I recently watched an interesting discussion on the legality of diversity statement requirements. [1] There's a lot of nuance here, and the two speakers have different opinions on the matter.
One believes that diversity statement requirements can be done properly and we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater by banning diversity statement requirements.
The other speaker suggests these are analogous to requirements that a candidate talk about how they support the government's ongoing war effort, and catalog all they have done in furtherance of it.
I'm surprised and pleased to see that this link is the top comment. The original article was a bit dismissive/presumptive, and the submission rode the flagging/vouching rollercoaster as a result. Not a great start!
But it's a testament to the HN community that the most-upvoted comment on this thread is one with a link to a video that is long form (over an hour!) and truly presents both sides. It is also legally sophisticated — not something that most HNers can digest at 3x. Yet enough folks engaged with it that this rose up slowly to be the top comment.
Most communities aren't able to perform conversational alchemy — starting out with bronze and ending up with gold. HN doesn't always do this, but the fact that it can is much of the reason why I'm here.
I'd love to see incentives to help level the playing field for people who come from impoverished backgrounds. But instead, what we get, and what people seem to clamor most loudly for, is what a former employer of mine had: "hiring bonus if the candidate isn't white or male" (and at one point, all I could hire was non-white or non-male, and the way it was spun was "we are in a hiring freeze, except for diversity hires").
Some of us would like to solve the ills of the world without resorting to racism/sexism.
Is it legal to have hiring bonuses for candidates (or for hiring them), where the bonus is based on attributes of the candidate on the basis of which it is normally not permissible to discriminate?
I've seen it for a university position in Sweden. It has a self-criticism and cult like feel that I really don't like. Position in universities should be considered on scientific and educational grounds, not political.
Seems to be fairly widespread and growing rapidly.[1] "68 percent of job ads in the fall of 2020 mentioned diversity, and 19 percent required a separate diversity statement. That number requiring diversity statements is even higher for elite schools and tenure-track jobs. Certain fields are more likely to require diversity statements than others, with political science being the most likely among fields included in the survey."
> Candidates must be from one or more of the following equity-seeking groups to apply: women, persons with disabilities, Indigenous peoples, and racialized groups.
Yes. A previous boss of mine that I liked once asked me to just add some boilerplate phrases to my performance review to make sure he and I were both aligned with the corporate diversity mandates. Did I change the way I acted simply by adding this text? Nope!
The original lawsuit the author cites happened more almost 50 years ago.
Taking into account that similarly incompetent practices persisted for half a decade, there should now be a line where incompetence becomes malice. It's easy to hide behind apologia and recognition of past wrongdoing.
The problem with the system isn't the oppressive results it might produce, the problem lies within the system itself and its innate bias to create oppression. Complacency isn't an excuse, it's an aggravating circumstance. Academia especially should try to get as close as possibe to a merit-based system, where acception and further progression are determined on past grades, not on skin color, gender, religion and economic status.
Another problem that noone seems to be worried about is the mass collection of personal data and the processing thereof. How can I trust discussing my faith, ethnicity and finances with a for-profit institution, when (especially under US jurisdiction) I have little to no control of how that data gets processed, sorted and monetized?
I think these institutions believe that more diversity ----> more inclusivity and less racism. How would a racist indian national deeply entrenched in caste culture help my company be less racist? How would an asian supremacist laotian increase the workplace's acceptance?
If you want a place of tolerance then it should be populated by tolerant people. Throwing together males and females with a random sample of skin colors and passports is not going to make your university a more inclusive place by default.
> How would a racist indian national deeply entrenched in caste culture help my company be less racist?
To be fair, there are many people from traditionally chauvinistic groups who despise the very chauvinism they live in. Many of them may be intelligent and productive people. Dismissing each and every individual because of the group is the root of discrimination.
Some attempts at diversity may go too far - tolerating intolerant people just because "they grew up in different environment" - leading to the paradox of tolerance [0]. I've read news [1] about the very phenomenon.
The fact is - tolerance, diversity, open-mindedness - those are all values, and they need to be enforced. In order to keep a tolerant society, you must show the door to anyone who disagrees with that philosophy. The same way you need to lock up criminals to keep an ordered society from devolving into chaos.
But ultimately, in order to have a truly tolerant society, each and every member of it must be evaluated as an individual.
You can't meaningfully enforce open-mindedness or tolerance. The very idea is an oxymoron. The whole notion of tolerance is based on the idea that we might sometimes find it expedient to work alongside people we don't agree with about everything.
Most of the metrics that I have been judged by over the course of my career (e.g. lines of code, story point velocity, etc) are absolute bullshit, and easily manipulated. And yet... I continue to build "dashboards" for VP's to stare at, and continue to be measured by deeply flawed metrics.
I believe that every rational thinking person would agree that tracking racial and ethnic and sexual headcount percentages doesn't necessarily mean what they purport to mean. But... what are you gonna do? We just need metrics, any metrics. Bad metrics are better than no metrics, or at least this seems to be the deeply entrenched mindset of business.
I find it so eerie that institutions are trying to design their work force's distribution of skin color. Unless your work force is make-up models or something.
With some exception (specifically our industry), all the privilige of a high caste indian or Laotian supremacy goes away when you move to a Western/White dominated culture.
They are much more likely to encounter racism against THEIR race, than have the opportunity to promote their own racism.
We also need DEI at the border in addition to the colleges and for job opportunities. The way LatinX people are oppressed at the border is inhumane. Not to mention the trauma inflicted on LatinX people during last administration.
For an example of this, see this story about Canadian professor and laser scientist Patanjali Kambhampati who was denied for grants because his avowed commitment to mere non-discrimination and merit-based hiring was deemed insufficient.
Is that a numbers game?
How many people don't get jobs because of the "wrong" skin color?
They don't get famous too, that's why no news site brings an article about them.
I'd agree that those sorts of outcomes are just as bad as ignoring the problems of internalised systemic biases towards particular sexes, age groups, racial backgrounds or lack of obvious but irrelevant physical disabilities.
We may not have found the best way to ensure that a 60yo black, wheelchair-bound woman is just as likely to be chosen on merit as a 30yo white able-bodied man yet but it doesn't seem we shouldn't keep trying.
I don't see a problem with this, especially if part of the mission of the folks giving the grant is to create opportunities for under-represented people.
"If I want to focus on merit, fairness and equality, then you get called out as racist or sexist."
I'm still waiting for an example where someone can actually vet people based on merit, fairness and equality without any of their own unconscious biases being a factor. Humans are most comfortable with people that think, look, and act like them. No matter how hard they try, it skews their thinking at times.
>I'm still waiting for an example where someone can actually vet people based on merit, fairness and equality without any of their own unconscious biases being a factor
I am absolutely all in for equality, but definitely strongly against equity.
When I get HR try to shove a resume down my throat because it ticks all of their boxes despite having none of the boxes to be succesful on the job, that is when I draw the line.
I don't care if you're white, black, purple or green, and whether you fuck men, women, all of them or none of them is none of my business. At the end of the day I want the most qualified to get the position when I interview, you either know your stuff or you don't.
(Speaking of the US) Our society has historically created great differences in opportunity. It is unarguable that white males have disproportionately benefited[1][2][3].
Affirmative action / Diversity Initiatives are a blunt instrument that attempts to address these historical inequities. If e.g., a student from a school in a poor area had the same quality of a K-12 education, did not have to worry about tuition (I.e., make university free again) / living expenses to be able to continue at university as the wealthy kid, affirmative action could have been phased out from higher ed.
The problem is that the inequities continue, so what should have been a short-term policy to address historical inequities has become a long-term papering over of deep issues in our society.
Policies to allow affirmative action to be phased out in higher ed might include, funding K-12 schools equitably instead of based on local property tax revenue + parental donations. Changing college entrance policies to accept only the top n students from any school, to create an incentive for wealthy to place their children in "worse" schools which would incentivize those same wealthy to properly fund all schools. Paying the parents of the children in the "bad" schools a wage that allows them a life with dignity and time to spend with their children. Mandatory paid time off so sick children are not just left on their own at home (possibly getting into trouble). Policing that doesn't target certain demographics foreclosing future opportunities-- e.g., a kid with an arrest record is barred from attending paramedic classes at the local community college. Etc.
We need to make fundamental changes in all areas of society to address inequities in opportunity just in college / university admissions. A great side effect is poor rural whites would benefit just as much as other marginalized groups by systemically addressing the issues (one fewer way for the wealthy elite to divide us). But, our society has collectively decided it is easier just to keep affirmative action / diversity programs around.
Workplaces are downstream from schools, so everything that needs to be solved around equitable access to education needs to occur before the "temporary" policies to address the fallout of not addressing our societal issues systemically can be phased out at the workplace.
> If e.g., a student from a school in a poor area had the same quality of a K-12 education, did not have to worry about tuition (I.e., make university free again) / living expenses to be able to continue at university as the wealthy kid, affirmative action could have been phased out from higher ed.
Wouldn't AA on social-economical status work, which can be more inclusive? Even you only mentioned "poor" and "wealthy", instead of some neighborhood of particular identity group.
One pretty stark reminder of this is how one's race is an indicator of standardized test scores in the US.
> ...selective institutions require high SAT scores for entry—and there are even bigger race gaps at the top of the score distribution. [In 2020,] of those scoring above 700, 43% are Asian and 45% are white, compared to 6% Hispanic or Latino and 1% Black
I'm not getting that implication. They are saying that, on occasion, HR tries to shove a resume down his throat on the basis of race/sexuality when the applicant is lacking experience. That, in no way, leads me to extrapolate any kind of volume one way or another.
Well that's sort of their own doing. When you formalize the process of prioritizing individuals based solely on their attributes that have no relation to merit (skin color) then you must necessarily accept that people will presume that skin-color alone played a role in their hiring.
Hiring for social diversity (e.g race, ethnicity, gender, age) when the benefits of diversity come from cognitive diversity (micro vs macro pov, engineer working with computer scientist) is a very inefficient way of doing things. Yes it may be that someone of a different gender/race/ethnicity may have a different way of thinking, but it may also not be the case
As an Hispanic Engineer I would hate to be hired to fill up a diversity quota... I am better than that.
And as a Software Engineering hiring manager, when hiring I always strive to to be statistically unbiased in the diversity distribution in my team. My base distribution is the population of Software Engineering University graduates.
As long as that base population has 1/10 women and 1/20 "non majority population" (in our case is average Mexican) my team should be expected to follow the same diversity distribution.
The problem with a lot of "diversity" pushes is that they treat use the full country population distribution as a base, which is unreal for ALL labours, Hospitality may be skewed to females, Basketball may be skewed to Blacks, mechanics may be skewed to males, etc. Unless the distribution in the upper part of the funnels do not change, it will be unfair to attempt to force a change in the distribution in the lower stages of the funnel.
Readit News
One believes that diversity statement requirements can be done properly and we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater by banning diversity statement requirements.
The other speaker suggests these are analogous to requirements that a candidate talk about how they support the government's ongoing war effort, and catalog all they have done in furtherance of it.
1: https://reason.com/volokh/2022/08/30/do-university-diversity...
But it's a testament to the HN community that the most-upvoted comment on this thread is one with a link to a video that is long form (over an hour!) and truly presents both sides. It is also legally sophisticated — not something that most HNers can digest at 3x. Yet enough folks engaged with it that this rose up slowly to be the top comment.
Most communities aren't able to perform conversational alchemy — starting out with bronze and ending up with gold. HN doesn't always do this, but the fact that it can is much of the reason why I'm here.
Some of us would like to solve the ills of the world without resorting to racism/sexism.
I've never heard about it before.
>schools are requiring “Diversity Statements” as a condition for new hires
Is this like when you do a self performance review and you just throw in a bunch of common phrases / text?
Seems to be fairly widespread and growing rapidly.[1] "68 percent of job ads in the fall of 2020 mentioned diversity, and 19 percent required a separate diversity statement. That number requiring diversity statements is even higher for elite schools and tenure-track jobs. Certain fields are more likely to require diversity statements than others, with political science being the most likely among fields included in the survey."
[1] https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2022/05/23/diversity-st....
Also below is a particularly egregious example from Canada, where it explicitly states white straight men need not apply.
https://www.universityaffairs.ca/search-job/?job_id=58317
Is such discrimination therefore legal in Canada? I don't think it's legal in the US (https://www.eeoc.gov/racecolor-discrimination).
edit: It looks like it might be legal in Canada: https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/E-5.401/page-1.html
The problem with the system isn't the oppressive results it might produce, the problem lies within the system itself and its innate bias to create oppression. Complacency isn't an excuse, it's an aggravating circumstance. Academia especially should try to get as close as possibe to a merit-based system, where acception and further progression are determined on past grades, not on skin color, gender, religion and economic status.
Another problem that noone seems to be worried about is the mass collection of personal data and the processing thereof. How can I trust discussing my faith, ethnicity and finances with a for-profit institution, when (especially under US jurisdiction) I have little to no control of how that data gets processed, sorted and monetized?
If you want a place of tolerance then it should be populated by tolerant people. Throwing together males and females with a random sample of skin colors and passports is not going to make your university a more inclusive place by default.
To be fair, there are many people from traditionally chauvinistic groups who despise the very chauvinism they live in. Many of them may be intelligent and productive people. Dismissing each and every individual because of the group is the root of discrimination.
Some attempts at diversity may go too far - tolerating intolerant people just because "they grew up in different environment" - leading to the paradox of tolerance [0]. I've read news [1] about the very phenomenon.
The fact is - tolerance, diversity, open-mindedness - those are all values, and they need to be enforced. In order to keep a tolerant society, you must show the door to anyone who disagrees with that philosophy. The same way you need to lock up criminals to keep an ordered society from devolving into chaos.
But ultimately, in order to have a truly tolerant society, each and every member of it must be evaluated as an individual.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
[1] https://restofworld.org/2022/tech-india-caste-divides/
I believe that every rational thinking person would agree that tracking racial and ethnic and sexual headcount percentages doesn't necessarily mean what they purport to mean. But... what are you gonna do? We just need metrics, any metrics. Bad metrics are better than no metrics, or at least this seems to be the deeply entrenched mindset of business.
With some exception (specifically our industry), all the privilige of a high caste indian or Laotian supremacy goes away when you move to a Western/White dominated culture.
They are much more likely to encounter racism against THEIR race, than have the opportunity to promote their own racism.
https://qz.com/apple-meta-and-google-must-fight-caste-discri...
https://slate.com/technology/2022/07/caste-silicon-valley-th...
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Polls consistently show less than 5% of hispanic and latin american people want to be called latinx. Lets respect their wishes.
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https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/minority-professor-deni...
https://getd.libs.uga.edu/pdfs/harrison_matthew_s_200512_ms....
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"If I want to focus on merit, fairness and equality, then you get called out as racist or sexist."
I'm still waiting for an example where someone can actually vet people based on merit, fairness and equality without any of their own unconscious biases being a factor. Humans are most comfortable with people that think, look, and act like them. No matter how hard they try, it skews their thinking at times.
Blind auditions for orchestras.
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But, well, we've seen what happened when ElectronConf tried that.
When I get HR try to shove a resume down my throat because it ticks all of their boxes despite having none of the boxes to be succesful on the job, that is when I draw the line.
I don't care if you're white, black, purple or green, and whether you fuck men, women, all of them or none of them is none of my business. At the end of the day I want the most qualified to get the position when I interview, you either know your stuff or you don't.
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This is a major difficulty we face today, mass irrationality in society.
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Affirmative action / Diversity Initiatives are a blunt instrument that attempts to address these historical inequities. If e.g., a student from a school in a poor area had the same quality of a K-12 education, did not have to worry about tuition (I.e., make university free again) / living expenses to be able to continue at university as the wealthy kid, affirmative action could have been phased out from higher ed.
The problem is that the inequities continue, so what should have been a short-term policy to address historical inequities has become a long-term papering over of deep issues in our society.
Policies to allow affirmative action to be phased out in higher ed might include, funding K-12 schools equitably instead of based on local property tax revenue + parental donations. Changing college entrance policies to accept only the top n students from any school, to create an incentive for wealthy to place their children in "worse" schools which would incentivize those same wealthy to properly fund all schools. Paying the parents of the children in the "bad" schools a wage that allows them a life with dignity and time to spend with their children. Mandatory paid time off so sick children are not just left on their own at home (possibly getting into trouble). Policing that doesn't target certain demographics foreclosing future opportunities-- e.g., a kid with an arrest record is barred from attending paramedic classes at the local community college. Etc.
We need to make fundamental changes in all areas of society to address inequities in opportunity just in college / university admissions. A great side effect is poor rural whites would benefit just as much as other marginalized groups by systemically addressing the issues (one fewer way for the wealthy elite to divide us). But, our society has collectively decided it is easier just to keep affirmative action / diversity programs around.
Workplaces are downstream from schools, so everything that needs to be solved around equitable access to education needs to occur before the "temporary" policies to address the fallout of not addressing our societal issues systemically can be phased out at the workplace.
[1] https://www.history.com/news/gi-bill-black-wwii-veterans-ben...
[2] https://www.nber.org/digest/dec02/gi-bill-world-war-ii-and-e...
[3] https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history...
Edit: fixed grammar
Wouldn't AA on social-economical status work, which can be more inclusive? Even you only mentioned "poor" and "wealthy", instead of some neighborhood of particular identity group.
> ...selective institutions require high SAT scores for entry—and there are even bigger race gaps at the top of the score distribution. [In 2020,] of those scoring above 700, 43% are Asian and 45% are white, compared to 6% Hispanic or Latino and 1% Black
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/12/01/sat-math-...
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And of course now every minority employee at your company has to excel or else they might torpedo the entire diversity hiring initiative.
And as a Software Engineering hiring manager, when hiring I always strive to to be statistically unbiased in the diversity distribution in my team. My base distribution is the population of Software Engineering University graduates.
As long as that base population has 1/10 women and 1/20 "non majority population" (in our case is average Mexican) my team should be expected to follow the same diversity distribution.
The problem with a lot of "diversity" pushes is that they treat use the full country population distribution as a base, which is unreal for ALL labours, Hospitality may be skewed to females, Basketball may be skewed to Blacks, mechanics may be skewed to males, etc. Unless the distribution in the upper part of the funnels do not change, it will be unfair to attempt to force a change in the distribution in the lower stages of the funnel.
Dead Comment