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Comment by downandout | Hacker News Reader

Programs like this promote the very discrimination that they are intended to counteract. People of all other races will see this and argue - correctly - that black students at Howard now have an advantage over them at one of the premier employers in the tech industry. This is wonderful for Howard students, and probably for black CS students looking for employment at Google in general, but not so great for everyone else.

You cannot fix racism by implementing racist programs. You do it by removing race from the hiring equation to the maximum extent possible, and making it known that applicants of all races are welcome and that they will be judged based solely on their skills and qualifications. The kind of program announced today will, and should, backfire on Google.

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The point of affirmative action is that it's impossible to remove race from the hiring equation, because race affects your applicants right up to the point they send in an application. If you say "I'm colorblind", you're also pretending that everyone else in the world is colorblind, and race had no impact on your applicants' resumes.

Race is a society-wide issue, and it's not possible to solve without recognizing and correcting for it. If you close your eyes and ignore it, racism will still exist and continue to affect people. Even if racism disappeared from America overnight, the issue would not be solved because there would still be lingering cyclical effects from past racism. Parents with fewer opportunities raise kids with fewer opportunities because we live in an imperfect world, and these things require active correction.

By the time anyone of any race becomes a viable Google candidate, they have excelled in both high school and at elite universities, earned advanced degrees, and in many cases have already done interesting things in their field. Their socioeconomic background is irrelevant by that point in their lives. People wind up in Google interviews because they have earned the right to be there with the best and the brightest. At that level of competition, it would truly be a shame for race to play any part in a hiring decision.

You're describing the world we all wish we lived in. There are plenty of studies showing that employers are less likely to consider a resume with a black-sounding name, regardless of their qualifications. The effect is usually subconscious and marginal, but it's there.

You're right, it is a shame for race to play a part, but we have a responsibility to work for the betterment of our society and not ignore the bad parts that don't affect us directly.

I am describing a very specific part of the world that we do live in. Google applicants with any chance at all of being hired tend to be exceptional people that have already overcome most of the challenges that their socioeconomic background may have imposed upon them. Google recruiters aren't likely throwing out resumes with black-sounding names, if the resume their resume stacks up well against competing resumes of any other race. The effect you are describing exists in the world, but far less so at companies as selective and focused on innovation as Google.

I don't know why you think tech companies would be immune to this kind of thing. I'm not talking about cartoonishly racist people ripping up resumes from black people, I'm talking about unconscious biases that make a recruiter think a white candidate seems like a more polished "better fit" for reasons they can't quite put their finger on. They aren't bad people, this is just a fact of life that we need to actively combat, not ignore.

And like I said, even if Google recruiters are somehow completely free of bias, that doesn't solve the problem. Black people are less likely have the necessary qualifications because of lingering effects of racism in the past, which means they're less likely to get well-paying jobs and move up the socioeconomic ladder, which means their kids are less likely to move up and the cycle continues even if racism completely disappears. Obviously it would be nice if we could solve this problem at the source by making education and childhood development completely independent of socioeconomic background, but that's sort of an impossible ideal. I don't think it's unreasonable for Google to try and address the symptoms when the cause is fairly insurmountable.

And one more thing, you're right that anyone hired by Google has exceptional qualifications, but consider what it takes to get your resume in front of a recruiter. When I applied to Google, it was through a friend who had just been hired giving my name to their recruiter. This clearly gave me an advantage over just uploading my resume to a job site. And during the application process, they asked for the names of anyone I knew currently working at Google so they could ask for recommendations. This is a fine step to have in a recruiting process, but you can see how network effects would continue to affect a group that's been discriminated against in the past, even if they're treated completely equally today. They're less likely to have a direct connection to a recruiter, less likely to have internal recommendations, less likely to get that extra boost.

Today companies say that they only hire diverse people. Who is getting discriminated? Pls tell me

I'm describing how affirmative action should be used, not how it always is. Certainly there are plenty of companies who just want different colored people in their website photos so they don't look bad.

People who don't add to a diversity quota.

A thought experiment. You have a program that costs $5. You collect that $5 at the door. In order to get to your program, participants must walk down a corridor. In that corridor there are people who will, at gunpoint, take all the money, except $2, from ethnic group A, but not ethnic group B. There is no way to ask for the money later.

You can do nothing about the gunmen in the corridor. You cannot move. Its a thought experiment.

Do you:

a) Say the cost is $5. Because to do otherwise would be racist. No people from group A can take your course.

b) Say that the cost is $5, unless you are from ethnic group A, in which case the cost is $2. Everyone who shows up can take your course. Because to do otherwise would fail to acknowledge the inherent racism of the larger system.

In the US, the larger system is demonstrably racist. People who should have $5 have $2. People who should have 4.0s have 2.0s.

This will backfire on Google in the same way that the "But they ask algorithms questions in their interviews" will backfire on Google: they'll attract smart people who can do the job.

>This will backfire on Google in the same way that the "But they ask algorithms questions in their interviews" will backfire on Google: they'll attract smart people who can do the job.

No, it will backfire on them by discouraging people of other races from even applying because they know they are starting with a disadvantage.

Very few engineers in Silicon Valley interact with black engineers. That's a problem. You can't have positive experiences to remove your bias if you have zero experiences.

> You can't have positive experiences to remove your bias if you have zero experiences.

Who is to say they have any? You're implying they're somehow racist because they haven't met a black engineer? Just because of their skin color you're gonna judge 'em? Well sounds like you're the racist.

The data is telling us that we are racist - that's why we need affirmative action. I don't really understand what you're trying to say.

That's not at all what the data is "telling us." That's just your political narrative of the status quo.

While this may not be the data GP is referring to, data from studies of people's responses in controlled circumstances when factors other than the apparent race/ethnicity of the person they are responding to are held constant shows that Americans, in general, are racist.

Can you cite your source for such a vile claim?

> Very few engineers in Silicon Valley interact with black engineers.

There is little diversity to be gained from black engineers. Black engineers end up in the category of another nerdy American.

Race is not a good metric for diversity.

Diversity would be Arabians, African immigrants, Thai, etc.

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