I'm not sure why it's relevant. Is there bias in hair color hiring? Is anyone tracking it? Does it matter at all? I feel similarly about skin color.

There is an extremely long and brutal history of systemic bias against groups people who look a certain way. Pretending it must have stopped and is now no more worthy of societal introspection than blondes vs. brunettes is laughable to me.

It's not "pretending it must have stopped" it's "stopping it by making it impolite to mention". It used to be OK to make dumb blonde jokes, or (more severely) to be openly antisemitic, or to discriminate against redheads due to perceived Irish ancestry. Yet these are considered in poor taste today. No affirmative action was undertaken on behalf of blondes or Jews or Irish people. We just realized it's in poor taste to make distinctions about people with regards to their hair colour or ethnic origin, and a few generations passed.

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.

Detecting/combatting instances of racial bias and affirmative action are not the same thing, in fact it's basically the opposite in that's it's eliminating actions that disproportionately benefit one racial group over another.

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.

Right but we didn't have to do any of this measuring for Jewish, Chinese, Italian, or Irish people. Yet discrimination against these groups has markedly improved over time. This happens naturally as people mix together and realize they're not so different, and as older generations die. This integration process naturally deemphasizes superficial differences.

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...

> You seem to be avoiding the question. This process clearly works, and doesn't require any metrics collection or monitoring.

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".

> Across what time scale

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.