Hiring Based on Race is Wrong...

[marks2065 0]

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OK, now here is the truth.

It's not that blacks are dumber or smarter that white people. It's Priorities.

Black kids growing up prioritize MTV, gangster rap, getting their bling on, slappin hoes, big ballin', grabbin their junk, and making sure their street cred is in order.

White kids are more likely to pay attention in school. Usually because they are more likely to have a father figure in their life to kick their ass if they slack off.

Some how it always makes it's way back to family values.

probably because family values actually make a difference.

[Nataly 38]

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>You have a very limited time scale on a new project. Your job and your
>livelyhood depends on this one project.

>You are given a choice from the two new hires to work with. You have a choice,
>you can have the black guy with a 66% passing grade that just barely
>squeaked by after they reduced the minimum passing grade, OR you can have
>the other guy, who passed his tests with a 90% minimum.

Then of course you take the most qualified guy.

Now here's a more realistic scenario. You have two guys. They both scored the same on the test. On the interviews, one guy got pretty good ratings. On the other set of interviews, there were no objective flaws detected, but several interviewers said things like "risk of poor priority setting" "may not be a hard worker" and "likely lower intelligence."

Your job is on the line. Which one are you going to take?

This is not a great scenario because we (the reader) do not know what those judgements were based on. If they *were* in relation to race alone, then your scenario implies that both candidates are exactly the same apart from colour, which is simply not possible.

"There is no problem so bad you can't make it worse."
- Chris Hadfield
« Sors le martinet et flagelle toi indigne contrôleuse de gestion. »
- my boss

[billvon 3,090]

>I didn't say in every senario.

Agreed. Sometimes two wrongs DO make a right. And sometimes treating a minority better than average makes up for the wrong done to them by treating them worse than average.

[billvon 3,090]

>This is not a great scenario because we (the reader) do not know what those
>judgements were based on.

Exactly; nor does the person making the decision in my example. If they were done by people who were completely race-blind, then you would take the guy who had the better interview with no problems. If they were done by people who believed in the same things people here were saying (blacks have lousy priorities, they are less intelligent on average, they are lazier) then you would be making a racist hiring decision, even though you yourself were not racist.

How do you avoid that? One way is to make sure no one is racist. Nice idea, and we're getting closer to that ideal, but we're not there yet. Another way is to apply the opposite bias. Have that hiring manager say "well, I'd ordinarily hire the guy with good reviews, but I have a quota, so I gotta go with the black guy." That's not a good way to "fix" the problem, either - but it is one way that works.

[wmw999 2,560]

I've been the hiring manager, making the decision among a number of qualities. No two candidates were ever exactly alike (at least not where I was hiring), and there was a lot of room for subjectivity. Colleges, courses, work experience -- they were all real-world different. And there were intangibles that we looked for (attention to detail & dutifulness) that aren't evident from transcripts.

What I found was that I had to actively decide what my criteria were and weren't going to be.

Spelling counted. Whether you could communicate well enough to work in a close team setting counted (note that trying goes a long way towards communicating). Whether you dressed in hiphop garb or a suit really doesn't count.

We exercised affirmative action by seeking qualified minority candidates. Not by hiring less-qualified minorities. That meant recruiting at traditionally-black universities, and at schools in the Rio Grande valley.

There were probably things that we could have done better had it been an all-white culturally homogeneous group. There were other things that we did better because we were not an all-white culturally homogeneous group.

Remember that if you draw exclusively from one group (Aggies, say ), your pool is smaller. It might be a generally good pool, but it's still smaller. Try expanding the pool in general, and determining what is really important to the job, not just what's comfortable.

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[SkyDekker 1,465]

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So much for living in a country where the best person for the job gets the job...

That may still be the case, the definition of best just got changed.

As an extreme example, if a community is 100% black, would the best police force really be 100% white?

Dayton, Ohio in 2000 was 54% white and 43% black. Unfortunately the story does not supply numbers on the racial makeup of the current police force. Having a police force which is representative of the community is an asset.

Just imagine how Turtle would feel if his local police force was 100% made up of Mexicans.

[Belgian_Draft 0]

I think you need to study up on genetics. Selective breeding can have huge influence in as little as one generation. Look into why Americans directly descended from African slaves have a much higher incidence of hypertension than other groups. You may be surprised at what you. Find.

HAMMER:
Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is used as a
kind of divining rod to locate the most expensive parts adjacent the
object we are trying to hit.

[Kennedy 0]

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first there was racism - and then affirmative action (anti-racism) to correct that racism...

So hiring someone based on their race is wrong, unless you approve of hiring of people of that particular race based on their race. Have you looked up hypocrite recently? I can help you out.

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[Nataly 38]

Well put.

"There is no problem so bad you can't make it worse."
- Chris Hadfield
« Sors le martinet et flagelle toi indigne contrôleuse de gestion. »
- my boss

[Nataly 38]

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I think you need to study up on genetics. Selective breeding can have huge influence in as little as one generation. Look into why Americans directly descended from African slaves have a much higher incidence of hypertension than other groups. You may be surprised at what you. Find.

Perhaps you don't really understand genetics... How many generations of inbreeding did Cleopatra come from??? The closer you are genetically to another person, the higher the likelihood that he/she will posses the same recessive genes. This means that there is a higher chance of your offspring displaying these recessive traits. These traits can include diseases but also things like blue eyes and blond hair and a resistance to certain diseases... There is a reason why (some) dog and cat breeders like to create "pure breeds"... Yes, they may be more susceptible to some ailments, but also they are more likely to display the characterictics they like in that particular breed.


Note: I still find the idea of inbreeding icky!!! Sleeping with my brother??? No thanks


ETA - In case anyone was going to criticise, just wanted to point out that I picked "blue eyes" and "blond hair" purely because they are recessive traits/genes.

"There is no problem so bad you can't make it worse."
- Chris Hadfield
« Sors le martinet et flagelle toi indigne contrôleuse de gestion. »
- my boss

[wmw999 2,560]

Question for those of you who feel that Americans of African descent have poorer family values, and lesser intelligence due to breeding.

How likely is that evaluation to enter into your evaluation of an African of African descent? Are they the same as white people?

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[Gravitymaster 0]

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>I didn't say in every senario.

Agreed. Sometimes two wrongs DO make a right. And sometimes treating a minority better than average makes up for the wrong done to them by treating them worse than average.

How do you prove something wrong was done to that individual?

[Butters 0]

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I think you need to study up on genetics. Selective breeding can have huge influence in as little as one generation. Look into why Americans directly descended from African slaves have a much higher incidence of hypertension than other groups. You may be surprised at what you. Find.

You may want to look into that yourself. It was proved wrong when they studied (and found low) hypertension in African countries. Probably has more to do with diet and stress in low income areas ...

"That looks dangerous." Leopold Stotch

[wmw999 2,560]

Generally if you're interviewing new-hires, you've never met most of the applicants. So it's a safe guess that you've never personally wronged any of them.

Free pass. Cool.

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[Gravitymaster 0]

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Generally if you're interviewing new-hires, you've never met most of the applicants. So it's a safe guess that you've never personally wronged any of them.

Free pass. Cool.

Wendy P.

I was just wondering how he knew that person had been treated worse than average. Suppose they have just graduated from school. Would you call all their professors to try and get a guage as to whether they had been treated worse than average? What if you find out that their entire life, they had proven themselves to be a leader. Do you have to assume they have still been treated wrongly? How would you know for sure.

[billvon 3,090]

>How do you prove something wrong was done to that individual?

Well, in some cases it's easy. If they were going to school in Virginia in 1966, for example, and were placed in one of the all-black schools, and did not have the option of going to the white one - they were done wrong.

In most cases it's a _lot_ harder.

[Kennedy 0]

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>2 wrongs don't make it right.

So a cop who shoots a murderer during a standoff should go to jail? Or in that case does the first wrong make the second wrong OK?

Homicide is not the same as murder. Shooting a man down in self defense is not the same as shooting a child because you felt like it. Shooting a man is not always wrong. Murdering a man is.

Quite simply, your example there isn't a "second wrong." If you want to start adding details, like maybe it was a standoff with no hostages and the suspect only ahd a knife and the officer shot him with a rifle from a distance for no justifiable reason, then yes, that officer should be charged and tried and jailed.

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Guard your honor, let your reputation fall where it will, and outlast the bastards.
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[Kennedy 0]

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>I didn't say in every senario.

Agreed. Sometimes two wrongs DO make a right. And sometimes treating a minority better than average makes up for the wrong done to them by treating them worse than average.

I completely disagree. Wrongs to not make rights. Either an action is right, or it is not.

There is no such thing as "anti-racism" or "reverse-racism" or any of that nonsense. There is racism, and there is the absence of racism. Giving advantages or discriminating based on race is RACISM. There is no reasonable way to sugar coat it.

I have a dream that Americans will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. Doesn't that sound like a great place to be? Or should we follow the DOJ example?

witty subliminal message
Guard your honor, let your reputation fall where it will, and outlast the bastards.
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[billvon 3,090]

>Shooting a man down in self defense is not the same as shooting a child
>because you felt like it.

Agreed. Even though the act itself (killing a man, considering race) might be judged wrong if you don't know the circumstances, there are special cases where it is actually the better of several choices.

[Kennedy 0]

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>Shooting a man down in self defense is not the same as shooting a child
>because you felt like it.

Agreed. Even though the act itself (killing a man, considering race) might be judged wrong if you don't know the circumstances, there are special cases where it is actually the better of several choices.

Killing a man is not inherently wrong. The circumstances can make it so. Considering race is inherently racist. If being racist is wrong (and I belive it is), then considering race is wrong. Your analopgy would've been more relevant if you'd compared murder and considering race, rather than killing and considering race. Would change the outcome, though.

witty subliminal message
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[dreamdancer 0]

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Considering race is inherently racist.

no it's not...

stay away from moving propellers - they bite
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[wmw999 2,560]

I would say that killing someone is inherently wrong. There are mitigating circumstances which make it justifiable, but the very fact that every killing goes before a grand jury, even if to no-bill, should be some indication of that.

These are societal constructs. It's up to us to make our society as we would like it to be. In America, we spent 100+ years making a society where whites had legal, social, and economic advantages over blacks. We've spent about 40 years trying to undo that. It's fairly gone in a lot of places. But it's hard to know when a decision is based on racist attitudes, and when it's because the person really is superior. Because so many of the decisons are subjective, and not based entirely on objective criteria.

In the case of the Dayton PD test, well, there are two solutions. The better solution, if the test isn't racist, is a two part one:
1. if you want to reflect your community, then go looking for qualified members of the community (e.g. recruit where you expect to find more African Americans)
2. work to improve the local schools so that a greater percentage of the locally-educated kids who are interested qualify. That means outreach.

Unless the test is racist (and yes, there is such a thing), then the qualifying grade should not change.

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[wmw999 2,560]

You're going to have to expand more on that if you want to be considered an actual participant in the discussion.

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[Kennedy 0]

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Considering race is inherently racist.

no it's not...

"I know you are but what am I?"

You're going to have to do better than that. How is making a decision based on race not racist? Choosing one person because of their race automatically means not choosing another person because of their race. If you choose not to hire someone because of their race, isn't that racist? How is discrimination based on race not racist?

witty subliminal message
Guard your honor, let your reputation fall where it will, and outlast the bastards.
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[winsor 236]

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Considering race is inherently racist.

no it's not...

Your logic should be programmed using some other source than Monty Python. I realize that they were massively overeducated on the subject, but their "Argument" sketch was for comedic, rather than instructional, purposes.

Bots are annoying.