[joannanewsom]

How do you determine which ethnic groups have been historically disadvantaged and to what extent need correction?

Black: Yes

Native American: ?

Afghan: ?

Puerto Rican: ?

Hawaiian: ?

Japanese: ?

Jewish: ?

White: No

Or do you simply go until the diversity of the position/company matches the diversity of the general population?

[olliej]

Determining groups that have been historically disadvantaged is generally not difficult.

The part that is difficult is how you correct for that. There are many things you need to deal with. The most obvious ones being

* Fields having relatively small populations run into the standard low population vs. overall population statistics

* Fields that have historically restricted access to a group can legitimately point to a lack of "qualified" members in the restricted group

Neither has an easy solution. The only thing we know is that a failure to actively work on correcting the effect of historical discrimination extends the impact of that discrimination beyond the point when the discrimination "ended".

Like I said in the original post this particular example is clunky, but I also don't have any better ideas :-/

[joannanewsom]

> Determining groups that have been historically disadvantaged is generally not difficult.

Want to elaborate on how to determine if an ethnic group is disadvantaged? I really do not see what the process would look like, that isn't just comparing population sizes.

Otherwise you get into these impossible questions of is anti-semitism worse than hate crimes against asians. Every ethnicity can point to a history of injustice against them. But if the ideas is to favor certain groups, that means there needs to be a way of choosing which are deserving and which are not.