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Hiring practices which discriminate based on attributes that would otherwise be illegal to consider may be permitted if those attributes are Bona fide occupatio

Hiring practices which discriminate based on attributes that would otherwise be illegal to consider may be permitted if those attributes are Bona fide occupational qualifications (BFOQ.) For instance, blind people can't be bus drivers. IQ tests are verboten after Griggs v. Duke Power Co. As far as I'm aware, claiming a BFOQ exemption to this will fail, or at best, is unproven. IQ tests discriminate by race (even if unintentionally) and BFOQ exemptions don't apply to racial discrimination. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

sokoloff 4y ago
EEOC policy page: https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/employment-tests-and-selection-procedures https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/employment-tests-and-sele... The use of tests and other selection procedures can be a very effective means of determining which applicants or employees are most qualified for a particular job. However, use of these tools can violate the federal anti-discrimination laws if an employer intentionally uses them to discriminate based on race, color, sex, national origin, religion, disability, or age (40 or older). Use of tests and other selection procedures can also violate the federal anti-discrimination laws if they disproportionately exclude people in a particular group by race, sex, or another covered basis, unless the employer can justify the test or procedure under the law. That is not a categorical exclusion. Department of Labor Employers' Guide to Good Practice (2000, 29 years after Griggs): http://assessmentresources.pbworks.com/f/empTestAsse.pdf http://assessmentresources.pbworks.com/f/empTestAsse.pdf Similar language: One of the basic principles of the Uniform Guidelines is that it is unlawful to use a test or selection procedure that creates adverse impact, unless justified. Adverse impact occurs when there is a substantially different rate of selection in hiring, promotion, or other employment decisions that work to the disadvantage of members of a race, sex, or ethnic group.
- lmkg 4y ago
  Your understanding is technically correct but missing some nuance which is the heart of the matter. It's true the use of an IQ test can be justified. The important thing is that the use of an IQ test must be justified. Due to the Supreme Court ruling, IQ tests are assumed to have a disparate impact. They are by default assumed to be discriminatory unless proven otherwise. A company must either prove the lack of disparate impact, or demonstrate a plausible connection to work performance (beyond "smart = good"). Most hiring practices are default OK, and a claim of discrimination must be proven in court. This hiring practice has already been decided in court, so it is default not-OK and must be defended. That difference is significant.
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    Indeed. They must be justified; they are not "verboten" as GP claimed.
throwaway09223 4y ago
This is really interesting to look at in the context of other hiring testing -- like Google's practice of asking silly abstract questions like "invert a binary tree" for jobs which do not involve substantial algorithmic work. eg: https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768 https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768
- erik_seaberg 4y ago
  Google doesn’t hire an ordinary dev for one specific job, they allow internal transfers and other teams expect you to meet the bar for your title. They do more useless protobuf schlepping by hand than they should, but I’d be surprised if any job were 100% that and 0% algorithms.
- eru 4y ago
  They never asked the guy to 'invert a binary tree'. That was completely made up by him.
PathOfEclipse 4y ago
How do IQ tests discriminate by race? This is the first I've heard of it, and I don't believe it. https://www.quora.com/Are-IQ-tests-racist https://www.quora.com/Are-IQ-tests-racist There's some great answers there that are summarized as "no they are not". I am guessing you mean IQ tests discriminate by race in the sense that racial groups exhibit disparate outcomes on the tests. According to critical race theory, all disparate outcome is caused by racism, which would make IQ tests racist. Critical race theory is 100% wrong, of course, as are all the related intellectual disciplines that make the same false and unfounded claims. Unfortunately, this "invincible fallacy", as the great philosopher Thomas Sowell calls it, really seems invincible to facts, truth, and reality. It is a virus on our culture and societal consciousness. IQ tests don't discriminate by race. They discriminate by IQ. That's literally the point of the test. Race has nothing to do with it.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  > How do IQ tests discriminate by race? Like this: > I am guessing you mean IQ tests discriminate by race in the sense that racial groups exhibit disparate outcomes on the tests If you go to court trying to argue that your hiring and promotion system isn't racially biased and it merely exposed the truth of some racial groups being less intelligent than others, you're going to lose. It doesn't matter if you're factually correct, you're going to lose anyway and you'll probably be personally ruined for even attempting it.
  - PathOfEclipse 4y ago
    Surprisingly we can find some agreement in what you're saying, but I strongly believe you should reword your initial claim to something along the lines of: IQ tests have shown disparate results along racial lines, and based on U.S. judicial precedent, you can't use them in the hiring process without justification. I also think the precedent is either mostly wrong, or far too narrowly applied: https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2018/12/10/essay-how-employers-college-degree-requirements-can-harm-students https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2018/12/10/essay-how-em... If you argue IQ is unrelated to a job, could you not argue, in most cases, that college degrees are irrelevant to a job? There is definitely still massive disparate racial impact there. https://nces.ed.gov/FastFacts/display.asp?id=72 https://nces.ed.gov/FastFacts/display.asp?id=72 In fact, life has disparate impact. One of my favorite quotes on this subject is: "The tests are not unfair. LIFE is unfair and the tests measure the results." This is a great, though long, video, on the history of mainstream academic views on racial disparity and how it should be handled: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tx6TkC45y-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tx6TkC45y-A I wish everyone would watch it. I will provide one small excerpt from it: "a 10th century Muslim scholar noted that Europeans grow more pale the farther north you go, and also that the farther they are to the north the more stupid, gross, and brutish they are. However offensive this correlation between skin color and intellectual development may seem today, there is no reason in history to challenge it as an empirical generalization as of that particular time. Mediterranean Europe was more advanced than northern Europe for centuries beginning in ancient times when the Greeks and Romans laid many of the foundations of western civilization at a time when the peoples of Britain and Scandinavia lived in illiterate and far less advanced societies." At no point in history have any two racial groups performed identically, and, arguably 99% of the time, the reasons have little to do with racism or societal injustice. In the above excerpt, there was certainly no racism causing the peoples of northern and western Europe to lag behind other civilizations of the time. Nor was there racism involved when these civilizations eventually rose in power and prominence. In both cases, skin color could be used to make correlations, but clearly skin color had nothing to do with causation. My point is: if a policy or procedure has disparate racial impact, it is not, by default, racist, discriminatory, or even wrong in any way, I can see an argument against using IQ tests in hiring based on the belief that IQ is not directly correlated to job performance, but, you could also say the same thing about probably 90% of the things people use to discriminate between job applicants. And there is no need to invoke race in the discussion when making these arguments, or to use race as the forcing function to make it illegal. This same type of logic is used to say election security reform is racist or discriminatory. Well, really, just about every law is racist if you measure racism by disparate impact. Laws against murder certainly are racist by this criteria: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-6.xls https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-... But it's a flawed, broken, and dangerously incorrect way to think about discrimination, and I hope our judicial precedent eventually corrects itself to something more sensible.

sokoloff 4y ago

EEOC policy page: https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/employment-tests-and-selection-procedures https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/employment-tests-and-sele... The use of tests and other selection procedures can be a very effective means of determining which applicants or employees are most qualified for a particular job. However, use of these tools can violate the federal anti-discrimination laws if an employer intentionally uses them to discriminate based on race, color, sex, national origin, religion, disability, or age (40 or older). Use of tests and other selection procedures can also violate the federal anti-discrimination laws if they disproportionately exclude people in a particular group by race, sex, or another covered basis, unless the employer can justify the test or procedure under the law. That is not a categorical exclusion. Department of Labor Employers' Guide to Good Practice (2000, 29 years after Griggs): http://assessmentresources.pbworks.com/f/empTestAsse.pdf http://assessmentresources.pbworks.com/f/empTestAsse.pdf Similar language: One of the basic principles of the Uniform Guidelines is that it is unlawful to use a test or selection procedure that creates adverse impact, unless justified. Adverse impact occurs when there is a substantially different rate of selection in hiring, promotion, or other employment decisions that work to the disadvantage of members of a race, sex, or ethnic group.

lmkg 4y ago
Your understanding is technically correct but missing some nuance which is the heart of the matter. It's true the use of an IQ test can be justified. The important thing is that the use of an IQ test must be justified. Due to the Supreme Court ruling, IQ tests are assumed to have a disparate impact. They are by default assumed to be discriminatory unless proven otherwise. A company must either prove the lack of disparate impact, or demonstrate a plausible connection to work performance (beyond "smart = good"). Most hiring practices are default OK, and a claim of discrimination must be proven in court. This hiring practice has already been decided in court, so it is default not-OK and must be defended. That difference is significant.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  Indeed. They must be justified; they are not "verboten" as GP claimed.

throwaway09223 4y ago

This is really interesting to look at in the context of other hiring testing -- like Google's practice of asking silly abstract questions like "invert a binary tree" for jobs which do not involve substantial algorithmic work. eg: https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768 https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768

erik_seaberg 4y ago
Google doesn’t hire an ordinary dev for one specific job, they allow internal transfers and other teams expect you to meet the bar for your title. They do more useless protobuf schlepping by hand than they should, but I’d be surprised if any job were 100% that and 0% algorithms.
eru 4y ago
They never asked the guy to 'invert a binary tree'. That was completely made up by him.

PathOfEclipse 4y ago

How do IQ tests discriminate by race? This is the first I've heard of it, and I don't believe it. https://www.quora.com/Are-IQ-tests-racist https://www.quora.com/Are-IQ-tests-racist There's some great answers there that are summarized as "no they are not". I am guessing you mean IQ tests discriminate by race in the sense that racial groups exhibit disparate outcomes on the tests. According to critical race theory, all disparate outcome is caused by racism, which would make IQ tests racist. Critical race theory is 100% wrong, of course, as are all the related intellectual disciplines that make the same false and unfounded claims. Unfortunately, this "invincible fallacy", as the great philosopher Thomas Sowell calls it, really seems invincible to facts, truth, and reality. It is a virus on our culture and societal consciousness. IQ tests don't discriminate by race. They discriminate by IQ. That's literally the point of the test. Race has nothing to do with it.

MichaelCollins 4y ago
> How do IQ tests discriminate by race? Like this: > I am guessing you mean IQ tests discriminate by race in the sense that racial groups exhibit disparate outcomes on the tests If you go to court trying to argue that your hiring and promotion system isn't racially biased and it merely exposed the truth of some racial groups being less intelligent than others, you're going to lose. It doesn't matter if you're factually correct, you're going to lose anyway and you'll probably be personally ruined for even attempting it.
- PathOfEclipse 4y ago
  Surprisingly we can find some agreement in what you're saying, but I strongly believe you should reword your initial claim to something along the lines of: IQ tests have shown disparate results along racial lines, and based on U.S. judicial precedent, you can't use them in the hiring process without justification. I also think the precedent is either mostly wrong, or far too narrowly applied: https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2018/12/10/essay-how-employers-college-degree-requirements-can-harm-students https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2018/12/10/essay-how-em... If you argue IQ is unrelated to a job, could you not argue, in most cases, that college degrees are irrelevant to a job? There is definitely still massive disparate racial impact there. https://nces.ed.gov/FastFacts/display.asp?id=72 https://nces.ed.gov/FastFacts/display.asp?id=72 In fact, life has disparate impact. One of my favorite quotes on this subject is: "The tests are not unfair. LIFE is unfair and the tests measure the results." This is a great, though long, video, on the history of mainstream academic views on racial disparity and how it should be handled: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tx6TkC45y-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tx6TkC45y-A I wish everyone would watch it. I will provide one small excerpt from it: "a 10th century Muslim scholar noted that Europeans grow more pale the farther north you go, and also that the farther they are to the north the more stupid, gross, and brutish they are. However offensive this correlation between skin color and intellectual development may seem today, there is no reason in history to challenge it as an empirical generalization as of that particular time. Mediterranean Europe was more advanced than northern Europe for centuries beginning in ancient times when the Greeks and Romans laid many of the foundations of western civilization at a time when the peoples of Britain and Scandinavia lived in illiterate and far less advanced societies." At no point in history have any two racial groups performed identically, and, arguably 99% of the time, the reasons have little to do with racism or societal injustice. In the above excerpt, there was certainly no racism causing the peoples of northern and western Europe to lag behind other civilizations of the time. Nor was there racism involved when these civilizations eventually rose in power and prominence. In both cases, skin color could be used to make correlations, but clearly skin color had nothing to do with causation. My point is: if a policy or procedure has disparate racial impact, it is not, by default, racist, discriminatory, or even wrong in any way, I can see an argument against using IQ tests in hiring based on the belief that IQ is not directly correlated to job performance, but, you could also say the same thing about probably 90% of the things people use to discriminate between job applicants. And there is no need to invoke race in the discussion when making these arguments, or to use race as the forcing function to make it illegal. This same type of logic is used to say election security reform is racist or discriminatory. Well, really, just about every law is racist if you measure racism by disparate impact. Laws against murder certainly are racist by this criteria: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-6.xls https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-... But it's a flawed, broken, and dangerously incorrect way to think about discrimination, and I hope our judicial precedent eventually corrects itself to something more sensible.