For instance, if you see that applicants that are otherwise equally qualified are getting rejected on recruiter screen disproportionally by race, you may have an issue with how your screening is done. And yes, this happens: https://eml.berkeley.edu//~crwalters/papers/randres.pdf

A reasonable goal is that race, gender, and sexual orientation should have no bearing at all on how likely it is that you get hired, promoted, or fired. So these inputs are typically blinded to hiring managers but available to HR in aggregate to let them perform these kinds of analyses.

I'll acknowledge this approach leads to some very odd interactions, like my school district asking what the sexual orientation of my five year old is. But it's not clear how else one can build a credible gauge for measuring and eliminating *isms from a system. (Open to hearing ideas!)

There being more male construction workers doesn't make it a sexist system.

There being more female teachers doesn't make it a sexist system.

There being more asian doctors doesn't make it a racist system.

Let people do what they want to do, you can look at demographics but stop trying to read racist tea leaves with it.

If it doesn't, you have an issue. The only way to know for sure is to measure.

E: To be clear, assuming equally qualified candidates, you would want expect hiring proportions to match the same A:B ratio as you get from applications.

No, I wouldn't expect this at all as I do not expect the height distribution of basketball player to reflect the height distribution of the general population. As I do not expect the personality trait distribution of pop stars to be the same of programmers, and again I do not expect the latter to be similar to the general population. Personal inclination, innate intelligence, talent, conscientiousness, and of course demographics, parenting, generational wealth all play a role.

Skin color is not an advantage when programming. It is also a characteristic by which it is illegal to hire a programmer.

That can be measured (imperfectly, but well enough), by filtering only for qualified candidates and then comparing the rate at which both A and B are hired and the rate at which they appear in the filtered list. E: This of course requires the filtering to be done _only_ with knowledge of a candidates skills/accomplishments, and association with demographics (including name, location, etc.) to be done only after the sorting.

If you also collect demographics of applicants, it may tell a different story.

If your employee demographics look skewed, but they're consistent with applicant demographics, you have an easy out when accused of ism.

Of course, if you collect the information, you might also use it for ism purposes. Or you might just lose or discourage applications from non-favored people. It's hard to show.

(It also doesn't help that the federal categories feel poorly chosen and ill-defined)

Are you sure? There being more male programmers is widely used as evidence that it's a sexist system.

How about the mostly male homeless population that live on the streets?

If females don't want to go into programming then don't make them.

There are really good female programmers, but males tend to be more frequent.

We all have different traits that make us good at different things, that's the beautiful thing about humans.

But if there is something to address, address the pain points specifically and directly.

Don't try to guess a "correct" ratio and work backwards with affirmative action (denying one race to boost up another).

For all you know the current ratio is the realistic ratio and where we should be.

In reality, the proportion of women in STEM directly matches the proportion of women in STEM majors, which directly matches proportion of women who say they're interested in STEM.

Maybe institutions can afford to leave sexual orientation out of it until you’re talking about a body of people that is firmly within the age of consent threshold or has at least hit puberty. A lawyer might disagree but for him the remedy is to bend him over and remove the stick from his ass.

Some people think that affirmative action isn't racist.

But tell me what it is when you think like: "hey we have enough asians, exclude that person, let's find a black to get our quota"

Some people will defend it like a user said below:

"By engaging in deliberate anti-racism efforts to counteract subconscious racism."

But what is "anti-racism"? It's being racist in the opposite direction. You think Y group is being oppressed "subconciously" so you oppress X group as much as you think you need to, to "even" it out.

We should strive for equal opportunities, not equal outcomes.

Everybody agrees that the US was hugely racist to start out and for centuries thereafter. The main dispute is over whether or not that has diminished or has been totally obliterated. If you'd like to claim the latter, I'm interested to see your data. E.g., what is the precise date where you think the last traces were destroyed?

> Everybody agrees that the US was hugely racist to start out and for centuries thereafter.

I don't. If anything we were the colony to finally collapse the system after many centuries of it being standard across the world.

For those more reasonable who want to know about what anti-racism is opposed to, I'd suggest reading Loewen's Sundown Towns, Kendi's Stamped from the Beginning, and Mills's The Racial Contract as beginner-friendly looks at the system of racism, its historical and intellectual roots, and how it all played out historically.

Many people were involved in this system, from the warring tribes in Africa selling prisoners, to countries like the UK setting up colonies with slaves for cotton, tobacco, etc.

We were the colony that finally stopped the system. It took a long time and a lot of blood because it was the system, but it was ended.

Given that the enslaved had been so subjugated by others of the very same race, how could the institution itself possibly be called essentially racist?

Or if you'd like a quick answer from the Confederacy's Vice President, you might read the Cornerstone Speech, which includes these words: "Our new government['s]...foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."

If you're having trouble seeing the racism there, I'm not sure how else I could help.

If even you could somehow make a convincing argument that the pre-war system was not inherently racist (which you cannot), the post-war system of neoslavery would put the final nail in that coffin.

Even an answer of zero doesn't address or contradict my original point.

There's no such thing as "neoslavery". Racism was certainly used after the war to reduce labor solidarity between the white working class and the newly-freed black laborers, however, that fact also doesn't address or contradict my original point.

Maybe try suggesting some serious historical scholarship instead of ideologues.

It's a bit disingenuous to put words in my mouth.

> > Everybody agrees that the US was hugely racist to start out and for centuries thereafter.

But your bio says you are a deliberate troll, so presumably you knew that.

You don't think it's me saying that the US was part of a system that had existed long before it was even a country, even though I said just that?

BTW my bio is a homage to Socrates being persecuted for asking questions and going against the mob.

USA was very late ending slavery, most European countries had already outlawed it long before the American civil war. USA was the colony that required a war to stop treating people like cattle, that is its history.

They were also buying those slave made goods, continuing the triangle, even well after they abolished it in their homeland.

So yes, they may have "ended" it at home, but they basically just outsourced their slavery to colonies they had setup.

This isn't true, if the American revolution hadn't happened then those slaves would have been freed peacefully already by 1833:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833

Or maybe that would have triggered an American revolution again because Americans love their slaves, I mean it happened that way as is...

But the UK still continued to buy US cotton, knowing full well it was enabling the slave trade to continue.

And the most important point was they had setup all of these colonies with these systems in the first place.

> we were the colony to finally collapse the system after many centuries of it being standard across the world.

That is blatantly false. That was my point. You are right the Europeans weren't angels, but you were absolutely wrong there, America was the colony that was dragged kicking and screaming to abolish slavery long after everyone else had already done so, it absolutely wasn't the colony that finally collapsed the system of slavery it was pushed by everyone else to end it and then still had to go through a civil war doing it.

The UK even continued slavery in Indian colonies until 1843. They only abolished sugar plantations because it was not profitable anymore.

If the American colonies didn't rebel from the UK, they may have not abolished the cotton plantations themselves because they highly depended on it.

This is a definition of racism, and the one currently in vogue, but just want to point out that it's not the only one. Racism can also denote individually held prejudices, or isolated discrimination based on race.

> Anti-racism seeks to end that system.

This is indeed the stated goal, but (at least to me) seems to be self-defeatist. For instance, when reading through Ibram X Kendi's work, a number of ideas that seem flat-out wrong popped out:

* Racism against a group in power can't exist (because the redefined version of racism requires group power), as if racial power exists in a monolith.

* The only cure for past discrimination is present discrimination. (!)

* Thedesire for race neutrality is racist (not just its flawed applications)

* The idea that biology influences behavior is racist (not just the standard racist claims that some groups are inferior biologically)

I realize that these terms can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, but the above ideas of "anti-racism" definitely lead to more stifling of discussion and outright acceptance of discrimination than I've otherwise experienced.

It is the one anti-racists are using, so if one is trying to understand the term, that's the right place to start.

I get that people disagree both on whether it should be ended and if so, what the right tactics are. My goal here is not to have that incredibly deep and nuanced conversation, but just to clear up this particular point.

Racists are calling themselves anti-racist.

It's branding, not an actual descriptor. It's an effective political technique to present it as the opposite.

Yeah totally agreed, it's important to call out the definitions of terms used in any context.

The main thrust of my post was similarly to point out that if you're using definition X, you may justify some action which doesn't conform to definition Y.

In the same vein as "Patriot Act" or "People's Republic", good branding on the part of "anti-racism" can help nip naysayers in the bud. (Are you anti-patriot? Are you against the people or democracy? Are you pro-racist?)

Knowing who means what when they use terms, and being willing to differ from someone else's definition clearly, is pretty much the only way I know of to have these deep conversations with civility.

Or in your terms of branding, it shouldn't be a shock that the dominant racial group would have established a definition of "racism" that is one more convenient to them than to the dominated groups, because that branding serves to prevent challenges to their power.

How many grains of sand does it take to form a big pile?

Not measuring something doesn't make it go away.

Ideally the race information you input would only be given to HR and not shown to anyone involved in the hiring process. It would then be used to identify anomalies indicative of bias occurring.

[1] https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2021/08/18/name-discriminati...

I'm just suggesting we let this same process unfold naturally. And that affirmative action, by placing emphasis on superficial differences between people, takes us in the wrong direction.

I don't doubt that some companies use this data to drive quotas but that isn't something inherent to collecting and analyzing race/gender info in hiring.

On top of that, something being impolite to mention doesn't mean it's not driving discrimination.

You seem to be avoiding the question. This process clearly works, and doesn't require any metrics collection or monitoring. Furthermore, DEI initiatives are clearly harmful to organizational goals[1] and clearly disenfranchise people who are just interested in colour-blindly carrying on with their work. Why do we need them?

PS. I'm hoping to preempt a no true Scotsman style reply about DEI. The example below was undertaken at a major corporation with the world-class consultants.

1. https://www.cspicenter.com/p/what-diversity-and-inclusion-me...

Across what time scale? Exactly how long is acceptable to you to wait as things work themselves out? Surely 400 years would have been enough time for this to really kick in.

> PS. I'm hoping to preempt a no true Scotsman style reply about DEI

I'm not defending DEI as practiced, I'm merely defending the idea that 1) racial discrimination in hiring happens, and 2) it's possible to do stuff about it faster than letting this work out "naturally".

I'd say ~80 years is about an appropriate amount of time. It's about how long it took antisemitism, anti-Irish and anti-Italian sentiment to die out. No amount of metrics will change the minds of adults who grew up in "a different time". Your only option is to wait for them to die.

> it's possible to do stuff about it faster

My point is that by attempting to address the concern faster than "naturally" you are almost certainly prolonging the "natural" time actual integration takes.

Org A) 10% of applicants are brown, 9% of hires are brown

Org B) 10% of applicants are brown, 0% of hires are brown

Org A might be close enough to a rounding error you can call it good. Org B likely has some issues.

Hard to fix what you don't measure.

"So which report makes an organization less racist"

So that implies that org B is more racist(because it hired zero brown people) - is that not the conclusion the author of the comment wants us to reach?

Do you or do you not think it is incredibly likely this is an unfair die.

That's Company B.

But hiring isn't random. Maybe all the "brown" candidates lacked necessary qualifications. Or needed visas which they couldn't get. Or a million other reasons other than "org B is racist".

My point is: you need further context. To look at that one stat as given above and conclude org B is racist is....unwise.

I am not sure I have ever been on a team without some kind of like-me bias. It's real hard.

Or in the exact time slice you got the data there weren't any brown applicants.

> Org A) 10% of applicants are brown, 9% of hires are brown

That means nearly all brown applicants for got hired. You're probably thinking this is a "good stat" and therefore a "good employer". But what if the rest of that company's stats were "90% of applicants are white, 80% of hires are white." Is that still a "good stat/good company"? According to you, it should be (and I would tend to agree.) In both cases, we're pretty much showing "If you apply for a job here, you have a ~90% chance of getting in, regardless of skin color." Not bad!!

But wait. What if the demographic of applicants is more like 50% white and 50% brown. (Assume a non-remote workplace). Now, one has to wonder why, in a demographic where half the population is brown, why only 10% are applying to this organization? Could be many reasons. Culturally, maybe the brown folds simply choose not to apply here. Or maybe the organization has a history of mistreating brown folks, abusing them, paying them less, etc. That could explain the low rate of applicants here. Your good example of a "less racist" org doesn't look so good anymore. Many factors could be a play; some less intentionally-evil than others. Hard to draw conclusions simply by reporting on one stat in isolation.

> Hard to fix what you don't measure.

Yes, but harder to think critically about the data you do gather.

Nope, the denominator is different. If you select the same percentage from each category the proportions stay the same.

If there are 100 fruits where 10 are apples and 90 are pears and each fruit has 10% chance to be selected then you get on average 1 apple and 9 pears => 10% of the selected fruits are apples.

And I consider almost all "anti-rqcism" to just be racism but against groups it's permitted to.

For example, asians and higher ed.

To answer your question - if there is such a complaint made, I'd appoint another qualified hiring manager(or HR person) to sit in on any future interviews with this person and give me their report on the situation.

Tl;dr: it is less about the company being less racist on their own by knowing the race, it is more about the company having to report those numbers so that others could hold them accountable (in case there are any arising concerns about racism).