4 ms·

Equity doesn't mean that though. There are people (like the current president) who certainly have something to gain from selling you that bridge, but no one I k

Equity doesn't mean that though. There are people (like the current president) who certainly have something to gain from selling you that bridge, but no one I know who works in or advocates for "equity" initiatives considers them to advocate for token or diversity hires. Have you considered that your sources of data may be biased? Consider, for example that need-based scholarships are perhaps one of the clearest examples of a equitable, but explicitly unequal program. Should they be removed, or perhaps is there some legitimacy to this "equity" thing?

Manuel_D 2y ago
> Consider, for example that need-based scholarships are perhaps one of the clearest examples of a equitable, but explicitly unequal program. Should they be removed, or perhaps is there some legitimacy to this "equity" thing? That's discrimination on the basis of income, which is legal. Discrimination on the basis of race and gender is not. All of the DEI programs I've seen have focused on equity with respect to race and gender. And 3 out of 4 companies I've worked at employed discrimination to that end. Plenty of people have seen their employers adopt discriminatory practices in pursuit of equity. Condescending towards people and insisting that they're being misled about DEI is not a good way to defend it when loads of people have witnessed discrimination carried out under DEI programs firsthand. While I respect that none of your experiences with DEI involved discrimination, I urge you to meet other people who've had different experiences with the same respect.
- joshuamorton 2y ago
  I want to break down this post a bit, because this topic is often divisive and I'm aiming to be constructive. So, the question I asked, "Is there some legitimacy to this equity thing", and the question you chose to answer, which as best as I can tell is "Is racial discrimination legal?". Those aren't the same question and I don't think conflating them is constructive. I'm not arguing that companies can do harmful things in the name of diversity. But the goal of equitable outcomes being worthwhile is independent from anyone's feelings about the legitimacy of any particular approach to meeting that goal, and that's what I asked about, and what you didn't reply to. I'd ask you to consider why. Reading some of your other posts on the topic, you keep quoting a "3/4" statistic, and you've described different practices when asked to describe what they were you've described: - Explicit racial and gender quotas in headcount (which are flatly illegal and so I doubt) - Hiring goals in OKRS (which aren't inherently discriminatory, and probably weren't achieved!) - Giving candidates multiple attempts on interviews in certain cases - Requiring a certain number of underrepresented candidates to be offered interviews before the candidate can be picked I want to dig into this last one, because in my experience, this is somewhat common, but only with executive hiring, where often roles aren't open for public application, and this forces executive search companies to make a modicum of additional effort to source and provide diverse candidates to the hiring company. This has, in some cases I've seen, also resulted in executive level positions having open public job postings. I also want to dig in to something you said in another comment, because I think you're using discrimination in a particular way that's not how most people think of it. Phrased more forcefully, the definition of "racial discrimination" you appear to be using and considering harmful includes practices that are both generally considered legal and generally considered moral. > Not every form of discrimination involves lowering hiring standards. For instance, imagine I flip a coin whenever a Catholic candidate applies. Tails, their resume goes into the garbage bin, heads and their application process as normal. Does this lower lower hiring standards for non Catholics? No. Does this advantage non-Catholics over Catholic candidates? Yes. It would halve the hiring rate of Catholics, though it doesn't result in any "lowering the bar". So, I agree that this would lower the hiring rate of Catholics, but under this definition, ending this (clearly) discriminatory practice would lower the hiring rate of non-catholics. If your metric is "it is discriminatory if it harms the hiring rate of some group", then you've created an explicitly zero-sum definition of discrimination, and anything that reduces discrimination against some group causes discrimination against another. In doing so you've baked in an assumption about the correctness of the methodology at some particular time and place that you're measuring against. You can call that discrimination, and I actually do in a lot of circumstances, but it isn't bad. It's actually a good thing, and we recognize that in a lot of circumstances that discrimination in pursuit of equity is moral and legal and even necessary! Outside the US, for example, there are explicit racial quotas in a lot of situations, for example in New Zealand[0] there are explicit quotas in parliament to ensure continued native representation, and India has quota systems to help support lower caste individuals in opposition to active discrimination in society by upper-caste folks. Even in the US, Due to the 1965 Voting Rights Act [1], ensuring representation of minority groups and actively "discriminating" in district drawing to ensure minority representation is both legal and in some cases required. And while the supreme court has defanged the voting rights act in recent years, it still recognizes that looking at race explicitly as part of disparate impact tests makes sense in many cases. So while I do in fact meet with and talk with lots of people who have different experiences, I urge you to do the same: consider if your interpretation of what is harmful discrimination is in line with common use. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C4%81ori_electorates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C4%81ori_electorates [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - Manuel_D 2y ago
    There is no zero sum of discrimination. In the above example, removing the coin-toss for Catholics removes the discrimination against Catholics, but does not add any discrimination against other groups. Your example of India's caste based affirmative action is a good one. In fact, one of my past employers replicated it: we reserved a segment of engineering headcount for women, much in the same vein as India's reservation system with respect to caste. However, this is illegal in the US, but the company was confident that non-discrimination laws wouldn't be enforced when the victims were men. Though as of the last election, companies seem to recognize that this non-enforcement is a thing of the past. The 3 out of 4 data point is my firsthand experience with my previous employer's DEI practices. Out of the 4 companies I've worked at, 3 employed DEI practices that are overtly discriminatory. So understand that when you write about how discriminatory DEI practices are myth, people such as myself have firsthand experience to the contrary. You're asking people to disbelieve their own lying eyes, when you insist that the notion that DEI involves discrimination is misinformation. Equity requires discrimination, since almost no outcomes are perfectly equal across demographics. Achieving an equitable gender representation of pediatricians requires discriminating against female pediatricians. Achieving an equitable gender representation of software developers requires discrimination against male developers. My use of the word "discrimination" is squarely in line with common use: does a policy discriminate on the basis of protected class? If so it's discrimination. Reserving headcount for one gender, even if it's done to push gender representation closer to 50/50, is discrimination. The notion that discrimination isn't discrimination when it's perpetrated against "non-diverse" groups is not in line with the common use of the term.
    - joshuamorton 2y ago
      > There is no zero sum of discrimination. In the above example, removing the coin-toss for Catholics removes the discrimination against Catholics, but does not add any discrimination against other groups. I want to clarify, because I see an inconsistency here. You say that preventing Catholic resumes from getting thrown out solely on the basis of race, is not discrimination and a good thing, and I agree. But elsewhere, you've said that changing hiring processes to ensure that URM and women are searched out and interviewed, is bad discrimination. The same action, ensuring fair access to the pipeline, is in your opinion non-discriminatory (and legal) when it helps theoretical Catholic people, but is discriminatory and illegal when it benefits women and racial minorities. I'm calling this out for two reasons, one because I want you to consider and reflect on this inconsistency, and two, to point this out to others reading and engaging, because insisting that we're asking you to disbelieve your own eyes does feel compelling, but less so when it appears very apparent that objectively, you're perception is colored by bias. > So understand that when you write about how discriminatory DEI practices are myth, people such as myself have firsthand experience to the contrary. I want to clarify, I've never said anything like this. My comments are pointing out an objection to your understanding of the word equity and how you interpret it. I've been fairly consistent about this, and you continue to avoid that and make more sweeping objections and statements about programs and your experiences, which may or may not be true but aren't actually relevant to the central question I'm asking, which is "Can equitable programs be good?" > Equity requires discrimination, since almost no outcomes are perfectly equal across demographics. I'm also going to call this out yet again, because it's the objection I made at the beginning of this thread. So I'll outline it yet again because you avoided it twice now: I consider need based financial aid to be an equitable program, specifically because it takes into account the circumstances of the individuals. It does not require or make any assumptions about outcomes being equivalent. What it avoids doing is making the assumption that giving all people the same treatment (the same price) is the best approach. Do you disagree, and if so where? Now I could agree that it requires discrimination based on financial status, but that is an input to the system, not an output (both in individual cases, and in aggregate). Where I disagree is that equity requires some assumption that outcomes are perfectly equal across demographics. I think that if you believe that, it makes perfect sense to oppose such programs, but I also believe that the people doing most equity work don't believe that, and it is primarily opponents of the programs that push such narratives. > My use of the word "discrimination" is squarely in line with common use: does a policy discriminate on the basis of protected class? You're using the word in its definition. And much like in this case, you've conflated what I'd describe as "unlawful discrimination" that violates the Civil Rights Act and "immoral discrimination" that may or may not break laws but is a bad thing, and "discrimination" that may in fact be a good thing but is predicated on recognizing differences between groups elsewhere in your responses, and it muddles the points that I think you're trying to make. I'd agree that equitable programs require discrimination in that third sense, but I disagree that such discrimination is necessarily unlawful or immoral, and I'll yet again point to the example of need based financial aid as an explicitly legal, moral, equitable category of program.

Manuel_D 2y ago

> Consider, for example that need-based scholarships are perhaps one of the clearest examples of a equitable, but explicitly unequal program. Should they be removed, or perhaps is there some legitimacy to this "equity" thing? That's discrimination on the basis of income, which is legal. Discrimination on the basis of race and gender is not. All of the DEI programs I've seen have focused on equity with respect to race and gender. And 3 out of 4 companies I've worked at employed discrimination to that end. Plenty of people have seen their employers adopt discriminatory practices in pursuit of equity. Condescending towards people and insisting that they're being misled about DEI is not a good way to defend it when loads of people have witnessed discrimination carried out under DEI programs firsthand. While I respect that none of your experiences with DEI involved discrimination, I urge you to meet other people who've had different experiences with the same respect.

joshuamorton 2y ago
I want to break down this post a bit, because this topic is often divisive and I'm aiming to be constructive. So, the question I asked, "Is there some legitimacy to this equity thing", and the question you chose to answer, which as best as I can tell is "Is racial discrimination legal?". Those aren't the same question and I don't think conflating them is constructive. I'm not arguing that companies can do harmful things in the name of diversity. But the goal of equitable outcomes being worthwhile is independent from anyone's feelings about the legitimacy of any particular approach to meeting that goal, and that's what I asked about, and what you didn't reply to. I'd ask you to consider why. Reading some of your other posts on the topic, you keep quoting a "3/4" statistic, and you've described different practices when asked to describe what they were you've described: - Explicit racial and gender quotas in headcount (which are flatly illegal and so I doubt) - Hiring goals in OKRS (which aren't inherently discriminatory, and probably weren't achieved!) - Giving candidates multiple attempts on interviews in certain cases - Requiring a certain number of underrepresented candidates to be offered interviews before the candidate can be picked I want to dig into this last one, because in my experience, this is somewhat common, but only with executive hiring, where often roles aren't open for public application, and this forces executive search companies to make a modicum of additional effort to source and provide diverse candidates to the hiring company. This has, in some cases I've seen, also resulted in executive level positions having open public job postings. I also want to dig in to something you said in another comment, because I think you're using discrimination in a particular way that's not how most people think of it. Phrased more forcefully, the definition of "racial discrimination" you appear to be using and considering harmful includes practices that are both generally considered legal and generally considered moral. > Not every form of discrimination involves lowering hiring standards. For instance, imagine I flip a coin whenever a Catholic candidate applies. Tails, their resume goes into the garbage bin, heads and their application process as normal. Does this lower lower hiring standards for non Catholics? No. Does this advantage non-Catholics over Catholic candidates? Yes. It would halve the hiring rate of Catholics, though it doesn't result in any "lowering the bar". So, I agree that this would lower the hiring rate of Catholics, but under this definition, ending this (clearly) discriminatory practice would lower the hiring rate of non-catholics. If your metric is "it is discriminatory if it harms the hiring rate of some group", then you've created an explicitly zero-sum definition of discrimination, and anything that reduces discrimination against some group causes discrimination against another. In doing so you've baked in an assumption about the correctness of the methodology at some particular time and place that you're measuring against. You can call that discrimination, and I actually do in a lot of circumstances, but it isn't bad. It's actually a good thing, and we recognize that in a lot of circumstances that discrimination in pursuit of equity is moral and legal and even necessary! Outside the US, for example, there are explicit racial quotas in a lot of situations, for example in New Zealand[0] there are explicit quotas in parliament to ensure continued native representation, and India has quota systems to help support lower caste individuals in opposition to active discrimination in society by upper-caste folks. Even in the US, Due to the 1965 Voting Rights Act [1], ensuring representation of minority groups and actively "discriminating" in district drawing to ensure minority representation is both legal and in some cases required. And while the supreme court has defanged the voting rights act in recent years, it still recognizes that looking at race explicitly as part of disparate impact tests makes sense in many cases. So while I do in fact meet with and talk with lots of people who have different experiences, I urge you to do the same: consider if your interpretation of what is harmful discrimination is in line with common use. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C4%81ori_electorates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C4%81ori_electorates [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Manuel_D 2y ago
  There is no zero sum of discrimination. In the above example, removing the coin-toss for Catholics removes the discrimination against Catholics, but does not add any discrimination against other groups. Your example of India's caste based affirmative action is a good one. In fact, one of my past employers replicated it: we reserved a segment of engineering headcount for women, much in the same vein as India's reservation system with respect to caste. However, this is illegal in the US, but the company was confident that non-discrimination laws wouldn't be enforced when the victims were men. Though as of the last election, companies seem to recognize that this non-enforcement is a thing of the past. The 3 out of 4 data point is my firsthand experience with my previous employer's DEI practices. Out of the 4 companies I've worked at, 3 employed DEI practices that are overtly discriminatory. So understand that when you write about how discriminatory DEI practices are myth, people such as myself have firsthand experience to the contrary. You're asking people to disbelieve their own lying eyes, when you insist that the notion that DEI involves discrimination is misinformation. Equity requires discrimination, since almost no outcomes are perfectly equal across demographics. Achieving an equitable gender representation of pediatricians requires discriminating against female pediatricians. Achieving an equitable gender representation of software developers requires discrimination against male developers. My use of the word "discrimination" is squarely in line with common use: does a policy discriminate on the basis of protected class? If so it's discrimination. Reserving headcount for one gender, even if it's done to push gender representation closer to 50/50, is discrimination. The notion that discrimination isn't discrimination when it's perpetrated against "non-diverse" groups is not in line with the common use of the term.
  - joshuamorton 2y ago
    > There is no zero sum of discrimination. In the above example, removing the coin-toss for Catholics removes the discrimination against Catholics, but does not add any discrimination against other groups. I want to clarify, because I see an inconsistency here. You say that preventing Catholic resumes from getting thrown out solely on the basis of race, is not discrimination and a good thing, and I agree. But elsewhere, you've said that changing hiring processes to ensure that URM and women are searched out and interviewed, is bad discrimination. The same action, ensuring fair access to the pipeline, is in your opinion non-discriminatory (and legal) when it helps theoretical Catholic people, but is discriminatory and illegal when it benefits women and racial minorities. I'm calling this out for two reasons, one because I want you to consider and reflect on this inconsistency, and two, to point this out to others reading and engaging, because insisting that we're asking you to disbelieve your own eyes does feel compelling, but less so when it appears very apparent that objectively, you're perception is colored by bias. > So understand that when you write about how discriminatory DEI practices are myth, people such as myself have firsthand experience to the contrary. I want to clarify, I've never said anything like this. My comments are pointing out an objection to your understanding of the word equity and how you interpret it. I've been fairly consistent about this, and you continue to avoid that and make more sweeping objections and statements about programs and your experiences, which may or may not be true but aren't actually relevant to the central question I'm asking, which is "Can equitable programs be good?" > Equity requires discrimination, since almost no outcomes are perfectly equal across demographics. I'm also going to call this out yet again, because it's the objection I made at the beginning of this thread. So I'll outline it yet again because you avoided it twice now: I consider need based financial aid to be an equitable program, specifically because it takes into account the circumstances of the individuals. It does not require or make any assumptions about outcomes being equivalent. What it avoids doing is making the assumption that giving all people the same treatment (the same price) is the best approach. Do you disagree, and if so where? Now I could agree that it requires discrimination based on financial status, but that is an input to the system, not an output (both in individual cases, and in aggregate). Where I disagree is that equity requires some assumption that outcomes are perfectly equal across demographics. I think that if you believe that, it makes perfect sense to oppose such programs, but I also believe that the people doing most equity work don't believe that, and it is primarily opponents of the programs that push such narratives. > My use of the word "discrimination" is squarely in line with common use: does a policy discriminate on the basis of protected class? You're using the word in its definition. And much like in this case, you've conflated what I'd describe as "unlawful discrimination" that violates the Civil Rights Act and "immoral discrimination" that may or may not break laws but is a bad thing, and "discrimination" that may in fact be a good thing but is predicated on recognizing differences between groups elsewhere in your responses, and it muddles the points that I think you're trying to make. I'd agree that equitable programs require discrimination in that third sense, but I disagree that such discrimination is necessarily unlawful or immoral, and I'll yet again point to the example of need based financial aid as an explicitly legal, moral, equitable category of program.