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Comment by littlelamb | Hacker News Reader

I am absolutely all in for equality, but definitely strongly against equity.

When I get HR try to shove a resume down my throat because it ticks all of their boxes despite having none of the boxes to be succesful on the job, that is when I draw the line.

I don't care if you're white, black, purple or green, and whether you fuck men, women, all of them or none of them is none of my business. At the end of the day I want the most qualified to get the position when I interview, you either know your stuff or you don't.

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I don't understand how sex orientation plays a pivotal role in job performance. Oh well, that thought alone puts me in alt-right group, I guess.

Your statement (maybe because of a massive pendulum swing in society) in some circles is considered racist, regardless of your motivations.

This is a major difficulty we face today, mass irrationality in society.

(Speaking of the US) Our society has historically created great differences in opportunity. It is unarguable that white males have disproportionately benefited[1][2][3].

Affirmative action / Diversity Initiatives are a blunt instrument that attempts to address these historical inequities. If e.g., a student from a school in a poor area had the same quality of a K-12 education, did not have to worry about tuition (I.e., make university free again) / living expenses to be able to continue at university as the wealthy kid, affirmative action could have been phased out from higher ed.

The problem is that the inequities continue, so what should have been a short-term policy to address historical inequities has become a long-term papering over of deep issues in our society.

Policies to allow affirmative action to be phased out in higher ed might include, funding K-12 schools equitably instead of based on local property tax revenue + parental donations. Changing college entrance policies to accept only the top n students from any school, to create an incentive for wealthy to place their children in "worse" schools which would incentivize those same wealthy to properly fund all schools. Paying the parents of the children in the "bad" schools a wage that allows them a life with dignity and time to spend with their children. Mandatory paid time off so sick children are not just left on their own at home (possibly getting into trouble). Policing that doesn't target certain demographics foreclosing future opportunities-- e.g., a kid with an arrest record is barred from attending paramedic classes at the local community college. Etc.

We need to make fundamental changes in all areas of society to address inequities in opportunity just in college / university admissions. A great side effect is poor rural whites would benefit just as much as other marginalized groups by systemically addressing the issues (one fewer way for the wealthy elite to divide us). But, our society has collectively decided it is easier just to keep affirmative action / diversity programs around.

Workplaces are downstream from schools, so everything that needs to be solved around equitable access to education needs to occur before the "temporary" policies to address the fallout of not addressing our societal issues systemically can be phased out at the workplace.

[1] https://www.history.com/news/gi-bill-black-wwii-veterans-ben...

[2] https://www.nber.org/digest/dec02/gi-bill-world-war-ii-and-e...

[3] https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history...

Edit: fixed grammar

> If e.g., a student from a school in a poor area had the same quality of a K-12 education, did not have to worry about tuition (I.e., make university free again) / living expenses to be able to continue at university as the wealthy kid, affirmative action could have been phased out from higher ed.

Wouldn't AA on social-economical status work, which can be more inclusive? Even you only mentioned "poor" and "wealthy", instead of some neighborhood of particular identity group.

I mostly agree with you. I think the concept of race is one of the tools, wielded by the wealthy, to keep the rest of us divided. But, ignoring that we have hundreds of years of government policies that favored whites over non-whites isn't addressing the past wrongs that got us here.

One pretty stark reminder of this is how one's race is an indicator of standardized test scores in the US.

> ...selective institutions require high SAT scores for entry—and there are even bigger race gaps at the top of the score distribution. [In 2020,] of those scoring above 700, 43% are Asian and 45% are white, compared to 6% Hispanic or Latino and 1% Black

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/12/01/sat-math-...

Why not just put more money into schools and poorer areas?

We would need an entirely different way of funding schools to make that happen. In the US school funding is more tied to local taxes, so wealthier areas get more money. There are other programs to give additional funds to poor areas, but it's not usually enough to level the playing field.

This comment just implies that you assume any minority candidate that HR failed to screen is a diversity hire.

And of course now every minority employee at your company has to excel or else they might torpedo the entire diversity hiring initiative.

No, that’s your assumption. The parent comment didn’t say it happens all the time, only that it does happen.

Nah, it’s pretty obvious. Maybe you need to learn to read between the lines.

Or perhaps our unconscious bias is providing a motivation to project meanings onto other people's words.

No, it’s a clear statement with clear implications that you’re willfully ignoring.

I'm not getting that implication. They are saying that, on occasion, HR tries to shove a resume down his throat on the basis of race/sexuality when the applicant is lacking experience. That, in no way, leads me to extrapolate any kind of volume one way or another.

HR is literally not allowed, legally, to do that. Given that their entire existence is predicated on not getting the company sued I’m sure they’re well aware of that.

So either OP should file a lawsuit or they’re imagining things.

What law would HR be violating by pushing certain resumes based on favored traits? IME this pretty common at all sorts of big companies.

People don't whistle-blow because its obvious you'll get buried if you do. Just ask James Damore.

Well that's sort of their own doing. When you formalize the process of prioritizing individuals based solely on their attributes that have no relation to merit (skin color) then you must necessarily accept that people will presume that skin-color alone played a role in their hiring.

HN is always complaining that tech hiring is broken and that whiteboard/leetcode is a waste of time. So it’s not like the current interview process has relation to merit either. Just filtering for people who have time and resources for dealing with bullshit, which given the demographics of the US serves as a nice racial filter as well.

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