[jkaplowitz]

The Supreme Court rulings didn't say whether race quota systems are racist since that's not a concept known to the law - they merely judged legality. The set of racist things includes both legal things and illegal ones (e.g. in the US calling someone a racial slur is usually racist but not itself illegal); so does the set of non-racist things (e.g. explicitly refusing to hire people over age 40 is usually illegal but not itself racist).

Anyway, it's not as if most of the tech industry cares about strict adherence to the law in other areas, such as Uber running roughshod over many jurisdictions' pre-existing transport-for-hire legislation, Airbnb doing the same for short-term rental/hotel legislation, and the whole "gig economy" bringing their gig workers close enough to the definition of misclassified employee that many rulings say they're past the line.

If this one case of powerful tech companies ignoring the law is working in favor of hiring more suitably qualified members of minority demographics than they otherwise would, then I'm happy they're doing it as long as they're generally willing to violate laws for worse purposes.

[R0b0t1]

Racism is a concept known to the legal system because it is a type of discrimination and quotas are illegal. It took me a second but the ruling is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regents_of_the_Univ._of_Cal._v....

[jkaplowitz]

That ruling did overturn the specific rigid quota system which that university used as unconstitutional and therefore illegal discrimination, but that is different than ruling that it was racist because racism is not illegal in the US. Literally, going up to someone on the street and using a racial slur at them is not illegal in the US, despite it being very classically racist. As another example, the federal law against race-based discrimination in employment does not apply to employers with fewer than 15 employees who meet certain frequency-of-work requirements; mere failure to meet that statutory threshold does not eliminate the racist character of racist behavior, but it does make it legal in the absence of a relevant state or local law.

Many specific racist behaviors are of course either sometimes or always illegal, but those concepts are individually known to the law, not outlawed as racism per se.

What's more, the ruling you linked did not address the kind of quotas which the FANG company was discussing in the quoted email. The university was setting aside a certain percentage of the total and rejecting white people who might otherwise have qualified to keep room for racial minorities, which was key to the ruling. The FANG company was evaluating white people just as it would have done without the quotas, but it was simply allowing extra hiring of racial minorities beyond the normal budgets until certain targets/quotas were met. Whether this is legal or not is out of scope of that ruling. (Maybe other rulings have addressed this; I'm not sure.)

[R0b0t1]

Fair enough, I guess I was referring to legal entities acting in outwardly racist ways as racism. I should have been more specific. I am aware most of the protected class laws had some kind of exception.

I'm aware of the specificity of the ruling but the basis on which the ruling was made is much more general. Depending on the entity different laws would be in question; a fully private entity would probably be violating the civil rights act of 1964, while in the case of university admissions and funding the current systems are still in violation of the equal protection clause. Interpretations of the civil rights act of 1964 that advantage groups for no reason other than race are also unconstitutional.

Note this is a lot different than allowing race to be a factor of a multifaceted evaluation -- it's inappropriate to have race at all be part of the evaluation. Instead substitute it for socioeconomic background.

I'm not sure yet how to fully clarify this, so consider the Missouri government's statutory commitment to spend X% of the budget with women or minority owned businesses. In a degenerate case this means e.g. even the most unqualified candidate could be awarded a contract solely on the basis of race, violating the equal protection clause.

(Practically this expenditure law means larger companies have "independent" women and minority owned businesses as subcontractors who might contract the work back to a business owned by the larger company that can do the work.)

[jkaplowitz]

> Note this is a lot different than allowing race to be a factor of a multifaceted evaluation -- it's inappropriate to have race at all be part of the evaluation.

My understanding of the state of the law is that race is currently allowed to be considered as a factor in university admissions if available workable race-neutral alternatives do not suffice, and that (as of 2016) the University of Texas at Austin's policy of using race as such a factor was found to be constitutional for this reason.

More reading on that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher_v._University_of_Texas_...

The viability of this precedent is highly uncertain since it was a 4-3 ruling (one SCOTUS seat vacant at the time and one justice recused), and since its majority was four of the liberal justices of whom one (the late RBG) has now been replaced by the conservative Justice Barrett. But it hasn't yet been overruled, and it was a SCOTUS majority ruling and not dicta, so it's likely to be followed by lower courts unless and until it's overruled by SCOTUS.

Questions of being inappropriate are, of course, a personal opinion-based judgment call and not a question of legality.

[R0b0t1]

I'm aware of the current rulings. I am explaining why they should be considered invalid.

>Questions of being inappropriate are, of course, a personal opinion-based judgment call and not a question of legality.

Disingenuous. If the law is not agreeable soon it will be unenforceable. I consider the rulings inappropriate both on the basis of constitutionality and on the basis of construction an egalitarian society.

Again, see my example about Missouri statutory expenditures on the basis of gender and race. Many states have laws like this. They plainly violate the equal protection clause. You can try to claim the state has an overwhelming interest to ignore the protection clause, but then can't it just have an overwhelming interest to violate whatever parts of the constitution it wants? Where does it stop?

[jkaplowitz]

> If the law is not agreeable soon it will be unenforceable.

Lots of awful laws remain enforceable for very, very, very long times. For example, the whole industry of private prison contractors profiting from prisoner labor, with prisoners sometimes being legally required to participate and always being paid far below the usual minimum wage, and with contractual provisions between the prison companies and the states about how full the states will keep their prisons, leading to the creation and proactive enforcement of lots of crimes with prison as a punishment to keep that pipeline filled. Non-inheritable slavery never got outlawed as a criminal sentence, even if states have chosen to limit their implementation of that to prison labor instead of "you but not your family are now literally a slave for the rest of your lifetime."

> I consider the rulings inappropriate [...] on the basis of construction an egalitarian society.

Many people agree with you, and I believe they share your reasons. But many people disagree with you, including me, on the basis that properly crafted affirmative action efforts are addressing an existing inequality in our not-at-all-egalitarian society.

That's not to say a qualified white person should see their application refused on the basis of rigid racial quotas - we both agree that should be illegal, and as we discussed it already is.

But yes, to me it seems fair and egalitarian to take into account something like race that routinely leads to disadvantage and discrimination (or alternatively advantage and privilege) even in today's society when evaluating a person's achievements and obstacles, and in planning outreach and recruitment efforts. People do likewise for other similarly impactful factors like poverty, disability, and migrant status, and rightly so. I view this as appropriate both in university admissions and in viewing success stories like Kelsey Hightower's as even more impressive than if he were Just Another White Guy In Tech(tm) ... highlighting the sad fact that stories like his are so rare is part of the point of the article.

> Again, see my example about Missouri statutory expenditures on the basis of gender and race. Many states have laws like this. They plainly violate the equal protection clause.

I haven't properly thought through the case about state government statutory expenditures, so I don't have a strong opinion there right now on what is either constitutional or appropriate. I think that case's constitutionality or lack thereof is a far less clear question than you apparently do.

But if any such programs are making significant progress toward fixing disproportionate imbalances in government expenditures that come from the systemic sexism and racism in society without getting the government substandard value per dolllar, any invalidation of those programs should be coupled with the adoption of some adequately effective replacements with fewer constitutional issues.