From my perspective what makes sense is we have large groups of people that believe diversity as defined by certain attributes is important. We also have large groups of people that don't. And both groups have some good and some poor reasons for their beliefs. Both "sides" are legit. So how do we reconcile this?
To me, the most agreeable aspect of each side is that:
1) We live in a diverse society whether we like it or not, which has a history of certain exclusion and we should try and improve on that to make all of our lives more peaceful.
2) Not everyone has an advantage or disadvantage because of certain immutable attributes and we should be conscious of this as well. Social engineering is less engineering than politics.
The idealist approach is to optimize one way or the other; mainly for political reasons which results in resentment and bitterness. The pragmatic approach is to try and create a system that is defensible one way or another - even if it is flawed in both regards. The perfect system is impossible anyhow and a matter of opinion.
So, you design a system that takes into account both points above. You ensure you interview across certain enumerative attributes generally agreed upon as important. But you don't optimize across it as it can turn into an exclusionary system in its own right with awful side effects such as legit resentment, meritless and simply political. You don't exclude any of the apparent important diversity attributes - they all are important. You also create a reasonable metric around what this means. This ensures you, in some way, have at least given the opportunity to a vast range of of people. It doesn't mean you've given an outcome to anyone.
The trick becomes in keeping it honest - that you don't assume that a certain set of attributes is more important than another. Where a lot of similar systems get it wrong is they define that a certain subset of attributes must be included. They should demand that over the entire pool all attributes must be included. And only to a limit and after that it's fair game.
I'm only saying that we should at least try and ensure we speak with everyone in terms of various individual attributes that are generally accepted, albeit arbitrary, when opening an opportunity. And that's it. What is alarming about this? How is this not pragmatic? Who is this stealing from? How is this bad for anyone?
Regarding your questions, I can't think of a clearer explanation that the comment that I initially replied to. Fundamentally, the core argument is that the moment you start using immutable characteristics as part of your heuristic, you've already lost- there will be resentment, because now, by definition, you've given something to someone that they did nothing to earn, and that position is coming from someone else.
That these exact things happened in the past, and happen now, doesn't mean that reversing the arrow makes things better- it just breeds a new generation of the same thing.
In terms of how do we move forward as a society, and speaking strictly as just my own opinion: we need to focus on what our commonalities are, not our differences, and go from there.
I had the great luck of growing up as the child of a diplomat, and thus getting to see a much wider variety of countries and ways of life than most people do. One of the most important lessons I took from the experience is that people are far more alike than different, even in areas that have had little previous cultural exchange. It takes some time to find out how to translate across different givens, but once you understand the shared local model of how things work, people's decisions make sense.
The catch is that if you don't agree with some of the base assumptions, then some decisions will seem utterly abhorrent, and the same is true in reverse. Some are mutually exclusive, in that there is no such thing as a middle ground. That is the problem of diversity, and it is a very real one.
So, moving forward- these schisms exist because the world used to be far more closed off from itself than it is today. I'm only in my mid-40's, and yet when I was a child, a letter to the US and back was a 3-month round trip. Now I can hop on any of a dozen free webcams if I felt so inclined and look at who is walking down the street where I used to live. All we can do is start talking to those now so close, find out what we can agree on, and try to forge something we can all live with.
(I realize this is a bit further afield than the original subject of applying for jobs, but I think a friendly reply deserves an honest answer.)
Inclusion and exclusion are two sides of the same thing. If you forcefully include group X, then you are by definition excluding group Y as a reaction. Therefore, the only truly fair design is to not preference anyone by any physical attribute, and in this case only judge for positions based on competence and merit.
I think this is quite valid. Especially from the progressive side I guess I'd say, there's a certain moral altruism that has no regard for other ideas or even the questioning of certain ideas and ideals. And to me, a lot of it is certainly a feeling of moral superiority that self legitimizes certain values from the authority of a middle and upper middle class socioeconomic position with complete disregard for the working and lower classes. The classes which served the progressive side so well until they became inconvenient.
My points are only trying to find a balance such that we can still live in a world with merit; where we can compromise a bit by ensuring there is a measurable opportunity available but yet the outcome is up to the individual.
To be frank, my dissenters here are people I probably agree with more from an idealist vantage. But I also understand that when working in a larger social system we need to be considerate of other points of view and to create systems that the reasonable people on "both sides" can live with. It's when we play to the unreasonable that extremism gains foothold.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything...
It raises, I think, some very interesting points. Not so much in the way you may agree with it or not, but in terms of how to frame the problem itself.
We're going in circles here as long as you fundamentally believe diversity of physical and biological details is important. If that's what you want to enforce in your workforce, even though it is meaningless to the job, then you're designing for an outcome, and not opportunity. Inclusive does not exist in a vacuum; to include some means to exclude others.