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Comment by icelancer | Hacker News Reader

>> One thing I recommend to my hiring managers is to not allow people from frictioned backgrounds to manage and interview people from the other side.

What? This is racist in and of itself and would be blatantly illegal for any number of reasons.

Also the problem is not necessarily limited to Pakistani and Indians. It's Indians and Indians. Not sure what you want done there. I freely believe that the caste system of the host country carries over to the United States, but attempting to subvert that via "good" racist methods is not going to fly, especially if documented.

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One of the primary things these stories never truly elaborate properly on in the quest to establish social rank out of a caste-based society is that Black Americans, that were native to the US, and even for black migrants to India and other countries, are some of the most affected by caste politics of this kind in employment and work opportunity.

Often having darker skin, Black Americans are even prone to more discrimination domestically. Any editorial that doesn't recognize that fact as a truth has no legs to stand on in my opinion. The fact that people still hang on to caste ideology in any way, and treat it as a continuing reality should disqualify them from any role concerning equal opportunity. "Gradual change and understanding" is not a reasonable discussion in America, or we're all coddling the same violent and hateful past that America was born from.

I write this as someone who has lots of Pakistani and Indian friends, and has regularly struggled to get them to understand how different each of the dynamics are on this matter, but zero tolerance is essential to get people to understand that the issue is more serious and damaging than they could ever know.

> Often having darker skin, Black Americans are even prone to more discrimination domestically. Any editorial that doesn't recognize that fact as a truth has no legs to stand on in my opinion.

Nigerian immigrants outperform most domestic US groups. So clearly "skin color" isn't the main factor (if at all).

Jamaicans are even more prone to be poorer than Americans.

Would your retort be "but Jamaicans who've won multiple gold medals in sprinting are wealthier than most Americans?"

People who smoke are more likely to get lung cancer.

Would your retort be "13 year olds who smoke have less incidents of lung cancer than the non-smoking population?"

If you subsample enough, you'll find outliers. That doesn't invalidate general trends/statistics.

No, but it does introduce other variables.

E.g. age is important for lung cancer as well as smoking. Only when controlling for age do you get correct estimate about the danger of smoking.

What other variables does "Nigerian immigrants" introduce besides skin color and culture? The latter is eliminated by most US sociologists that keep screaming "it's not about culture!" so only race remains...

Isn't the fact that they immigrated likely bias towards the higher skilled echelon that managed to go through the visa process?

When you say "outperform most domestic US groups", are you normalising for the same skillset and education levels?

Perhaps a source to accompany your statement will help shed some light.

Don't forget to control for:

- Wealth upon entry (If all Nigerian immigrants come from millionaire families, then it doesn't matter if they're underpaid; they'll be far wealthier than most Americans)

- Location (If all Nigerian immigrants live in New York City, then the effect size of being underpaid can be masked by the higher income (and cost of living) in New York City)

- Profession/Job Title (if all Nigerian immigrants are neurosurgeons, then it doesn't matter if they're underpaid; they'll be way above average income)

- Age (if all Nigerian immigrants are older, then they'll have had more time to generate skills/wealth, which could mask the effect of being underpaid)

- Health (if all Nigerian immigrants are healthy, then the effect of being underpaid could be masked by the fact that many Americans are less productive due to health issues)

There are obviously more confounders, but doing an analysis using these would be a good place to start to actually answer the question.

That's not at all how I interpreted the parent comment.

I read it as the types of hardships and barriers that, say, a US descendant of slaves faces can be very different from a Nigerian immigrant, and that's one problem with lumping everyone with the same skin color together as "Black" when calculating diversity metrics.

This reminds me of an individual from South America I worked with many years ago. Some well-meaning individuals were asking him how the company could reach out to its Hispanic employees better. He looks at them and wryly says, "Well to start, you could stop thinking of us as 'Hispanic' since it encompasses people from 3 different continents, a dozen different countries and doesn't mean much."

Because you're getting the elite of the elite.

I don't understand how this is still such a difficult concept for people.

> Nigerian immigrants outperform most domestic US groups. So clearly "skin color" isn't the main factor (if at all).

This is very true. Most of the time when people think they're talking about race, they're actually talking about culture, which happens to be a much trickier concept. The Nigeria example, for instance, is an inconvenient truth that doesn't mesh well with the dominant race-essentialist narrative right now, so it typically gets ignored or outright dismissed.

...Yet, at any company where I've worked, a qualified candidate for a professional position in, say, accounting--who also happens to be black--has HR falling all over themselves in excitement. (The accountant I'm thinking of developed kind of a dark sense of humor in response.) Obsessing over the arbitrary characteristics that originally were used in discrimination doesn't fix it, and never will.

It makes it worse.

You needn’t be ham handed and stupid about it, just use meaningful internal controls.

Not just for this issue. If everyone hires friends and family, people from the hometown, place of worship, etc you run into other conflicts of interest. It’s always good to have disinterested parties involved in the hiring process.

On the basis of race, either documented or not, is asking to eat a massive civil lawsuit and get canceled in the media for doing so.

That’s why I said to not be ham handed about it.

Make a policy with respect to nepotism and discrimination, include a representative from other organizational groups in the interview process and be attentive to following policy.

You also have to be aware of culture issues and manage them without being a jerk. If you hire managers with background/experience whose norms are not inline with your culture you need to manage that. A McKinsey alum, a former outsourcing manager, and a web agency manager are going to have different positive and negative biases.

> What? This is racist in and of itself and would be blatantly illegal for any number of reasons.

And, as a half-Croat, needed. The ethnic tensions between former Yugoslavian countries have never been resolved, and many emigrants took the unresolved issues with them. The youngest generation is one thing, they grew up without having to live through all that bullshit, but a lot of people 35 and older have lost relatives and friends in one of the wars.

FFS Bosnia is at the moment creeping into the breakout of yet another conflict.

> attempting to subvert that via "good" racist methods is not going to fly, especially if documented.

It would because it did and it does: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Steelworkers_v._Weber

Looks like you didn’t get the point from OP.

It's called a conflict of interest, and anyone who has a conflict of interest in a given business situation should absolutely be removed from making any decisions around that conflict of interest (and they should be more than forthcoming about those conflicts of interest). Standards of Business Practice 101.

I agree that genuine conflicts of interest need to be addressed.

It seems absurd to declare a-priori that “no Indian shall be the unsupervised leader of a Pakistani (nor vice-versa) because that’s a conflict of interest”.

I didn't say that. What you've said here is a straw man

The original comment that spawned this discussion definitely was.

> One thing I recommend to my hiring managers is to not allow people from frictioned backgrounds to manage and interview people from the other side.

Huh? You said it is a conflict of interest when people from frictioned backgrounds are allowed to manage and interview people from the other side. It's right here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30523177

What is the strawman?

Interviewing someone from an opposite “frictioned background” is not considered a conflict of interest in law or ethics.

“Conflict of interest” is when someone has a clearly defined interest, usually in something of value, that opposes the interests of someone they have a duty towards.

In ethnic prejudice, there’s no clearly defined interest.

I know this sounds pedantic. But when a conflict of interest arises, the next questions are “when did it begin?”, “when will it end?”, “how big was it?”, and “can we mitigate it somehow?”

You can’t do any of those things with ethnic bias.

Ethnic bias is bad, but it’s not a conflict of interests.

> In ethnic prejudice, there’s no clearly defined interest.

> Ethnic bias is bad, but it’s not a conflict of interests.

Okay, so - for sure, if you're from an opposite "frictioned background" and you can interview someone neutrally, you should be able to.

But if you have an ethnic prejudice, you literally have an interest against the person you are interviewing.

> But when a conflict of interest arises, the next questions are “when did it begin?”, “when will it end?”, “how big was it?”, and “can we mitigate it somehow?”

(one example) > when did it begin?

hundreds of years ago

> when will it end?

not soon

> how big was it?

the US literally fought an entire war over it

> can we mitigate it somehow

Yes, by having a variety of people from different backgrounds interview the candidate.

That wasn't that hard, was it?

> But if you have an ethnic prejudice, you literally have an interest against the person you are interviewing.

The original comment by throwaway_dcnt -- "Example problematic pairs for candidates/interviewers (not including the cast situation) include: Indians and Pakistanis, Serbians and Bosnians, Greeks and Turks, Chinese and Japanese." -- doesn't make any qualifications. I read it the same way that icelancer seems to: they make the determination themselves, assuming it's going to be a problem without actually establishing that it will be. If that is the case, that is literally racism.

Maybe not in the legal sense of conflict of interest, a kind of conflict of interest non the less.

The way that you deal with ethnic bias and conflicts of interest is very different.

For example, employees are required to declare a conflict of interest. Declaring ethnic bias is a firable offense.

Imagine a mostly white business in rural Georgia where all the employees have declares they have racial bias against Black people.

As a result, they avoid hiring Black people because they don’t trust they can fairly evaluate their skills.

Realistically if you applied normal conflict of interest rules, it would be very hard to make a company more diverse.

wouldn't it be deeply discriminatory to assume that person X has a conflict of interest with person Y based solely on their religion, ethnicity or nationality?

You cannot assume these things because of protected classes having potential issues with one another. Not all Indians have caste issues with other Indians, and excluding them on the basis of nationality/race is strictly prohibited.

>> What? This is racist in and of itself and would be blatantly illegal for any number of reasons

Not going to touch the moral implications here, but _is_ that actually illegal discrimination? Is there any benefit for interviewing a particular candidate than an employee would miss out on? Again, not picking a side here; just curious.

> I freely believe that the caste system of the host country carries over to the United States,

Until relatively recently, the United States has always had a very strong strictly enforced caste system, even written into law, still the case in some Southern states. Some people were even allowed to buy and sell other types of people! As we can see some people are still allowed to kill certain types of other people with no consequences.

Okay? That has nothing to do with my point. I am merely agreeing with the article's thrust that the Indian caste system probably carries over to the US, but despite that, discrimination on the basis of race for employment is strictly prohibitive due to protected class statuses.

> Okay? That has nothing to do with my point.

I disagree. The phrasing you used implied that you believed the United States did not already have a caste system and that foreigners were bringing it to the US. This is factually incorrect since the US always had a very strict caste system pretty much from the inception of the nation only repealed recently, and even then still functionally present.

No it didn't imply that, because I have no idea what you are talking about. I am merely commenting on the caste system literally described in the article written and linked here about India.

Then what exactly is implied by " Not sure what you want done there. I freely believe that the caste system of the host country carries over to the United States, but attempting to subvert that via "good" racist methods is not going to fly, especially if documented. ".

Not sure what you want done there? Aren't you implying that the US is a caste-free system with the there?

That's... not even a little bit true.

It is called a 'conflict of interest'. (in this case it is national interest).

Fifa has often rules for this, where it avoid drawing to teams to play together when they are in constant/active conflict.

So, if there are some national tempers flaring, or a war somewhere, it is a better idea to have some boundaries.

Why we hope most people are good natured, we don't live in a perfect world, and it would be insane, or completely naive to believe that 'biases' do not exist.

The other side of it is 'ethnic nepotism', where people hire and favor people from their own countries, creating this pools of mono-ethnic teams in a company which statistically are not probable. This is actually a very common sight in Tech companies and we all know it.

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