You have misunderstood the point so badly it almost seems willful. The scale is already tipped; AA policies are an attempt to fix that, not to promote mediocrities.

For instance consider this work showing that, given the exact same resume, employers are less likely to call back applicants whose names sound black: https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/mar/15...

> The [identical] resumes with white-sounding names spurred 50 percent more callbacks than the ones with black-sounding names.

> After responding to 1,300 ads with more than 5,000 resumes, the researchers found that the job applicants with white names needed to send 10 resumes to get one callback, but the black candidate needed to send 15 for one.

> It didn’t matter whether the employer was a federal contractor or was described as an "equal opportunity employer," as those also discriminated like the others.

> "We find little evidence that our results are driven by employers inferring something other than race, such as social class, from the names," their paper states. "These results suggest that racial discrimination is still a prominent feature of the labor market."

I have actually read that paper and it is fairly old at this point, and other studies like it more recently have concluded different results.

While your quote mentions class, and asserts that they were not getting signals from class -- one look at the name list chosen for white people will show you how they did not properly control for class. For example they have almost no low class names on the white side. I am sure adding a Bo, Ada, Billy, Bucephelus, Cleatus or Clyde would have for sure changed the callback results on whites.

At the time the study was done I was working at a company that would have never posted a advertisement in a paper, but would have called every single last person both white and black back. The suggestion is that people who posted in papers might have been of a different age group and other means of replying to a job ad such as email at the time may have produced more balanced results.

There is also the issue of the name being disliked and not actually the perceived color of the person. Aversion to unfamiliar ethnic names is entirely different than hating black people. While it is will play out poorly for those with such names it does not guarantee that the same person with a different name would have experienced the same callback rate. This is a phenomena that transcends race. This also is probably a good time to point out assimilation is part of living in a mixed race society. If I recall correctly, the notion of black names started sometime after the 1960s. This happened more so in low-income racially divided areas. It was part of Afrocentrism. While there is nothing wrong with that in general, it can have unintended consequences that are not necessarily racially charged. Meanwhile other immigrants had taken on more traditionally American names, as a result those groups seemed to have done very well in the US (Asians). To keep it short, sometimes it does not pay to be unique.

But none of that matters, because I never claimed there was no discrimination. But I have repeatedly stated how to solve the problem without using more discrimination. That is to pump money and education efforts into low income areas. More aid to single parent families, access to computers (not just access, but actual computers in their names). Classes on personal finance, and dealing with money. Cultivating a notion of delayed gratification. Paid classes for low income parents to learn more about what they can do to make their child successful. Subsidized match savings accounts that are released in full on graduating high school. And 3 free meals at low income schools. I think it would also be interesting to see how to desegregate low income black schools from low income white schools. Don't forget the teachers! Competitive salaries that can support hiring the best of the teachers for these areas.

This is the key because it gives the kids real tools for life that will serve them regardless of how they are treated once they get out of school. A good education also helps with racism in general. If you look the people thinking about these issue and trying things are very educated. If you target poor areas with a relentless education effort both whites and non-whites will be educated, and in return lower the total racial tension, creating a new wave of diversity that will be a lasting one.

> There is also the issue of the name being disliked and not actually the perceived color of the person. Aversion to unfamiliar ethnic names is entirely different than hating black people. While it is will play out poorly for those with such names it does not guarantee that the same person with a different name would have experienced the same callback rate. This is a phenomena that transcends race. This also is probably a good time to point out assimilation is part of living in a mixed race society. If I recall correctly, the notion of black names started sometime after the 1960s. This happened more so in low-income racially divided areas. It was part of Afrocentrism. While there is nothing wrong with that in general, it can have unintended consequences that are not necessarily racially charged. Meanwhile other immigrants had taken on more traditionally American names, as a result those groups seemed to have done very well in the US (Asians). To keep it short, sometimes it does not pay to be unique.

In case you've forgotten, black people were brought to this country against their will and their culture, heritage, and genealogical record was deliberately destroyed. Choosing a black name is a small attempt to reverse that tremendous damage. To turn around and say that if they want to be successful they have to "assimilate" is to me a position that's indefensible. You may also remember that the position of black workers was actually not more equal before the 1960s.

I am also not very reassured to hear that maybe they're merely rejecting people with the wrong class background out of hand.

> But none of that matters, because I never claimed there was no discrimination. But I have repeatedly stated how to solve the problem without using more discrimination. That is to pump money and education efforts into low income areas. More aid to single parent families, access to computers (not just access, but actual computers in their names). Classes on personal finance, and dealing with money. Cultivating a notion of delayed gratification. Paid classes for low income parents to learn more about what they can do to make their child successful. Subsidized match savings accounts that are released in full on graduating high school. And 3 free meals at low income schools. I think it would also be interesting to see how to desegregate low income black schools from low income white schools. Don't forget the teachers! Competitive salaries that can support hiring the best of the teachers for these areas.

All these solutions presume the inferiority of black candidates when we're looking at the reality that identical credentials are less valued from black candidates. The idea that black people are uniquely lacking in "delayed gratification" is also bordering on offensive racist caricature.

It is all well and good to improve the schooling circumstances of black students, but it seems equally important to make it so black candidates do not have to be overwhelmingly superior to even be considered over white ones.

> black people were brought to this country against their will and their culture

This is a nice argument for maybe the first few generations, but all of us, you and me and everybody had no choice where we were born even what color we are. People get shuffled and moved around this earth for all sorts of misfortunate reasons. You also have to deal with the fact that there has been voluntary immigration of blacks since slavery. I was just reading how more sub-Saharan immigrants have came to the US since slavery than the entirety of those shipped here by slave traders. Much of the renewed culture has been attributed to those with a choice and fresh connections to Africa.

> I am also not very reassured to hear that maybe they're merely rejecting people with the wrong class background out of hand.

Nobody said it was good that anybody would do it, but it is entirely different problem that is not racism, and something that is within the power of change. A person can't change his skin color to get a better chance at a job, but a person can change their name. This goes for people of all color born with a name that does not perform as well. A white Harvard grad with the name Butkiss is likely going to have trouble true. The point is discrimination on immutable characteristics is what we are fighting here.

> All these solutions presume the inferiority of black candidates when we're looking at the reality that identical credentials are less valued from black candidates. The idea that black people are uniquely lacking in "delayed gratification" is also bordering on offensive racist caricature.

Please go read my comment again. My solutions are applied to the poor, not by race, that is my entire point. Fix the poor problem and the race issues described in this thread go away. Why? Because we will have more people educated, including whites that may have grown up to be racist or at least had bias tendencies. Affirmative action is like taking pain killers for a curable problem. Educating the masses and raising the bar for all is the actual cure. I feel you have grossly interpret something from my comments that is totally off basis. The ability to display delayed gratification is one of the biggest indicators of future success in life, and it is something that is probably not taught by the parents of the poor, I know it was not in my household. No assumption about the candidates were being made at all, although many have suggested considering a lower marked minority over a higher marked white person. I don't make derogatory generalization about any group identified by a immutable characteristic. The only sensible thing to do when two candidates who are equally qualified for a position is simply flip a coin. This would remove any bias and over time have a more natural result in what you are attempting to achieve.

> It is all well and good to improve the schooling circumstances of black students, but it seems equally important to make it so black candidates do not have to be overwhelmingly superior to even be considered over white ones.

Again, I said poor, not black students, poor. I am not concerned with the candidates. Quite simply if a qualified black candidate does not get the job because of his race then that is discrimination and should be dealt with, there are means to do so already in place. I am 100% on board with everybody having an equal opportunity. If you can show that somebody is selecting one candidate over another based on things like color (especially to underrepresented people), then we should be going after them full force and ensuring they correct their hiring processes. You simply can't create a right with two wrongs. Once you give people the power to discriminate it is hard to go back.

Nobody should ever not get a job because they had the wrong skin color, and when you say chose somebody based off skin color you are ensuring the number of people who don't get a job because of their skin color goes, not down. We should be striving to remove race based decisions from our society not adding them.

If you think everything is dandy if people don't get jobs because their names sound too poor or too ethnic then we just don't share the same basic worldview.

You are being completely dishonest. Don't put words in my mouth. I never said such a thing or implied it.

All I am doing is pointing out the difference between that and selcting somebody based off color.

This is the second time you have resorted to paiting a dishonest view of me instead of attacking my points...

I don't see what the difference is. Even if the intent of binning "Jamal's" resume and keeping "Jake's" isn't overtly racist the effect is obviously discriminatory.

You are right, the result may be the same. But it is important to properly label and address the issues.

This is part of the entire issue as a whole. And partly why I think the there are better solutions to the problem. Intent matters. If you apply a race based solution to a problem that was incorrectly identified as a race based issue it is sure to fail. You could call it discriminatory but the entire selection process is just that. What I think we all care about is why a given individual was chosen or not.

In a attempt to maybe find some common ground. How would you feel about this solution be applied at the end of the pipeline; What if when there are two or more candidates with the same qualifications, the candidate is randomly selected? This will remove any bias by the selector, and over time would ensure diversity would result in matching the local population.

I also figured out why I have such a hard time with blindly selecting a given race in terms of programming. No pun intended, it creates a race condition. In your scenario if a white person and a black person always submitted their resume, and the black person is always selected then then white person might apply to 100 jobs and get selected, if it so happens that 100 black people also applied with the same qualifications. Because there is no global accounting system per individual this very well can happen, and has happened, and is the exact thing we are trying to solve. Nobody can guarantee there will be a scenario when this white person will submit a resume indefinitely and indefinitely not get selected because of the rule of always selecting a minority over a white person. This is why I suggest adding a bit of randomness to it.

So today we have have broken code, we can fix it, but we should fix it with more correct code, not more broken code.

> What I think we all care about is why a given individual was chosen or not.

This presumption of yours is presumably why I'm not making any sense to you. I don't really think it's relevant whether someone is consciously choosing to discriminate on the basis of race or doing so unwittingly. Many -- probably even most -- racist outcomes we see do not require overt, intentional racism. Instead they come from unexamined and subconscious bias in circumstances where the judgement is subjective enough that it's possible for the person making it to fool themselves and others about what they're really doing. That's an improvement over open, unabashed racism, but I don't think we can stop there and say we're delivering anything resembling fairness. Having an aesthetic distaste for cornrows or the name Lakeisha is one of the least subtle examples of this happening.

> In a attempt to maybe find some common ground. How would you feel about this solution be applied at the end of the pipeline; What if when there are two or more candidates with the same qualifications, the candidate is randomly selected? This will remove any bias by the selector, and over time would ensure diversity would result in matching the local population.

In real-world scenarios you never have two completely identical candidates. What John Dovidio has shown is that in these circumstances people doing the judging have a strong tendency to decide which criteria to weigh most heavily in a way that, in effect, favors the white candidate in any given instance where both candidates are plausible. I don't think you can fix this solely by changing the interviewing process except, maybe, by the kind of extremely rigid and uniform government job interviewing process everyone talks about hating.

> racist outcomes

Its not racist if race was not the driving factor. I think that is the big part of why there is so much push back. On this topic. You appear to be viewing the outcome as raciest, but are not willing to see how other factors may result in the same outcome. You have to understand how the outcomes came about to being to fix it. I agree that there is discrimination and much of it can be caused by subconscious bias. To repeat, assuming the cause based off the outcome is completely incorrect. I do agree that people are and can be doing exactly what you are saying, but it is hard to prove and not what is happening in every case.

It is completely bad logic to assume racism is occurring because the results are what one might expect had it occurred. You MUST understand the dynamics before prescribing a solution.

> In real-world scenarios you never have two completely identical candidates.

I had a feeling you might say something like this, but I was hoping you could see past my simple example. When I say same qualifications I mean a range that is acceptable for the position at hand. Lets say we had a scale of 1 to 10 for a marking system. And we have a job that requires between 7 and 9. We would randomly select all candidates matching who were marked between 7 and 9. But you do bring a problem I had thought about and why I hate mucking with the hiring process at all, is the judging system. I think you are suggesting that the judges will rank a group more poorly thus wont fit the bracket and thus wont get the job -- thus we must select the underrepresented person by default. If that is the case, then why have a rank at all, you seem to simply say if underrepresented person applies they must be hired, because the person judging the candidates for rank will give the underrepresented person lower marks, and not get the job. I don't think this is the case but there is a solution to make sure it is that still allows for random selection on equally ranked Canada's. That is simply companies must keep a record of rankings and document their decision's why they chose who they chose for a given job position. These records can be audited at any time.

If you are dead set on the only solution is that a underrepresented person must always be selected over a white person then I think we are done, and I don't think we are going to changes each other's minds. I would be interested in any other solutions you might have. While I have more ideas, I feel that I have already struck out with you and can't put any more effort into this.

I don't agree with your definition of "racism" here. If it's racially discriminatory in effect, by my reckoning, it's racist, even if no actor has racist intent.

In the question of hiring, what I most favor is measures to reward the hiring of a diverse workforce as a countervailing force to structural forces that lead to racist outcomes. I feel this would work better than trying to impose some method of hiring. This is not really that different from Affirmative Action, which of course does not actually prescribe that minority candidates most always be selected.