> Tangent: if I am attempting to prove that I am not bigoted against group X and by doing so I point out that I have members of group X amongst my friends, haven't I made my point if they really ARE my friends?

No, having friends that are members of group X does not disprove prejudice against group X. Finding specific people of group X meet your bar from friendship, no matter how high that bar is, does not mean that you don't have a bias -- even potentially a very strong bias -- against people of group X, it just means that if you do some people have other characteristics that have weighed sufficiently in your favor to outweigh any general bias you have.

'No, having friends that are members of group X does not disprove prejudice against group X.'

Perhaps you and I have different definitions of the word "friend", then.

I'm talking about the pre-Facebook version, where they were earned.

> Perhaps you and I have different definitions of the word "friend", then.

I think the problem has nothing to do with the word "friend" but the word "prejudice".

> I'm talking about the pre-Facebook version, where they were earned.

So what? The fact that people in group X can earn any given position with you doesn't mean that they don't, just by the fact of being members of group X, start out in a worse position in your view. So, that people in group X may have earned the designation "friend" from you does not in any way prove that you don't have a prejudice, even potentially a very strong one, against group X.

Basically, the difference is between, on one hand, having friends who are black and that being an orthogonal characteristic unconsidered in the friendship; and, on the other hand, having friends despite their being black.

Indeed; it seems people are not even aware of the origin of this 'defence'.

The man accused described his black golf caddy as a friend. Of course, he was no such thing no matter how cordial their relationship.

Surely however that sort of defense against specific manifestations of bigotry can be evidence (assuming proof is practically unobtainable). For instance, if I were accused of hiring practices that are biased against black people, pointing out that I have only hired black people would be evidence (if not proof, in this hypothetical and silly black and white example...) that the accusations are false.

> For instance, if I were accused of hiring practices that are biased against black people, pointing out that I have only hired black people would be evidence [...] that the accusations are false.

Without information about the external constraints on your hiring, I'm not sure it would really constitute meaningful evidence (e.g., if the entire available employment pool was black, hiring only blacks wouldn't be evidence that the process you had implemented wasn't biased, just that the bias has no opportunity to manifest.)

(This is the kind of thing that would work mostly to burden shift, but then the burden would already, IMO, be on the person making the accusation from the start.)

OTOH, it would be very challenging (though not impossible) for anyone to have evidence that your system was biased against blacks with a hired-all-blacks outcome.

I suppose my hangup here is what I perceive to be the difference between evidence and proof.

It is entirely possible to find evidence of things that turn out to be false. For example, you could take the seemingly chaotic retrograde motion of the planets in the night sky as evidence of the existence of gods with self-determination. We know know that isn't true, we have better explanations for that phenomenon (notably the notion of heliocentricity).

The planets moving differently from the stars was never proof that there were gods up there, but evidence? Sure, it was evidence. Evidence can be of various qualities, evidence of thins has to be judged critically, and weighed against the alternatives.

Evidence for or against bias on a particular axis is something that tends to indicate the presence or absence of differential treatment basis on that axis.

Facts which do not provide a basis for comparisons of how different values on that axis are treated are not much evidence for or against bias, this include facts about outcome (e.g., all the people I hired are black, etc.) without additional information from which the expected outcome in the absence of bias can be inferred.

I don't think such statements are totally worthless, but I do see where you are coming from now. Thank you.

How then, might one prove that one is not bigoted?

In many cases, it appears to be same way one proves that one is not a witch.

> How then, might one prove that one is not bigoted?

Generally, in practice, one can't prove the presence or absence of prejudice on a particular axis. I mean, to prove its absence, you'd have to prove that your subjective assessment of people is not affected by their status on the axis in question.

EDIT: If one is accused of bias based on a particular example of supposedly unequal treatment based on the status in question, of course, one can always provide the actual basis for the specific treatment at issue, or simply rebut the factual characterization of the treatment.

You can't prove that you're not a witch.

Someday, the community can wake up and decide that witch-hunting is not a respectable hobby.