If you haven't noticed, that's been the goal for a long time now. People get accepted to college because of the color of their skin. People get better SAT scores now because of the color of their skin. Every major company has diversity boards which make sure to hire people based in the color of their skin. Hollywood and big business choose who to be in ads, movies, and other customer facing media because of the color of their skin. Groups decide their memberships based on the color of people's skin. CHAZ protesters in Seattle are arguing for judging people in court differently based on the color of their skin.
It's really so interesting that these groups of politically motivated people think they're ending what they perceive as racism ... by being as racist as it's possible to be.
Transfer of wealth from a social group that is perceived as unfairly advantaged, to another group, that is perceived otherwise. Since pensions are gone for most of the people nowadays, targeting pension funds will result in relatively low public pushback, compared to other targets.
And as long as the public approves it, millions could be spent on committees figuring out "the best way to do it", bureaucrats making policies, etc. Political game as it is, nothing new.
I could probably respond in several ways but I think I'm the most curious about the economic angle here.
What if there is no money to be made or lost but a certain group is simply worse off? What if fairness lowers GDP? Does that mean it should be abandoned? Without even getting into what the realities are, I'm trying to understand what you're saying here.
What person from an underrepresented group wants to be chosen just because of their group status? Isn't that highly patronizing for someone who likely had worked hard to get to where they got? Do you want to be "pretty great for a xxxxx person!" or just "one of the best".
Is this a lesson that people want their kids to learn?
Doesn't this also lead discrimination actually being a rational (and maybe ethical) thing to do?
Simply put- if the top 100 medical students (based on MCAT, boards scores, etc) are chosen to become heart surgeons, choosing a heart surgeon from those 100 based on race or gender is not only absolutely egregious morally but it's also irrational.
But if the top 90 of the 100 medical students are chosen and then 10 are chosen because of non-relevant factors (race, gender, etc)... doesn't it become rational (and maybe morally acceptable) to try and avoid choosing those lesser-qualified 10 for your life-or-death surgery?
>Thomas has recollected that his Yale Juris Doctor degree was not taken seriously by law firms to which he applied after graduating. He said that potential employers assumed he obtained it because of affirmative action policies.[18] In 1969 Dean Louis Pollak wrote that the law school was expanding its program of quotas for black applicants, with up to 24 entering that year admitted under a system that deemphasized grades and LSAT scores.[19] According to Thomas, he was "asked pointed questions, unsubtly suggesting that they doubted I was as smart as my grades indicated."[20] He further reflected:
> ⠀⠀ "I peeled a fifteen-cent sticker off a package of cigars and stuck it on the frame of my law degree to remind myself of the mistake I'd made by going to Yale. I never did change my mind about its value."[21]
>>What person from an underrepresented group wants to be chosen just because of their group status? Isn't that highly patronizing for someone who likely had worked hard to get to where they got? Do you want to be "pretty great for a xxxxx person!" or just "one of the best".
For comparison, consider the case of people who get their jobs via nepotism. The people who are hired for nepotism are seldom concerned with the fact that they were chosen because of who their parents were. In many cases these people are reasonably qualified and do just fine in spite of the fact that they were given the job because of their family's status.
When there is a preponderance of talent and success is hard to quantify precisely, choosing the best means choosing between a number of comparably good alternatives (to within the large uncertainty of the measurement). In certain cases there are very meritocratic scenarios where I think your statement holds, but when there is a surplus of talent for a role and quantifying success is very imprecise, I'm not sure if meritocracy makes sense.
Given that many hedge funds are basically glorified ETFs that average to the market, I'm not if there is much difference between reasonably qualified candidates for these jobs.
If the people in underrepresented groups are anything like the females I knew in the military, most of them will hate that they were treated differently. The females had lower physical fitness standards, but competed for the same promotion slots as males. Most females I knew resented the fact that they were put in a position where their male subordinates would always question whether they were actually qualified to be in charge, or if they just happened to get promoted earlier because it was easier for them to get high physical fitness scores.
I remember several comments in the Iowa Caucus app debacle threads calling out the ex-googler who led the project as an affirmative action hire. Irregardless of morality or righteousness the more affirmative action permeates our culture the more resentment is going to build up in groups that feel cheated by such a system.
> What person from an underrepresented group wants to be chosen just because of their group status? Isn't that highly patronizing for someone who likely had worked hard to get to where they got?
Your question rests on the assumption that that's actually how they feel about it.
If they are from an underrepresented group, then by definition there is some factor that works against them. (Or multiple factors.)
If you appropriately counterbalance that factor with another factor that works in their favor, then it shouldn't make them feel bad about themselves. Competing on a level playing field doesn't reflect negatively on someone. It doesn't undermine their confidence or cast doubt on their achievements.
Of course, this assumes the playing field is actually level. In theory it's possible to get this wrong. (You could apply either too little or too much correction. It's ultimately a quantitative question.) But my point is, to argue that someone would feel bad, you need to do more than say that correction has been applied; you also need to show that it is the wrong amount of correction.
> But if the top 90 of the 100 medical students are chosen and then 10 are chosen because of non-relevant factors (race, gender, etc)... doesn't it become rational (and maybe morally acceptable) to try and avoid choosing those lesser-qualified 10 for your life-or-death surgery?
What if the 90 were chosen in a process that is also not really entirely about their qualifications? Isn't this also a problem? Why focus only on the problems in choosing the 10?
Particularly as, when you get surgery, you're way more likely to get surgeon who is one of the 90. If this is the real concern, Amdahl's Law tells you to look first at the 90.
>But if the top 90 of the 100 medical students are chosen and then 10 are chosen because of non-relevant factors (race, gender, etc)... doesn't it become rational (and maybe morally acceptable) to try and avoid choosing those lesser-qualified 10 for your life-or-death surgery?
Isn't that assuming test scores have a linear relationship to ability?
I would pick one of the conscientious hardworking "lesser-scoring" surgeon over the class valedictorian who might just happen to be a functioning alcoholic.
I agree (and I hope most people could agree) that this downside exists. I think the harder question is how to weigh this downside against the upsides of better representation. For example, of course it's also bad for kids to learn that "xxxxx people can't be doctors." Affirmative action comes in lots of different forms, and I think there's room to optimize for more than one problem at the same time.
We just want justice.
We need to ask how and why people found themselves in “underrepresented” and “marginalized” categories in first place. Piketty [1], Katznelson [2] (white people are happy to go along with set asides and actions to address class inequity, as long as no Black or Brown folk are involved) might be worth pondering.
I hope that everyone is using the opportunity to understand the processes that got us to mass uprisings in most U.S. cities.
Funny, I had to have drawn out argument with a white surgeon — day after day a few months back. He didn’t think my mother’s Black life was worth much.
This analogy is weak for a few reasons, first off companies are not doctors and with diversification no one is at risk of death.
Secondly, expanding the pool of available investments with an eye towards attempting to correct systematic injustice doesn’t need to accompany a loss of quality, which is what is argued here. If the pool of quality candidates is large, then having a diversity goal in an investment fund doesn’t necessarily lead to lower quality.
After all, can you honestly say that all the worthy startups and teams are getting investment now?
As a side note, if the diversity argument lowering quality is “correct”, then why wouldn’t any investment hypothesis also lead to lower quality? There are tons of vc firms that only invest in certain types of companies. They still manage to keep quality high while being discerning about who they invest in. Think funds that only do bio or only do social media.
Instead of coming up with reasons why status quo is totally fine or why giving money to black entrepreneurs is going to cause losses, perhaps we could imagine a world where such investment thesis are successful, and expand the total success of everyone?
"At this moment of heightened public awareness, forcing big public pension funds to commit to putting more of their dollars in funds controlled by minorities could have a major impact. These public institutions, unlike their corporate kin, represent a wide and diverse swath of the country, making investment decisions for public servants like teachers, firefighters and municipal workers."
While I think this is a phenomenal idea, it should be noted that systems like this that currently exist are frequently, almost typically, gamed. I went to work for a Federal Government certified 8a minority woman owned business with at the time about 20 employees in my mid-20s. I remember thinking how cool that was.
The "CEO" was a highly competent woman of Filipino descent who, after having kids, had chosen to become a stay-at home mom. She was CEO in name only, and her husband (a big giant white dude who was also highly competent) was the actual CEO, but with a different title.
The company's main source of revenue was acting as a prime contractor on contracts only available to 8a companies, then subbing the work out to large contractors. Another regulation on the company was a cap on it's profits, as well as a cap on salaries of individual employees. Their way around that was that the acting CEO and his wife both earned max level salaries. Another C level co-founder also payed his wife the maximum salary, and near as we can tell, her sole item of work for the company was sending out holiday gift baskets.
Again, good idea, but we need to think very hard about how to ACTUALLY help, rather than just making a small number of people who know how to game the system wealthy.
I'm not sure why this is being downvoted. It describes common practice for US Federal government business in response to the creation of minority business preferences in contracting.
Many companies that are not actually minority-owned essentially rent minority-owned shell companies to clear the qualification hurdle for contract preferences, it is de rigueur unless you have unique capabilities that make it likely you'll get a contract award regardless. The obvious consequence is that once every company is "minority owned" no company is and you are back to where you started, just with some middlemen.
O wow this takes me back to my first software job we did pretty much only government contracts but were not eligible for 8a. We had another company was that eligible that we sort of brought on to tons on contracts to make the requirements; they were pretty much a single person shop that got paid to be visible.
I still don't see the value in diversity for diversities sake. Having read much from Thomas Sowell on the matter I think most of these terms will lead to much worse outcomes than what we have present day.
Diversity of viewpoints is essential for long term prosperity - it allows for a marketplace of ideas and limits blind spots.
The first time this really clicked for me was when I dived deeply into the history of the First World War. If I could restate the root cause, it was complete failure by both the British and especially the Germans to envision a point of view different from their own. They each operated like they were sparring with themselves, and shit got out of control. The problem is that it’s now vogue to assume what point of view a person holds bases entirely on their race/gender/etc.
P.S. If WWI sounds interesting, I very much recommend the podcast “When Diplomacy Fails.”
The classic argument in favor of diversity for diversity's sake is that people frame expectations for themselves based on what they see around them. If there are no members of group X in a field, then many people in group X will assume that field is not for them. At a societal level, we miss out if people who would have been highly productive in a field choose not to enter it behind assumptions about inclusion. By injecting members of group X into the field, we can help eliminate those assumptions thereby enticing more qualified people into the field and yielding productivity benefits long term. At an individual corporate level, the value is less clear. I've heard that people do not want to be the only member of group X at a company, so by building a base of members from group X it might make it easier to attract high tier talent who might otherwise pass and work for a competitor. This should be somewhat measurable for a company.
This is somewhat tangential, but it's also important to make sure that your user base is appropriately represented in your workforce (eg if you are developing products catering to white males then it probably doesn't make sense to have no white males in your workforce). That's less diversity for diversity's sake and more representation for the sake of accurate product development though.
For those who don't read the article, here's a quote: "Unless you're only selling to white people, if I was at a firm I would want every point of view represented in the investment process"
Is this how people view the world these days? Where skin color is important?
I feel like I'm totally lost and saddened by this new race-focused world. Can someone please tell me when I can go back to caring about the quality of air traffic controller's[1], the quality of a manager's returns[2], and a restaurant's food[3] and NOT their skin color? I'm exhausted by it.
How fortunate you are to merely be "exhausted" emotionally. This isn't really a conversation about skin color its a conversation on how we treat each other and we happen to treat people with certain skin colors in ways that make their lives worse and in some cases more dangerous. Talking about it like its about skin is foolish. It's about behavior.
"diversity and inclusion" initiatives are coming up on a long overdue reckoning. The premise is to allege discrimination, based solely on "evidence" in the form of inequality of outcome, and then use that unilateral accusation as justification for the accusing party to practice the discrimination they claim to oppose. Bonus: you are liable to lose your job for criticising these practices.
The comments ITT suggest that perhaps the taboo surrounding criticism of diversity initiatives is finally lifting, and rightly so.
Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules on HN? I'm afraid you've been breaking them in two ways. First, it's not ok to use the site primarily [1] for political or ideological battle. That's probably the single most destructive thing people do here, because battle mode and curiosity mode do not go together. Some political overlap is ok [2], but it's not ok to use the site primarily this way.
Second, please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that.
You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. [3]
[+] [-] whatshisface|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheGrim999|5 years ago|reply
It's really so interesting that these groups of politically motivated people think they're ending what they perceive as racism ... by being as racist as it's possible to be.
[+] [-] john_moscow|5 years ago|reply
And as long as the public approves it, millions could be spent on committees figuring out "the best way to do it", bureaucrats making policies, etc. Political game as it is, nothing new.
[+] [-] lawnchair_larry|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jayd16|5 years ago|reply
What if there is no money to be made or lost but a certain group is simply worse off? What if fairness lowers GDP? Does that mean it should be abandoned? Without even getting into what the realities are, I'm trying to understand what you're saying here.
[+] [-] tuna-piano|5 years ago|reply
Is this a lesson that people want their kids to learn?
Doesn't this also lead discrimination actually being a rational (and maybe ethical) thing to do?
Simply put- if the top 100 medical students (based on MCAT, boards scores, etc) are chosen to become heart surgeons, choosing a heart surgeon from those 100 based on race or gender is not only absolutely egregious morally but it's also irrational.
But if the top 90 of the 100 medical students are chosen and then 10 are chosen because of non-relevant factors (race, gender, etc)... doesn't it become rational (and maybe morally acceptable) to try and avoid choosing those lesser-qualified 10 for your life-or-death surgery?
[+] [-] sbierwagen|5 years ago|reply
>Thomas has recollected that his Yale Juris Doctor degree was not taken seriously by law firms to which he applied after graduating. He said that potential employers assumed he obtained it because of affirmative action policies.[18] In 1969 Dean Louis Pollak wrote that the law school was expanding its program of quotas for black applicants, with up to 24 entering that year admitted under a system that deemphasized grades and LSAT scores.[19] According to Thomas, he was "asked pointed questions, unsubtly suggesting that they doubted I was as smart as my grades indicated."[20] He further reflected:
> ⠀⠀ "I peeled a fifteen-cent sticker off a package of cigars and stuck it on the frame of my law degree to remind myself of the mistake I'd made by going to Yale. I never did change my mind about its value."[21]
[+] [-] blululu|5 years ago|reply
For comparison, consider the case of people who get their jobs via nepotism. The people who are hired for nepotism are seldom concerned with the fact that they were chosen because of who their parents were. In many cases these people are reasonably qualified and do just fine in spite of the fact that they were given the job because of their family's status.
When there is a preponderance of talent and success is hard to quantify precisely, choosing the best means choosing between a number of comparably good alternatives (to within the large uncertainty of the measurement). In certain cases there are very meritocratic scenarios where I think your statement holds, but when there is a surplus of talent for a role and quantifying success is very imprecise, I'm not sure if meritocracy makes sense. Given that many hedge funds are basically glorified ETFs that average to the market, I'm not if there is much difference between reasonably qualified candidates for these jobs.
[+] [-] dx87|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tmpz22|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adrianmonk|5 years ago|reply
Your question rests on the assumption that that's actually how they feel about it.
If they are from an underrepresented group, then by definition there is some factor that works against them. (Or multiple factors.)
If you appropriately counterbalance that factor with another factor that works in their favor, then it shouldn't make them feel bad about themselves. Competing on a level playing field doesn't reflect negatively on someone. It doesn't undermine their confidence or cast doubt on their achievements.
Of course, this assumes the playing field is actually level. In theory it's possible to get this wrong. (You could apply either too little or too much correction. It's ultimately a quantitative question.) But my point is, to argue that someone would feel bad, you need to do more than say that correction has been applied; you also need to show that it is the wrong amount of correction.
> But if the top 90 of the 100 medical students are chosen and then 10 are chosen because of non-relevant factors (race, gender, etc)... doesn't it become rational (and maybe morally acceptable) to try and avoid choosing those lesser-qualified 10 for your life-or-death surgery?
What if the 90 were chosen in a process that is also not really entirely about their qualifications? Isn't this also a problem? Why focus only on the problems in choosing the 10?
Particularly as, when you get surgery, you're way more likely to get surgeon who is one of the 90. If this is the real concern, Amdahl's Law tells you to look first at the 90.
[+] [-] callmeal|5 years ago|reply
Isn't that assuming test scores have a linear relationship to ability? I would pick one of the conscientious hardworking "lesser-scoring" surgeon over the class valedictorian who might just happen to be a functioning alcoholic.
[+] [-] oconnor663|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] creaghpatr|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] charlescearl|5 years ago|reply
Funny, I had to have drawn out argument with a white surgeon — day after day a few months back. He didn’t think my mother’s Black life was worth much.
[1] http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/Piketty2020SlidesLongVersion... [2] http://origins.osu.edu/review/when-affirmative-action-was-wh...
[+] [-] ryanobjc|5 years ago|reply
Secondly, expanding the pool of available investments with an eye towards attempting to correct systematic injustice doesn’t need to accompany a loss of quality, which is what is argued here. If the pool of quality candidates is large, then having a diversity goal in an investment fund doesn’t necessarily lead to lower quality.
After all, can you honestly say that all the worthy startups and teams are getting investment now?
As a side note, if the diversity argument lowering quality is “correct”, then why wouldn’t any investment hypothesis also lead to lower quality? There are tons of vc firms that only invest in certain types of companies. They still manage to keep quality high while being discerning about who they invest in. Think funds that only do bio or only do social media.
Instead of coming up with reasons why status quo is totally fine or why giving money to black entrepreneurs is going to cause losses, perhaps we could imagine a world where such investment thesis are successful, and expand the total success of everyone?
[+] [-] MattGaiser|5 years ago|reply
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/lynnwood-man-tried...
https://www.vox.com/2014/12/22/7431391/guess-where-white-ame...
[+] [-] JPKab|5 years ago|reply
While I think this is a phenomenal idea, it should be noted that systems like this that currently exist are frequently, almost typically, gamed. I went to work for a Federal Government certified 8a minority woman owned business with at the time about 20 employees in my mid-20s. I remember thinking how cool that was.
The "CEO" was a highly competent woman of Filipino descent who, after having kids, had chosen to become a stay-at home mom. She was CEO in name only, and her husband (a big giant white dude who was also highly competent) was the actual CEO, but with a different title.
The company's main source of revenue was acting as a prime contractor on contracts only available to 8a companies, then subbing the work out to large contractors. Another regulation on the company was a cap on it's profits, as well as a cap on salaries of individual employees. Their way around that was that the acting CEO and his wife both earned max level salaries. Another C level co-founder also payed his wife the maximum salary, and near as we can tell, her sole item of work for the company was sending out holiday gift baskets.
Again, good idea, but we need to think very hard about how to ACTUALLY help, rather than just making a small number of people who know how to game the system wealthy.
[+] [-] jandrewrogers|5 years ago|reply
Many companies that are not actually minority-owned essentially rent minority-owned shell companies to clear the qualification hurdle for contract preferences, it is de rigueur unless you have unique capabilities that make it likely you'll get a contract award regardless. The obvious consequence is that once every company is "minority owned" no company is and you are back to where you started, just with some middlemen.
[+] [-] tick_tock_tick|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] lbj|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitcurious|5 years ago|reply
The first time this really clicked for me was when I dived deeply into the history of the First World War. If I could restate the root cause, it was complete failure by both the British and especially the Germans to envision a point of view different from their own. They each operated like they were sparring with themselves, and shit got out of control. The problem is that it’s now vogue to assume what point of view a person holds bases entirely on their race/gender/etc.
P.S. If WWI sounds interesting, I very much recommend the podcast “When Diplomacy Fails.”
[+] [-] OminousWeapons|5 years ago|reply
This is somewhat tangential, but it's also important to make sure that your user base is appropriately represented in your workforce (eg if you are developing products catering to white males then it probably doesn't make sense to have no white males in your workforce). That's less diversity for diversity's sake and more representation for the sake of accurate product development though.
[+] [-] Avicebron|5 years ago|reply
Do some heuristics, we might even calculate a bias score.
[+] [-] PeeInTheData|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tuna-piano|5 years ago|reply
Is this how people view the world these days? Where skin color is important?
I feel like I'm totally lost and saddened by this new race-focused world. Can someone please tell me when I can go back to caring about the quality of air traffic controller's[1], the quality of a manager's returns[2], and a restaurant's food[3] and NOT their skin color? I'm exhausted by it.
[1]https://www.fullwsj.com/articles/affirmative-action-lands-in...
[2]The article from this discussion
[3]https://www.forbes.com/sites/korihale/2020/06/09/uber-eats-d...
[+] [-] WesternStar|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ikeyany|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtgp1000|5 years ago|reply
The comments ITT suggest that perhaps the taboo surrounding criticism of diversity initiatives is finally lifting, and rightly so.
[+] [-] dang|5 years ago|reply
Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules on HN? I'm afraid you've been breaking them in two ways. First, it's not ok to use the site primarily [1] for political or ideological battle. That's probably the single most destructive thing people do here, because battle mode and curiosity mode do not go together. Some political overlap is ok [2], but it's not ok to use the site primarily this way.
Second, please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that.
You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. [3]
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
[+] [-] dubrocks|5 years ago|reply