with (I have yet to see good evidence IQ tests measure anything more than "how good at IQ tests you are", and as a child I obsessed over them and got very good at them by learning how to approach them, which means it very much isn't measuring something innate), tests are often (and in the case of the historic ones actually cited in the "evidence", all) culturally biased, and the supposed evidence for IQ differences is deeply flawed. (The famous example of "The Bell Curve" citing absurd things like tests in English referencing British culture being given to people who didn't even speak English properly and had never been to Britain as accurate IQ tests). > It's clearly because of some more innate qualities measured by IQ. This is an absurd statement, because even if the IQ differences exist, you are jumping to a conclusion here: that difference in IQ is innate, and not a result of racism or other external factors, with your only justification being: > And the differences appear before school age, so it's hardly any opportunity for racism to cause it. One of the biggest factors for childhood success is how much time your parents spend with you when you are young. If historic racism means your family is poorer, it likely means your parents can spend less time with you. Just one example of many of how this argument just doesn't hold water.
- Ferrotin 4y ago
  Lots of research has been done controlling for income, adoption studies, and such, showing your words to be completely untrue.
  - peter422 4y ago
    So you believe that IQ alone is the most predictive metric for a person’s ability to what? Seriously who cares about a couple of IQ points?
    - water-your-self 4y ago
      IQ is generally thrown out entirely. Im shocked to see it treated as a legitimate metric on hacker news
      - peter422 4y ago
        Only on HN would the prevailing thought be that leet-code interviews are stupid but IQ is a magical, unbiased metric of a person’s ability and potential.
      - paledot 4y ago
        Really? HN in 1822 would be filled with educated people seriously defending phrenology. 1922 HN would be falling over itself to defend eugenics. Apparently 2022 HN hasn't come very far from 1922. No one falls for pseudoscientific groupthink like communities of affluent, well-educated people.
      - kansface 4y ago
        The military still uses it because it is highly predictive. They also have a hard cutoff at the bottom which wasn’t always the case (see McNamara’s Folly for the history of when the army accepted literally retarded people - it didn’t end well). We also see a very strong correlation between eg IQ and occupation. It is a legitimate metric of *something*.

mhuffman 4y ago

>despite the vast amount of empirical data Well, your examples seem pretty cherry-picked and not necessarily generally empirical (ie. lots of embedded subjectivity). Now your first link is more interesting and is usually the one that everyone pulls out as "absolute proof" that discrimination is live and well in modern hiring against Black people. I wonder, though, how much of this is in the bias of the experimenters when they selected "Black sounding names" and how much is just unfamiliarity with an "unusual" (and by this I mean rare) name and how much is the knee-jerk reaction to a name (basically real prejudice). For example the actual most common names for Black children in the US are – Jacob, Emma, Michael, Ava, William, Emily, etc. And I suspect they are not choosing those names on purpose. On the other hand, my ex's sister named their son "Air Jordan" (for his first name) and their daughter Cinnamon for her first name. And I personally have great uncles with the real first names of "Snapbean" and "Squawk" (I am not joking). None of these people are Black, but how do you imagine their resumes are accepted at large (or small) companies? So I am wondering how much is prejudice against the person and how much is prejudice against the name?

throwbacktictac 4y ago
I'm genuinely missing your point. It sou d like you're insinuating that the lack of a "normal" name is a good reason to disqualify someone from a job opportunity. That possibly implies that the resume screen uses someone's name as a discriminating factor and I don't think that it should be.
- mhuffman 4y ago
  >I'm genuinely missing your point Yes, you are missing my point. I am not insinuating anything, I am stating directly that some people might be biased against unusual (to them) names. Names that are difficult to say, spell, etc. depending on the language, or just out-right stereotypical prejudice with a name (which is what these studies just assume). I am not saying that any of this is ok, people rarely get to pick their names. What I am saying is that it might not all be based on the color of people's skin.
  - 4y ago

darawk 4y ago

People love to cite this study as an example of absolute proof of discrimination, but it isn't. There is an obvious rational non-racist explanation for the outcome in question, and it is affirmative action. A black person, a white person, and an asian person with the exact same credentials mean extremely different things in terms of absolute rather than relative competence level, as a consequence of affirmative action policies. The filters they had to pass through are different, and therefore an Asian person who went to Harvard almost certainly is in the top 1% of the absolute test score distribution, whereas the same is not necessarily true for the others. Since job performance is correlated with absolute capability, and not group-relative capability, discrimination on the basis of race is rational in a society that employs affirmative action policies at prior points in the credentialism pipeline. Correcting and controlling for this would only be possible by designing resumes that don't reference achievements that have group-relative thresholds.

okwubodu 4y ago
> There is an obvious rational non-racist explanation for the outcome in question > A black person, a white person, and an asian person with the exact same credentials mean extremely different things in terms of absolute rather than relative competence level Say these sentences out loud.
- darawk 4y ago
  I have. They do not refer to the capability of the groups, only their present level. It's entirely consistent with what I said that the current differences between the groups are a consequence of historical racism and inequity. That doesn't change the fact that the absolute level of current ability implied by the same credential differs between groups, when the credential is conferred via affirmative action.
beowulfey 4y ago
Take a moment to wonder at the implication of your observation. Why do you assume, if three people all went to the same university and had the same credentials, that one of those people is almost certainly at the top 1% of absolute test scores because of their race? Perhaps you may be experiencing subconscious biases without even realizing it? Based on your other comment, you would claim "Affirmative Action" is why you think this. But it is important to realize that by making this assumption at all you are expressing biased judgements on these three humans entirely based upon their race.