It's worse than that.
What doctor would you go to, a white man, a black man, or a woman, if you knew that there's affirmative action for blacks/women, and you wanted (and could afford) the best doctor?
Mind you, picking white man isn't even racist, it's rational in the Bayesian framework (the white/male had to have better exam scores to be admitted to the school than blacks/women).
What is it with this obsession that every requires the best doctor? I don't want the best doctor, I want a good enough doctor who is close to my house location or I will stick to my current doctor because I had good experience with them. Once I stumble upon problems with that doctor I might reevaluate. Sometimes good is good enough, you don't always need the best of the best. My dentist is a woman, and not white. She's great. My doctor is a white male, he is also great. Skin or gender mean nothing to me in this context.
Being only willing to settle for the absolute best doctor in the world is ridiculous, but it is perfectly rational to want to choose the best one out of a small group of candidates. I can't imagine approaching it any other way when my personal health is on the line.
[1] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medisch_tuchtcollege
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoni_van_Leeuwenhoekziekenhu...
Only if you assume no inherent counter-bias, which is of course ridiculous. Without affirmative action, blacks/women would have to have equal exam scores coupled with adverse conditions (statistically, on average) to the white/male candidate. By that logic, they would need to perform much better on aggregate.
Anyway, my original question was about fairness :).
I guess the hope is that increased participation will slowly reduce the severity of adversity, but whether that is effective I'm less sure of (I don't really believe it will ever disappear completely tbh).
As for it being more rational to choose the person who contends with adversity on the assumption that the adversity never disappears (and therefore continues to impair), this only works on the assumption that affirmative action is a complete, perfect remedy to adversity: otherwise those contending with adversity must still overachieve to a certain degree to get the same positions (and therefore represent a potentially better rational choice).
Of course I wouldn't really, I'm just using your logic.
Although technically that's a different effect. Affirmative action is, AFAIK, meant to counter negative bias before (i.e. positive discrimination at university entry is meant to counter worse education and poverty at a primary- and high-school level), whereas you're talking about overcoming biases after graduation ("old boys network" etc).
Just philosophizing.
However, to take the bait and make an attempt at analysing it:
- (race/gender-based) adversity in education usually has the effect of reducing your chances of succeeding in exams, admissions, etc.
- (race/gender-based) adversity in professional practice usually has the effect of reducing your chances of acquiring customers, partners, progression within an organisation.
So while she may still face after admission, that adversity should have a much more significant affect on her paycheck than on her medical performance.
How would that work? If we talked about oral exams or job interview then surely there can be a bias. But written exams? I can't imagine how it would be affected by your race.
What can be however affected is your access to quality education prior to the admission, which will affect your admission changes, which should not be an issue after the admission because now you are getting the same quality education as others.
While I can imagine that socio-economic issues (like being black=poor) may affect your access to quality education prior to the admission, I can not imagine how being a woman would affect your access to quality education. Maybe stereotypes in case of STEM?
Feeling safe is related to rapport with the person which is again related to ethnicity, gender, age, behavior, etc.