4 ms·

Problem is if the talent pool is not heterogenous, for a litany of historical reasons, a hiring manager becomes tasked with waiting around for a candidate that

Problem is if the talent pool is not heterogenous, for a litany of historical reasons, a hiring manager becomes tasked with waiting around for a candidate that meets a race quota, which one might consider exactly as racist as maintaining a race status quo.

shakna 1y ago
Thankfully "race quotas" are not the only DEI hiring practice. Things like removing names from CVs are fairly effective at fighting bias.
- winrid 1y ago
  I'm perfectly fine with that.
acdha 1y ago
I haven’t seen DEI programs which set “race quotas”. It was things like making sure they did outreach to wider groups, had job requirements which matched the work, and made efforts to avoid nebulous “culture fit” judgements which tended to cut against people who weren’t like the existing employees (this often benefits even white guys if, for example, it avoids age discrimination or lower ratings for someone who goes home to their family after work instead of grabbing beers with the other 20-something single people).
- RHSeeger 1y ago
  Honestly, it feels like you're not looking, then. Because most DEI programs push to have a balance of minorities in employees. And, if the available pool consists of mainly the majority, that means you need to negatively impact an individual from the majority to hire the individual from a minority. However, it is best for society to do this. Because it is best for society if all groups are starting from the same point; and that means we need to give a leg up to the groups that are currently being pushed down by the system.
  - mmooss 1y ago
    > if the available pool consists of mainly the majority The available talent pool is usually defined by the personal/professional networks of the people doing the hiring, and since the hirers are almost all white, so is the talent pool. The point is to find more talent - much more - that is not in the current 'pool', to expand the networks. > you need to negatively impact an individual from the majority to hire the individual from a minority. The racist competition for survival is the hallmark of the propaganda of racists. It's just a fair competition - do you want minorities excluded from competing for the job? Do you want a handout? When baseball in the US ended the color line, and allowed black and latino and other athletes to compete for the same jobs as white athletes, were they 'negatively impacting' some white athletes? I guess that's literally true, but do you really think they should have continued to receive 'affirmative action for white people', which is what hiring was and in many ways still is?
    - RHSeeger 1y ago
      > The point is to find more talent - much more - that is not in the current 'pool', to expand the networks. That won't solve the problem. If most Minority-X are born poorer than Majority, then they will have access to a lesser set of opportunities. Less ability to do well in school. Less ability to go to college. Less ability to do well in college. Fewer contacts made through parents. The list goes on an on. And, because of that, the number of individuals in Minority-X that enter the workforce with the same experience and schooling as Majority is much lower. So the pool of people to choose from is skewed towards Majority. The only realistic solution to this (that's been put forth/tried) is to artificially boost the ability of members of Minority-X to have access to opportunities. Which means there's more members of Minority-X going to school, and doing well, and to college, and so on, and so on. And once the pools start to even out, the artificial boosts are no longer necessary. Just "expanding your network to people you don't normally interact with" isn't enough, because even the complete pool of _everyone_ that's qualified for a give thing is still biased toward the majority.
      - mmooss 1y ago
        I agree to a great extent, though I think it's a matter of misunderstanding between us: We need to expend the networks from the beginning of that pipeline to the end, not just when Corp Z is hiring senior engineers. Colleges need to expand their networks. There's research showing that plenty of disadvantaged kids who could go to elite schools don't apply simply because they don't know what the value is or which schools to apply to. They go to the local college in town. And you also have a good point: Kids don't go to bad local schools because of a social network, but because the schools are underresourced. We need to boost the resources of those schools. And that is tough to do unless the people in those schools have political power (for two reasons: For leverage, and because only the locals understand what they need). So political representation needs to be boosted. And the ideal that all these things will happen doesn't often work out, and we can't ask these kids to wait for this ideal world - it will soon be too late. So we need to provide some artificial help so they can have resources and power and improve those schools, get access to good colleges, etc. ...
- dgfitz 1y ago
  It’s a step before that. Colleges have DEI quotas, which is the mindset that is ingrained before graduation. It just carries over, even if it isn’t actually relevant at an employer. We have very effectively “educated the shit out of our kids” for decades about this. Education works, I guess?
  - mmooss 1y ago
    > We have very effectively “educated the shit out of our kids” for decades about this. Maybe kids and others who disagree with you aren't indoctrinated, but form their own opinions, and the great majority have seen the research (in college) and the very obvious reality, and concluded there is discrimination. I don't know how you can say otherwise in the face of reality. 'Decades' ago there was even more open racism. It didn't take much education to say that white-only hotels and restaurants, and lynchings indicated there was racism. Many people today, since 2016, openly embrace racism. What do you say to them?
    - dgfitz 1y ago
      Sincerely, I have no idea how to respond to any of that. I’m kind of at a loss… hasn’t the messaging been that it takes a generation or so to make an effective change in the mindset of a population? Aren’t we bearing the fruits of that?
      - mmooss 1y ago
        > hasn’t the messaging been that it takes a generation or so to make an effective change in the mindset of a population? Aren’t we bearing the fruits of that? I'm not quite sure what you mean here. Do you mean, it's not changing faster because it takes a generation? The US has been addressing racism for many generations; the civil rights era - which was not the start of the issue - peaked in the 1960s. The US had the Abolitionist movement in the 19th century and maybe before. The US Civil War was in the 19th century.
aorloff 1y ago
This is the mental trap the right wing wants you to fall into. It is not "as racist" because we didn't just magically arrive into this moment.

shakna 1y ago

Thankfully "race quotas" are not the only DEI hiring practice. Things like removing names from CVs are fairly effective at fighting bias.

winrid 1y ago
I'm perfectly fine with that.

acdha 1y ago

I haven’t seen DEI programs which set “race quotas”. It was things like making sure they did outreach to wider groups, had job requirements which matched the work, and made efforts to avoid nebulous “culture fit” judgements which tended to cut against people who weren’t like the existing employees (this often benefits even white guys if, for example, it avoids age discrimination or lower ratings for someone who goes home to their family after work instead of grabbing beers with the other 20-something single people).

RHSeeger 1y ago
Honestly, it feels like you're not looking, then. Because most DEI programs push to have a balance of minorities in employees. And, if the available pool consists of mainly the majority, that means you need to negatively impact an individual from the majority to hire the individual from a minority. However, it is best for society to do this. Because it is best for society if all groups are starting from the same point; and that means we need to give a leg up to the groups that are currently being pushed down by the system.
- mmooss 1y ago
  > if the available pool consists of mainly the majority The available talent pool is usually defined by the personal/professional networks of the people doing the hiring, and since the hirers are almost all white, so is the talent pool. The point is to find more talent - much more - that is not in the current 'pool', to expand the networks. > you need to negatively impact an individual from the majority to hire the individual from a minority. The racist competition for survival is the hallmark of the propaganda of racists. It's just a fair competition - do you want minorities excluded from competing for the job? Do you want a handout? When baseball in the US ended the color line, and allowed black and latino and other athletes to compete for the same jobs as white athletes, were they 'negatively impacting' some white athletes? I guess that's literally true, but do you really think they should have continued to receive 'affirmative action for white people', which is what hiring was and in many ways still is?
  - RHSeeger 1y ago
    > The point is to find more talent - much more - that is not in the current 'pool', to expand the networks. That won't solve the problem. If most Minority-X are born poorer than Majority, then they will have access to a lesser set of opportunities. Less ability to do well in school. Less ability to go to college. Less ability to do well in college. Fewer contacts made through parents. The list goes on an on. And, because of that, the number of individuals in Minority-X that enter the workforce with the same experience and schooling as Majority is much lower. So the pool of people to choose from is skewed towards Majority. The only realistic solution to this (that's been put forth/tried) is to artificially boost the ability of members of Minority-X to have access to opportunities. Which means there's more members of Minority-X going to school, and doing well, and to college, and so on, and so on. And once the pools start to even out, the artificial boosts are no longer necessary. Just "expanding your network to people you don't normally interact with" isn't enough, because even the complete pool of _everyone_ that's qualified for a give thing is still biased toward the majority.
    - mmooss 1y ago
      I agree to a great extent, though I think it's a matter of misunderstanding between us: We need to expend the networks from the beginning of that pipeline to the end, not just when Corp Z is hiring senior engineers. Colleges need to expand their networks. There's research showing that plenty of disadvantaged kids who could go to elite schools don't apply simply because they don't know what the value is or which schools to apply to. They go to the local college in town. And you also have a good point: Kids don't go to bad local schools because of a social network, but because the schools are underresourced. We need to boost the resources of those schools. And that is tough to do unless the people in those schools have political power (for two reasons: For leverage, and because only the locals understand what they need). So political representation needs to be boosted. And the ideal that all these things will happen doesn't often work out, and we can't ask these kids to wait for this ideal world - it will soon be too late. So we need to provide some artificial help so they can have resources and power and improve those schools, get access to good colleges, etc. ...
dgfitz 1y ago
It’s a step before that. Colleges have DEI quotas, which is the mindset that is ingrained before graduation. It just carries over, even if it isn’t actually relevant at an employer. We have very effectively “educated the shit out of our kids” for decades about this. Education works, I guess?
- mmooss 1y ago
  > We have very effectively “educated the shit out of our kids” for decades about this. Maybe kids and others who disagree with you aren't indoctrinated, but form their own opinions, and the great majority have seen the research (in college) and the very obvious reality, and concluded there is discrimination. I don't know how you can say otherwise in the face of reality. 'Decades' ago there was even more open racism. It didn't take much education to say that white-only hotels and restaurants, and lynchings indicated there was racism. Many people today, since 2016, openly embrace racism. What do you say to them?
  - dgfitz 1y ago
    Sincerely, I have no idea how to respond to any of that. I’m kind of at a loss… hasn’t the messaging been that it takes a generation or so to make an effective change in the mindset of a population? Aren’t we bearing the fruits of that?
    - mmooss 1y ago
      > hasn’t the messaging been that it takes a generation or so to make an effective change in the mindset of a population? Aren’t we bearing the fruits of that? I'm not quite sure what you mean here. Do you mean, it's not changing faster because it takes a generation? The US has been addressing racism for many generations; the civil rights era - which was not the start of the issue - peaked in the 1960s. The US had the Abolitionist movement in the 19th century and maybe before. The US Civil War was in the 19th century.

aorloff 1y ago

This is the mental trap the right wing wants you to fall into. It is not "as racist" because we didn't just magically arrive into this moment.