Comment by ojnabieoot | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ojnabieoot | Hacker News Reader

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The hypothetical you’re clearly referring to here is a high-performing white or Asian applicant who regrettably has to be rejected to make room for a mediocre black applicant. This concern is 1% based in reality and 99% based in racist resentment.

Companies make hiring decisions based on all sorts of factors that have nothing to do with performance. Two extremely problematic ones are:

1) soft “skills” like charisma, rapport, etc, which are much more about social identity than social ability, and in particular discriminate against nonwhites, women, and many LGBT people

2) Unvarnished and criminal Klan-style racism, such as turning down a well-qualified job applicant because his name is Jamal, or assuming a black woman must have lied about her 3.9 GPA, which is still rampant in all 50 United States, and an enormous reason for the black-white wealth and income disparity. This sort of blatant discrimination has been repeatedly observed in the 21st century and is a plain fact.

These two practices are not only widespread and illegal, they also deprive companies of good talent. The reason for diversity quotas isn’t to distort a (nonexistent) meritocratic hiring process, but instead to correct grotesque violations in actually existing hiring practices.

Do you have any sources to back this up? I figured that may have been the case a few decades ago but I imagined nowadays the affirmative action outweighs those factors on a macro scale.

Coming from someone who used to be seen as a white man and is now seen as a white woman, it matters. Noticing that it mattered for me made me take notice when it happens to others. Spoiler: it happens a lot. I shut it down real fast when it happens in front of me, but I used to be part of the problem as well. It's (usually) not malice; people genuinely don't realize that "cultural fit" is usually code for "like me". That ability to be blind to things like that is essentially the nature of what people call "privilege". Doesn't make you a bad person, it just means you should probably listen to other perspectives before you interject your own.

"Affirmative action" isn't a thing. It never really was. All it ever meant was ensuring that opportunities were offered to minorities to interview, but those opportunities still paid out at a below-average rate relative to straight / white / male people. Your company won't share diversity numbers outside of HR, but if you have a friend you can usually get them off the record. They don't share them because the numbers are bad.

I am sorry to keep being uncharitable about this but I am angry and frustrated: the reason you “figured” it may have been the case a long time ago but you “imagine” that nowadays we have the reverse problem is because you are an ignorant racist who is filling your gaps in knowledge with white resentment. I will try to alleviate some of the ignorant side of this:

March 2020, results from a field experiment demonstrating persistent unambiguous racist discrimination: https://www.nber.org/papers/w26861

This is a recent example of a famous series of experiments, where otherwise identical fictitious resumes are given “black-sounding” or “white-sounding” names (or addresses, alma maters, etc), and the researchers count how many callbacks the resumes get. If the black resumes get significantly less callbacks there is no alternative explanation than illegal racism. The classic experiment is “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal?” from 2003: https://www.nber.org/papers/w9873

A 2016 retrospective of similar labor discrimination field experiments: https://www.nber.org/papers/w22022

Evidence of improving but ongoing racist discrimination against black business owners seeking credit: https://www.nber.org/papers/w13972

2011 paper estimating that 1/3rd of the black-white wage gap is due solely to employment discrimination: https://www.nber.org/papers/w17462 (it has been established elsewhere that about ~1/2 the wage gap is due to the education/credentials gap)

An interesting 2019 paper finding virtually no discrimination against Native Americans and Hawaiians: https://www.nber.org/papers/w25849 (this is relevant to the sociological view that American racial stratification is anti-black more than pro-white, or rather that “white” really means “not black”)

This is just from one google search of the NBER archives on my phone. This evidence exists in spades.

I wish I could upvote this comment 1000 times.

Hey, I agree with everything that is being said here but I think it might be unnecessary here to be making personal attacks such as calling somebody racist or implying white resentment because somebody is mis-informed. Especially because -- growing up in a racist society -- we all have internalized racism in some way, which we're just slowly trying to unlearn.

Just based on current events, even many dense non-Whites (myself included) have just started to realize how deep the problem goes when it goes to both conscious and unconscious bias.

We can definitely do better, and I hope the trends do indeed show that we're heading that way.

In my view a huge part of the problem is that we keep giving bad people a benefit of the doubt they don't deserve, and keep treating bad faith nonsense as arguments worthy of consideration. In my view I am not making a "personal attack" so much as calling a spade a spade.

To be clear: I believe OP is not just ignorant, but is being a bad person. OP's point was not simply that anti-black discrimination is no big deal - which would be reprehensible enough - but that the opposite is happening, to the detriment of whites. It doesn't matter if OP is parroting racist propaganda or creating it themselves: it is highly potent racist propaganda, designed to convert whites into overt racists by playing on their resentment.

OP isn't "less racist" if they sincerely believe the propaganda due to misinformation: racism is racism and OP is perpetuating it. "Just because he's repeating a racist lie does NOT mean he is a racist" is unfortunately a common line of thought in the US. But this only assuages the feelings of whites, and does not accurately describe racism in America.

Ah, I see what you mean. You're saying that intent does not excuse action, and if somebody is repeating things that are racist then they are engaging in racism, and a racist is someone who carries out the act of racism. Therefore they are a racist.

I can't disagree with that. Thanks for making the effort to explain.

----

EDIT (5 minutes later): Man, now that you put it that way I can't stop thinking about how obvious that is.

"Just because they're repeating racist things doesn't mean they're a racist" Is a pretty weak line of thought, since that's quite literally the definition of racist. It's alarming what you internalize living somewhere for long enough. Sorry ojnabieoot, I've got it now.

When you say 'OP', who are you talking about?

> Any company that has diversity hiring numbers that they are supposed to hit is discriminating based on factors outside of performance if it influences their hiring process at all.

> OP's point was not simply that anti-black discrimination is no big deal - which would be reprehensible enough - but that the opposite is happening, to the detriment of whites.

You.

You do realize I didn't say any of that and this person hallucinated a giant rant right?

One way to do better is to recognize that the onus is by default put on minorities to explain discrimination. For example, black people in the US spend extraordinary amounts of time explaining racism to white people, an exhausting and neverending effort. It's like a DDOS.

How do people use `soft “skills” like charisma, rapport etc' as the excuse for rejecting a woman in favor of a typical white male neckbeard with a straight face? It's weird that people who everybody agrees lack social skills can be so entrenched in society. Maybe we need more education at an early age as to what social ability is and isn't.

What I said was a generality, I was not alluding to any of this.

Hiring or not hiring based on a protected class in the US is illegal.

> soft “skills” like charisma, rapport, etc, which are much more about social identity than social ability, and in particular discriminate against nonwhites, women, and many LGBT people

That sounds plenty racist to me*

* two can play this game

Stating which demographics beyond race the commenter believes is being significantly discriminated against is not racist. This is not discrimination against white people. It is not false either - lgbtq people have a higher chance of suicide, there's a signriciant wage gap between men and women across fields and industries, employers can also be racist. If you are uncertain of these well known facts, I have nothing to say.

Two can play a game indeed if both know what they're doing.

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