Because to identify discrimination, you need to measure it.
Without taking these stats, the Jim Crow South suddenly looks like an even-handed application of voting tests.
e: I will say, the number of comments I get from European commentators favoring the “putting your hands in front of your eyes” approach when it comes to racism in Europe does make it completely unsurprising how non-diverse their C-suite is as well as why they have difficulty attracting high-skilled immigrant talent.
The US has long had permissive immigration policy relative to Europe and that is absolutely one of the largest factors in America's dominance in industry and that immigration policy is a product of attitude towards immigrants. This is true historically - explaining dominance in the 20th century - and in modern tech, capital flows to where it can most effectively leverage high-skilled technical labor and that was the almost exclusively the United States until very recently.
I don't think it's any of my school's, employer's, internship's, etc business what race I am, unless there are protections in place that make it only for govt statistics. The US Census is also fine.
Like it took until 2023 to finally outlaw intentional racial discrimination in American universities; that was A-OK and widely practiced before. And some of Google's internship programs publicly list what races they prefer, which is common in tech.
Without taking these stats, the Jim Crow South suddenly looks like an even-handed application of voting tests.
e: I will say, the number of comments I get from European commentators favoring the “putting your hands in front of your eyes” approach when it comes to racism in Europe does make it completely unsurprising how non-diverse their C-suite is as well as why they have difficulty attracting high-skilled immigrant talent.