7 ms·

It's not those with a disadvantage. It's strictly based on skin color. That's the problem. You have no idea if they are disadvantaged or not. There are plenty o

• rhacker 4y ago
  It's also dangerously creating racism. The more we tow some kind of line of lets end racism by only hiring minorities, the more racist this country will get. Watch it. The moment you step back and let people hire the best candidate, you will find different cultures mixing and moving forward together.
  • nonethewiser 4y ago
    > It's also dangerously creating racism. That seems like the primary feature at this point.
  • MockObject 4y ago
    This is such an obvious point that I am now deaf to cries of incompetence and good intentions. Racial division can only be the end goal of such a concerted effort.
• peter422 4y ago
  So even if we have aggregate statistics showing how certain groups of people are disadvantaged, the fact that the rules do not apply universally means we should just ignore them?
  • BlargMcLarg 4y ago
    You can flip the script and ask why you should apply rules based on the aggregate despite obvious counterexamples. White boonies kid isn't happy to be excluded over the fact they are white, either. Point being this whole strive for 'ultimate equality' is going to create victims in its fanatical wake. No perfect method exists and no one wants to be on the losing end. But it is easier for those in a position of affluence to decide who is allowed in, as long as they won't get hurt themselves.
    • peter422 4y ago
      So we throw up our hands and perpetuate the obviously unjust status quo?
      • notch656a 4y ago
        The beauty of capitalism is the process that farms for the most net value extracted from the employees is more favored to win. I'm all for competitor companies hiring based on diversity (aka progressive-approved racism) , it creates market opportunities for the firms I work for.
        • peter422 4y ago
          Perfect, so you have no problem with Microsoft having this policy! Problem solved.
          • notch656a 4y ago
            I don't follow the logic that suggests that because I have no personal problem, a problem doesn't exist.
            • psd1 4y ago
              Splendid, we agree. I'm expensively-educated but not particularly talented. Inner-city kids who are smarter than me don't have anything like my opportunities. I have no personal problem, but a problem exists.
              • notch656a 4y ago
                Hiring people based on skin color is not equality of opportunity, it is equality of outcome.
      • fsniper 4y ago
        No, you go and fix the social inequalities and trickle that up. You can't trickle down equality by introducing more "positive" inequality
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • origin_path 4y ago
    Yes. "Disadvantaged" isn't a clear enough concept to act on, even if it were the same thing as race or gender, which it isn't. It's not even semantically clear. Does it mean something bad has been inflicted on them externally in the past, or does it merely mean their present situation is worse than average without passing judgement on why? The whole woke DEI idea of people being "disadvantaged" is itself a disempowering notion. It tells people that there is no point making better decisions or trying harder in life, because what you do or don't do doesn't matter, only outcomes matter, and if they are poor someone else will give you stuff for free. It's the ultimate form of emasculation.
• mmmpop 4y ago
  You're about to get downvoted to hell but I'll add in that I love when big, fat, ugly White people think sees a Black person that may have their shit otherwise together and go "wow they really need my help and compassion." Because that's not racist lol
• etchalon 4y ago
  We have objective evidence, through numerous studies, that just "being black" produces disadvantage during the hiring process, and data which shows the outcomes of that disadvantage in fairly straight-forward terms: https://hbr.org/2017/10/hiring-discrimination-against-black-americans-hasnt-declined-in-25-years https://hbr.org/2017/10/hiring-discrimination-against-black-... https://www.americanprogress.org/article/african-americans-face-systematic-obstacles-getting-good-jobs/ https://www.americanprogress.org/article/african-americans-f... The discrimination faced by Black Americans is because of their skin color, not their socio-economic status. And while a higher socio-economic status can help to offset that discrimination, we have no evidence it eliminates it.
  • notch656a 4y ago
    • etchalon 4y ago
      The answer to your question is yes. They are more likely to be convicted, and are given longer sentences when they are: https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/demographic-differences-sentencing https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/demographic-d... They are 7.5 times more likely to be wrongfully convicted: https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/report-black-people-7-5-times-more-likely-to-be-wrongfully-convicted-of-murder-than-whites-risk-even-greater-if-victim-was-white https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/report-black-people-7-5-ti...
      • notch656a 4y ago
  • sascha_sl 4y ago
    >The discrimination faced by Black Americans is because of their skin color, not their socio-economic status. They're a self-reinforcing loop. A lot of racism is affecting socio-economic status (redlining, no generational wealth) and the bad socio-economic status then fuels the continuation of the disadvantaged status alongside racism.
• badpun 4y ago
  Spot on. I wonder if daughters of Barrack Obama will get preferrential treatment as diversity hires. As women of color, they definitely should, according to many companies' policies.
  • ParetoOptimal 4y ago
    What if that treatment is a necessary counter-weight to being taken less seriously?
    • badpun 4y ago
      Daughers of Barrack Obama will be taken less seriously?
  • pvaldes 4y ago
    If the children of a president want to work in your company, and they aren't scammers, crazy as a goat, or involved in criminal activity, of course that they should get preferential treatment. Not hiring them would be extremely stupid. Their network of friends and knowledge of the government is not the kind of things that one can buy with money normally.
• afarrell 4y ago
  One goal of this is maintaining social cohesion between groups of people who can be immediately distinguished in combat. The visible existence of middle-class and upper-class Black families presents a lower-middle-class black teenager (or any teenager) with a choice: A. Spend a lot of time and effort growing into someone with the skills and social access to be a part of one of those middle-class (or with luck upper-class) families. B. Spend a moderate amount of time and effort maintaining a position in the lower-middle-class. C. Spend a small amount of time and effort to fall into what socialists call the lumpenproletariat. D. Spend an enormous amount of time and effort to gather a group of conscientious and industrious peers to form a new militant group which seeks to take power, trusting them to be rational enough to act effectively and loyal enough not to betray your cause. E. Join an established militant group. Why does Microsoft care? Microsoft wants to sell services to various governments, who want to maintain monopsony power on recruiting those who choose path E. They also want tax revenue from those who choose path A. They also don't want to spend tax revenue on the messes left behind by those who choose path C or D.
• sascha_sl 4y ago
  Disadvantage is not solely based on wealth, though it does play a large part. If you presuppose that giving disadvantaged groups an extra chance is a positive (your argument sort of does already) and only use wealth as a factor, isn't it still a net positive to uplift the typically poorer group? Doesn't that rightfully uplift more people than it does "wrongly"?
  • Cyberdog 4y ago
    I notice that you only use the word “group” above and not “people” or some older word acknowledging that that’s what these groups are made of. Why judge people by the groups that were born into when we could be judging them as individuals instead?
    • sascha_sl 4y ago
      Have you ever been involved with hiring? The first stage - reading CVs - is not exactly the greatest point in time to judge people as individuals, if they're even read beyond a short skim. It is the biggest opportunity for unconscious bias to reject a candidate.
      • Cyberdog 4y ago
        I don't understand what you're saying. Are you saying that we shouldn't consider people as individuals when reading their CV because that's when unconscious bias may lead to their rejection? If the latter is true, then shouldn't we do the former all the more?
        • psd1 4y ago
          Maybe. But instead we're training AI.
        • sascha_sl 4y ago
          I'm not saying we shouldn't. I'm saying that's the status quo, and changing people on this level is much harder than a policy that simply says "you must have an underrepresented person in this batch of interview invites". Maybe that'll even get them to read the CVs as a side effect.
• faeriechangling 4y ago
  I'd have less of a problem with D&I policies if they were justified in the following way. "Black people are this percentage of the company. We need to show minorities respect and ensure they're doing well economically by ensuring that we hire a certain percentage of minorities, and then hire the best among them. This is something they fought for through the political system, and it's something every group can benefit from if they ever find themselves under-represented" I'd be like, well I don't like my asian friend Clive is not getting hired after trying so hard in school, I might disagree with it, but I would at least understand where it's coming from. However how these policies are actually justified is nonstop racism. "white privilege, "You were only hired because of unconscious bias", so on and so forth as people are paraded into mandatory racism training seminars. I'm just sick and tired of the racism from the DEI bigots and the way they parade around as anti-racists honestly makes me want to projectile vomit.
• colinmhayes 4y ago
  Even Lebron James children have to deal with racism. Someone spray painted the n word on his house. Are poor people more disadvantaged? Obviously. But all else equal, being black or brown in this country means you face more adversity.
  • jobs_throwaway 4y ago
    So you're okay with Lebron's children being given advantages in hiring process over a poor white candidate?
    • colinmhayes 4y ago
      I think it’s ok to factor race into the criteria that resumes are judged on because it affects the experiences those students have had and I do think thought diversity is valuable in and of itself. It’s a tricky situation obviously. But at the resume level all we're doing is using heuristics to decide who deserves an interview. Are white applicants with a 3.2 gpa more likely to be successful than black ones with a 3.1 gpa? I have no idea. I don't think you do either. Really the only way to find out is to hire some black applicants and compare them which might be what msft is doing.
      • boppo1 4y ago
        >thought diversity And you believe this is a function of skin color?
        • colinmhayes 4y ago
          Yes I think cultural lines are commonly divided along skin color.
• the_gipsy 4y ago
  > It's strictly based on skin color. That's the problem. You have no idea if they are disadvantaged or not. We do know that skin color is a decisive factor in discrimination. You suggest to let this continue to happen (do nothing) because some specific individuals of a discriminated skin color do not seem to be discriminated. So you just need one token black guy, not even in every company, just one, promoted to near executive-level, so that people like you can say "look; if they want to, they can!" And then you can all go on with your lives pretending you're there because of your merits.