[curioushacking]

My understand for how we measure systemic racism issues seems to typically be predicated on assumed outcomes. For example that if the distribution of employees race does not match the general population then there must be a systemic cause for this.

What I don’t understand is why that is assumed true. If we want to encourage many different cultures to live together wouldn’t it naturally make sense that different cultures would have different outcomes in job preferences? How do you separate potential racism from cultural differences?

My fear is if there are strong cultural differences that lead to disparate racial outcomes so organizations will always be able to point out that systemic issues exist even when they may be eradicated. I don’t know how we measure this.

[bjourne]

> How do you separate potential racism from cultural differences?

By conducting studies where you study the effect of the race variable. This has been done many times over in multiple countries and the results have shown that colored people and racial minorities are discriminated against. But despite the vast amount of empirical data, people still refuse to believe that racial discrimination is a factor in the job market.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-29/job-appli... https://www.jstor.org/stable/40276548 https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/lehr-2015-000...

[mhuffman]

>despite the vast amount of empirical data

Well, your examples seem pretty cherry-picked and not necessarily generally empirical (ie. lots of embedded subjectivity).

Now your first link is more interesting and is usually the one that everyone pulls out as "absolute proof" that discrimination is live and well in modern hiring against Black people.

I wonder, though, how much of this is in the bias of the experimenters when they selected "Black sounding names" and how much is just unfamiliarity with an "unusual" (and by this I mean rare) name and how much is the knee-jerk reaction to a name (basically real prejudice).

For example the actual most common names for Black children in the US are – Jacob, Emma, Michael, Ava, William, Emily, etc. And I suspect they are not choosing those names on purpose.

On the other hand, my ex's sister named their son "Air Jordan" (for his first name) and their daughter Cinnamon for her first name. And I personally have great uncles with the real first names of "Snapbean" and "Squawk" (I am not joking).

None of these people are Black, but how do you imagine their resumes are accepted at large (or small) companies?

So I am wondering how much is prejudice against the person and how much is prejudice against the name?

[throwbacktictac]

I'm genuinely missing your point. It sou d like you're insinuating that the lack of a "normal" name is a good reason to disqualify someone from a job opportunity. That possibly implies that the resume screen uses someone's name as a discriminating factor and I don't think that it should be.

[ponow]

> I don't think that it should be

Why is it your choice to make? When you hire someone, you're hiring everything they bring to the table. You might be wrong in your interpretation, but it's what you've got. So perhaps you find names beyond the pale, but why not dress codes too? Names and many other characteristics involve human choices well beyond genetics.

You do realize that the orchestras used to hire blind, that is, the audition was done with the musician hidden behind a curtain and all other factors withheld, so that the only factor that was perceivable was the sound of the music from the musician, in an effort to remove bias. And New York Times in the last year or two had an editorial decrying this as unfair, because it didn't give the correct outcome of reducing underrepresentation. The DIE crowd does not want fairness and equality of opportunity; they want equality of outcome. They want diversity hires, not hires of the maximally strong candidates.

[Spivak]

> The DIE crowd does not want fairness and equality of opportunity; they want equality of outcome

I always find it weird that people see this is a bad thing. Equality of outcome is equity. Extra time for people with learning disabilities is equity, ada regulations is equity, hearing aids, glasses, booster seats, handicaps in golf and chess, giving bus seats to the elderly are all equity. Equity is the thing we naturally strive for in basically all aspects of life. Provide aid when we can, receive aid when needed.

> They want diversity hires, not hires of the maximally strong candidates.

That's not what affirmative action is, it's recognizing both the systematic and individual disadvantages that someone experienced and, potentially, depending on what they are, realizing that they have more potential than meets the eye. It's like basing hiring decisions entirely on leetcode challenges and putting on your blinders on not realizing that the people who have the time to waste on leetcode is a skewed sample of the population.

Who is the more impressive student? Alice who had a stable suburban comfortable upbringing and went to prestigious private high school and got a 34 on her ACT, or Bob who grew up with a single father, went to a public high school in an high needs district, had to work a part time job after school and babysit his little brother every day before his dad got home and got a 29?

The above is an example of an individual disadvantage, now apply that same logic to systematic disadvantages.

[rayiner]

> Who is the more impressive student? Alice who had a stable suburban comfortable upbringing and went to prestigious private high school and got a 34 on her ACT, or Bob who grew up with a single father, went to a public high school in an high needs district, had to work a part time job after school and babysit his little brother every day before his dad got home and got a 29?

The kid with the higher score is a more impressive student. But there might certainly be a justification for giving the kid who had a tougher road to get there a leg up.

But that’s different from what we’re doing, where we apply racist assumptions and treat certain minorities as if they’re all from single parent homes, regardless of whether that’s true for the individual.

[LawTalkingGuy]

> Equity is the thing we naturally strive for

If equity was our standard we wouldn't give eyeglasses to anyone because blind people can't see at all.

Instead we strive for equality, where everyone is able to use the best devices they or their insurance can provide regardless of others. I can get glasses to restore my vision to 25/20 even if yours never was 20/20.

> That's not what affirmative action is, it's recognizing both the systematic and individual disadvantages

Affirmative action doesn't treat people as individuals. It's specifically about using people's visible identities (whether or not they do!) to determine how they're treated. Under affirmative action a rich black man would get a job before a poor white man and it would be defended by its supporters as undoing systematic obstacles even if the recipient never encountered those obstacles themselves.

> people who have the time to waste on leetcode

Why do we hate people who teach themselves a skill? Why is it literally considered a negative these days?

> a skewed sample of the population

They're individuals, not population samples.

> Who is the more impressive student

If I was running a scholarship this would be the criteria because it would indicate who would get the most out of the resources. If I'm hiring them to fit a defined role I only care about their current skills, not where they started.

[mhuffman]

>I'm genuinely missing your point

Yes, you are missing my point. I am not insinuating anything, I am stating directly that some people might be biased against unusual (to them) names. Names that are difficult to say, spell, etc. depending on the language, or just out-right stereotypical prejudice with a name (which is what these studies just assume). I am not saying that any of this is ok, people rarely get to pick their names. What I am saying is that it might not all be based on the color of people's skin.

[joshuamorton]

Reducing racial bias to solely and precisely "skin color", and not the cultural biases that come with it is itself missing the point.

Begin biased against Black skin is a problem (and is the important bit in some instances). Being biased against "Black" names is also a problem, even if you can devise situations where the name is attached to a person who doesn't have Black skin. And both are racism, because they are directed at people based on the assumption that they are in a particular ethnic group, even if that assumption is wrong.

[LawTalkingGuy]

> Being biased against "Black" names is also a problem, even if you can devise situations where the name is attached to a person who doesn't have Black skin. And both are racism, because they are directed at people based on the assumption that they are in a particular ethnic group, even if that assumption is wrong.

You assume a racist motive in your scenario, but what if the bias is actually towards all unfamiliar names, only some of which are black names?

The specter of racism is so great that people are expected to be free from every potential bias because it could be race-equity related somewhere.

[einherjae]

I read the above as a way of saying that names may not necessarily be a good proxy for race specifically. Not as a comment on whether discrimination based on names is right or wrong.

You are of course entirely right that it shouldn’t matter in the decision process, unless the job at hand is “person named John”. But a point to raise is that this holds for positive discrimination as well, if the goal is to increase the number of X minority employees, then you cant optimize for that by selecting for X-sounding names if that’s a bad proxy.

[n4r9]

I'm not sure it matters, in the sense that both feel like an example of "systemic" racism (as referred to above). It may not be the recruiter/interviewer's intention to be prejudiced, but it is the outcome of the system.

[bjourne]

I have just one question; how many Israeli Palestinians and Indian dalits are named Air Jordan?

[mhuffman]

Well, I purposely pointed out the first link. Regarding the others, I think there are deeper historical, social, and religious issues that go beyond the racial problems in the US and I don't have any type of deeper insight on those.

[darawk]

People love to cite this study as an example of absolute proof of discrimination, but it isn't. There is an obvious rational non-racist explanation for the outcome in question, and it is affirmative action.

A black person, a white person, and an asian person with the exact same credentials mean extremely different things in terms of absolute rather than relative competence level, as a consequence of affirmative action policies. The filters they had to pass through are different, and therefore an Asian person who went to Harvard almost certainly is in the top 1% of the absolute test score distribution, whereas the same is not necessarily true for the others.

Since job performance is correlated with absolute capability, and not group-relative capability, discrimination on the basis of race is rational in a society that employs affirmative action policies at prior points in the credentialism pipeline. Correcting and controlling for this would only be possible by designing resumes that don't reference achievements that have group-relative thresholds.

[lupire]

That's good information for me to consider when hiring for my firm, Standardized Test Taking, Inc.

[darawk]

That's a fair response, so I suppose I should add the asterisk: Conditional on a belief that test scores are correlated with ability level. However, this belief is rather common, and I wouldn't say that it is an intrinsically racist belief.

[okwubodu]

> There is an obvious rational non-racist explanation for the outcome in question

> A black person, a white person, and an asian person with the exact same credentials mean extremely different things in terms of absolute rather than relative competence level

Say these sentences out loud.

[darawk]

I have. They do not refer to the capability of the groups, only their present level. It's entirely consistent with what I said that the current differences between the groups are a consequence of historical racism and inequity.

That doesn't change the fact that the absolute level of current ability implied by the same credential differs between groups, when the credential is conferred via affirmative action.

[beowulfey]

Take a moment to wonder at the implication of your observation. Why do you assume, if three people all went to the same university and had the same credentials, that one of those people is almost certainly at the top 1% of absolute test scores because of their race? Perhaps you may be experiencing subconscious biases without even realizing it?

Based on your other comment, you would claim "Affirmative Action" is why you think this. But it is important to realize that by making this assumption at all you are expressing biased judgements on these three humans entirely based upon their race.

[darawk]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Affirmative action policies mechanically have this consequence. Asians have the highest test scores (among the racial groupings commonly used for AA policies), and affirmative action policies effectively z-score test scores by racial group for the purpose of admittance. The effect I described is a mechanical consequence of these two facts, it doesn't require any further assumption.

[beowulfey]

Let me try again. You receive three resumes for a job application, for three humans of three different races. They have the exact same credentials. You immediately assume one of the three is the brightest of them, because your understanding of Affirmative Action Policies says this particular race has the highest likelihood of having higher overall test scores.

One of the other two could have had the highest possible score of all time, but you have written them off by making an assumption about them, based on race. You have made a judgement based on statistical inference, when you should have treated them all equally.

You may not intend it in any ill-meaning way, but it is important to realize that minor assumptions like this are pervasive, and they have far-reaching effects.

[darawk]

> You immediately assume one of the three is the brightest of them, because your understanding of Affirmative Action Policies says this particular race has the highest likelihood of having higher overall test scores.

I think it's important to distinguish between probabilities and possibilities. It is possible that any of them has the highest score. However, it is most likely that the Asian does.

Let me articulate this phenomenon in a more neutral example. Suppose you start an elite academy for the game Go. All of the best Go players in the world come from places like South Korea, China, etc, who have a long history of playing the game. However, you would like to increase the appeal of the game internationally, so you institute an affirmative action policy that says 50% of your students must come from non-asian countries.

Let's say you have 100 slots to fill each year, and you operationalize your affirmative action policy as follows: You take all the asian applicants, rank them by ability, and take the top 50. You take all the non-asian applicants, rank them by ability and take the top 50.

It should be obvious that, in this example, the average absolute ability level of the two groups will be quite different. The incoming Asian group would crush the non-Asian group in competition. This isn't due to any innate racial capacity gap, but due to the historical and cultural relationship to the game of Go.

Now, you educate each group together for say, 4 years. That education process may homogenize ability a little bit - helping the lower performers improve more than the higher performers (though the opposite may also be true), but it's probably not sufficient to close the rather large incoming skill gap.

Now, if you were watching a match, and the only things you knew about the two competitors were that they both attended your elite academy, and one was from South Korea, and the other was from California, who would you bet on to win?

It's entirely possible that the Californian is better! It's just less likely, given no additional information. Critically, this isn't an argument against the affirmative action policy. The AA policy is doing just what it should do - helping to close the skill gap. But it does means that statistical reasoning about racism has to be sensitive to this confounding variable if it wants to make truly accurate inferences.

[meowtimemania]

I think what GP said was logical. Imagine Harvard has 3 entrance criteria, and the criteria a student receives depends on the first letter of their first name:

* A name: must be in top 1% of test scores

* B name: must be in top 5% of test scores

* C name: must be in top 10% of test scores

The following 3 students are admitted:

* Allison (is in top 1%)

* Brian (is in top 4%)

* Caitlin (is in top 1%)

We can only safely assume that Allison is in the top 1% because her criteria certifies it. Even though Caitlin in actuality is in the top 1%, because her entrance criteria is more lax, we are not sure.

I think this is one downside of affirmative action, people are unsure if a person passes based on affirmative action or purely on merit. Now we consider the upsides and downsides of affirmative action, and decide whether it should be implemented.

[Judgmentality]

> you should have treated them all equally

This is obviously the golden standard we are trying to achieve, but how do we get there? It's theoretically impossible to treat everyone equally and apply affirmative action at the same time. I understand there is a difference between equality and equity, but I'm replying to the words you wrote.

Affirmative action may be the best solution we currently have to deal with systemic racism, but ultimately it's trying to fix prejudice with prejudice - and that is not a perfect solution. It also creates a lot of confusion because sometimes we say to treat people equally (as you say when trying to decide between hiring candidates), and other times we say we should help out the disenfranchised (such as when admitting students to schools). So where do we draw the line for when we want equality versus equity?

[mistermann]

It is perhaps worth mentioning that this is actually only a means for potentially learning what is going on, and that it can also lead one into a state of confident confusion/misunderstanding.

Study results may only suggest something, which can often have the appearance of showing it.

[majormajor]

In the United States coming from a position of "maybe there is or isn't an effect from racism" is simply naive. A quick glance at history will show you that many differences in both outcomes AND culture have deep-seated intentionally racist historical sources (in different ways for different races).

How do you fight intentional racism, with a healthy dose of residual lasting generational effects from past racism, with passivity?

It's like creating a game with rules, but having no penalty for breaking them for the first half of the game, and then saying it's just the fault of the loser if someone cheats to beat them.

Or saying "I can't tell for sure if it's below freezing, my thermometer has an error bar of +/- ten degrees" and ignoring a bunch of freezing water around you.

[Test0129]

Perhaps by not telling the alleged perpetrators they are taking advantage of "power structures" provided by racism. If the US is ~60% white, then simply by the numbers there are more disenfranchised white people than any other race. Are these people also taking advantage of said "power structures"?

If the movement to fight this spectre of "institutional" racism would focus less on applying their rules to everyone, and more on applying their rules to actual perpetrators, it would garner more support from the people it needs. To use your analogy if you're sitting in your neighbors pool and he says it's not freezing, but there's freezing water, perhaps don't blame all of his neighbors.

[curioushacking]

I'm not trying to say that there hasn't been a history of racism nor even that it isn't prevalent today. I just want to understand how we accurately measure the actual effects of it so that we can understand how much effort to put into solving it or measuring if it is getting better over time. And some of the most used measures I find as evidence seem to be about the distribution of races in various jobs which on its own doesn't necessarily seem like a reliable metric to me.

Others pointed out some studies which showed potential biases in hiring and that seems like a great potential proxy to understand the current level of racism in hiring.

[BurningFrog]

> if the distribution of employees race does not match the general population then there must be a systemic cause for this.

A foundational belief here is that correlation is causation!

[jhoechtl]

> For example that if the distribution of employees race does not match the general population then there must be a systemic cause for this.

The assumption alone is wrong yet any other assumption inevitably leads to stigmatisation and segregation.

Whatever study anyone comes up with it will inevitably turn into a discussion if either racism or discrimination.

[curioushacking]

This seems to be the largest potential issue then with my understanding of requiring research a-priori to match an assumed outcome or ideal. I wonder if an academic wanted to rigorously attempt to isolate between these, would they be allowed to publish the results were found that systemic issues were not significant. It seems potentially dangerous if we stifle publications of studies that find minimal impact of racism because it could have the impact of only highlighting the cases of racism, but not the net impact.

[peter422]

The only issue with this is we can and have isolated clear mechanisms in which certain races are treated differently as compared to others (for example, names on resumes and interview rates, property assessments given a white looking household vs black looking household, pain management in hospitals for women of various races during childbirth, etc), and do I think it is fair to say that the expectation would be if the system were truly unbiased that the proportion of people of different races in various roles would be about similar.

Obviously there are a lot of mechanisms that might change that equal expectation, but it still seems reasonable to me that for most jobs the default expectations should be around equal.

[janef0421]

It's not unreasonable to think that cultural preferences might influence job roles in academia, but in a country with a strong and poorly addressed history of racism, the assumption should be that it results from discrimination. Cultural factor should only be considered if there is strong evidence for them, otherwise they would be used as a rhetorical justification for maintaining discriminatory systems.

[naasking]

Or you could just not assume any specific cause and actually study the problem, otherwise you leave such policies open to perfectly justified attacks, to say nothing of the fact that you're potentially persecuting a whole class of innocent people.

[hbrn]

> in a country with a strong and poorly addressed history of racism

Is there a diverse country that doesn't have a strong history of racism?

Is US worse than India, with it's caste system?

Is US worse than China, with it's Uyghur genocide?

Is US worse than Russia with it's Slavs-only rental ads?

Mind you, those are not the examples of past discriminations.

Is it possible that the reason you know more about discrimination in the US is not because US had more of it, but because you are better educated about US?

[janef0421]

Nothing about my comment indicated any sort of comparison to any other country.