"Some people buck up and show their mettle under that kind of pressure of feeling watched, but it can cause others to fail ("stereotype threat"). Humans vary."
Yeah, I think this is a key source of irritation amongst minorities and women. I absolutely resent the implication (not saying this is your implication, but it certainly exists in …
"Some people buck up and show their mettle under that kind of pressure of feeling watched, but it can cause others to fail ("stereotype threat"). Humans vary."
Yeah, I think this is a key source of irritation amongst minorities and women. I absolutely resent the implication (not saying this is your implication, but it certainly exists in society generally) that we need to "buck up" when people make assumptions about us based on some immutable characteristic. That doesn't mean we won't or can't, it means we shouldn't need to. The frustration is about having to do this thing we shouldn't have to do, and which an entire class of people *never* has to do, in addition to the ordinary frustrations and mistreatments of life that we all deal with. It's like running a race where there's an extra hurdle only in your lane.
I won't fail because somebody believes that I'm less capable because I'm black. But that in no way diminishes the irritation that I should need to "prove myself" to the satisfaction of my white colleagues as Murray put it. And for the people who *will* fail under that pressure, it's absolutely wrong that they should face it for no reason other than some facet of how they were born.
And yeah, while eliminating AA would reduce this dynamic, it would also leave in place the dynamic that AA was intended to solve. All those people who would assume that POC and women are less capable would continue to make that assumption and so would hire/promote them less often. This, in turn, would leave the employment and opportunity disparities in place.
After all, the purpose of AA wasn't to hire POC who were less capable, instead, as you say, it was to give POC who *were* capable a fairer chance in the employment market. Maybe AA wasn't the best way to do this. Or wasn't implemented in the best way. There are smart people on both sides of that debate. But other than some kind of conscious intervention, I'm not sure how it would be possible to break the hegemony that was already in place. I don't think we'd see the degree of diversity we see today in the employment market without AA and diversity programs, for example.
I think the reason the assumption around "affirmative action hires" arose is that too many people really couldn't wrap their heads around the fact that pretty much every single president, CEO, movie star, etc. being a white man wasn't just a coincidence or a simple question of merit. They saw the challenge to the monopoly as preferential treatment for minorities and women, while failing to realise that people with their immutable characteristics had enjoyed preferential treatment since forever.
So I guess the best way to reduce the dynamic, though sadly by no means easy (and almost endlessly frustrating), is to encourage the people who hold this mindset to really examine the world from a perspective other than their own. And this, in turn, means learning to talk about racial and sex-based bias in ways that are honest and clear without being divisive or accusatory. There's a lot of talk about how white people get defensive in discussion about race. And it's true. But I think a fair amount of that defensiveness has been generated by the demonising way we talk about it.
And it's hard to wisely intervene without "undesired side effects".
I don't have the answer, either.
And yes, as I noted - in the ideal case, somebody chosen via AA is just as competent (or very close) as the person who was passed over. In the real world, that doesn't always happen tho. I was reading somebody whose boss was convinced there was an unlimited supply of qualified Black doctors, so they could focusing on hiring almost exclusively those doctors, until decades of past practice had been balanced out and the total workforce (of this institution) was proportionate to the population. The correspondent was saying that in practice, there just were not enough such physicians, so they either had to understaff (unacceptable), hire more Asians and whites than they wanted, or reduce the quality they expect. No magic pills to avoid those tradeoffs (other than waiting many years).
I don't like that situation, I'd much prefer that the boss's illusions were true. Sometimes maybe it is, and that's good. Other times it's a tight market for employers, and they can't afford to pass up too many good and available employees to find enough people who fulfill the diversity goals. Hopefully that will change over time.
One of the purest meritocracy examples I've heard of is the practice of doing blind auditions for major orchestras - the candidates play behind a cloth, so the reviewers have zero knowledge of their sex, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, appearance, etc. This was demanded of them back in the 60's and 70's. However this process has consistently resulted in greatly disproportionate hiring of Asians, slightly disproportionate hiring of whites, and too few Latin and Black hirings - compared to the overall population. Of course, talented musicians in different groups may be attracted more or less to classical music for their expression. But to fix that, the major orchestras in the US have abandoned blind auditions, so they can deliberately choose certain groups more often and be socially accountable. The assertion is that top musicians are so close that they are functionally indistinguishable - but they have been being distinguished for many years without any prejudice involved at all, so the new paradigm is to deliberately distinguish so as to meet diversity goals. I am not that much into US orchestras, so it doesn't matter a lot to me, but it's objective evidence that Kendi is wrong in asserting that the ONLY explanation for different outcomes is racial discrimination. This practice may still be justified in the big picture, but not on the basis that it's *reducing* discrimination and bias, but rather on the basis that it is practicing "positive discrimination" (as the AA concept is sometimes referred to in England). That is, a major improvement in social justice (represented by the proxy of proportionate hiring) may arguably be more important than the minor hit to merit. However, I wonder if there is any dynamic here which will ensure that the hit to merit really is only minor.
"Some people buck up and show their mettle under that kind of pressure of feeling watched, but it can cause others to fail ("stereotype threat"). Humans vary."
Yeah, I think this is a key source of irritation amongst minorities and women. I absolutely resent the implication (not saying this is your implication, but it certainly exists in society generally) that we need to "buck up" when people make assumptions about us based on some immutable characteristic. That doesn't mean we won't or can't, it means we shouldn't need to. The frustration is about having to do this thing we shouldn't have to do, and which an entire class of people *never* has to do, in addition to the ordinary frustrations and mistreatments of life that we all deal with. It's like running a race where there's an extra hurdle only in your lane.
I won't fail because somebody believes that I'm less capable because I'm black. But that in no way diminishes the irritation that I should need to "prove myself" to the satisfaction of my white colleagues as Murray put it. And for the people who *will* fail under that pressure, it's absolutely wrong that they should face it for no reason other than some facet of how they were born.
And yeah, while eliminating AA would reduce this dynamic, it would also leave in place the dynamic that AA was intended to solve. All those people who would assume that POC and women are less capable would continue to make that assumption and so would hire/promote them less often. This, in turn, would leave the employment and opportunity disparities in place.
After all, the purpose of AA wasn't to hire POC who were less capable, instead, as you say, it was to give POC who *were* capable a fairer chance in the employment market. Maybe AA wasn't the best way to do this. Or wasn't implemented in the best way. There are smart people on both sides of that debate. But other than some kind of conscious intervention, I'm not sure how it would be possible to break the hegemony that was already in place. I don't think we'd see the degree of diversity we see today in the employment market without AA and diversity programs, for example.
I think the reason the assumption around "affirmative action hires" arose is that too many people really couldn't wrap their heads around the fact that pretty much every single president, CEO, movie star, etc. being a white man wasn't just a coincidence or a simple question of merit. They saw the challenge to the monopoly as preferential treatment for minorities and women, while failing to realise that people with their immutable characteristics had enjoyed preferential treatment since forever.
So I guess the best way to reduce the dynamic, though sadly by no means easy (and almost endlessly frustrating), is to encourage the people who hold this mindset to really examine the world from a perspective other than their own. And this, in turn, means learning to talk about racial and sex-based bias in ways that are honest and clear without being divisive or accusatory. There's a lot of talk about how white people get defensive in discussion about race. And it's true. But I think a fair amount of that defensiveness has been generated by the demonising way we talk about it.
Agreed. It's unfair.
And it's hard to wisely intervene without "undesired side effects".
I don't have the answer, either.
And yes, as I noted - in the ideal case, somebody chosen via AA is just as competent (or very close) as the person who was passed over. In the real world, that doesn't always happen tho. I was reading somebody whose boss was convinced there was an unlimited supply of qualified Black doctors, so they could focusing on hiring almost exclusively those doctors, until decades of past practice had been balanced out and the total workforce (of this institution) was proportionate to the population. The correspondent was saying that in practice, there just were not enough such physicians, so they either had to understaff (unacceptable), hire more Asians and whites than they wanted, or reduce the quality they expect. No magic pills to avoid those tradeoffs (other than waiting many years).
I don't like that situation, I'd much prefer that the boss's illusions were true. Sometimes maybe it is, and that's good. Other times it's a tight market for employers, and they can't afford to pass up too many good and available employees to find enough people who fulfill the diversity goals. Hopefully that will change over time.
One of the purest meritocracy examples I've heard of is the practice of doing blind auditions for major orchestras - the candidates play behind a cloth, so the reviewers have zero knowledge of their sex, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, appearance, etc. This was demanded of them back in the 60's and 70's. However this process has consistently resulted in greatly disproportionate hiring of Asians, slightly disproportionate hiring of whites, and too few Latin and Black hirings - compared to the overall population. Of course, talented musicians in different groups may be attracted more or less to classical music for their expression. But to fix that, the major orchestras in the US have abandoned blind auditions, so they can deliberately choose certain groups more often and be socially accountable. The assertion is that top musicians are so close that they are functionally indistinguishable - but they have been being distinguished for many years without any prejudice involved at all, so the new paradigm is to deliberately distinguish so as to meet diversity goals. I am not that much into US orchestras, so it doesn't matter a lot to me, but it's objective evidence that Kendi is wrong in asserting that the ONLY explanation for different outcomes is racial discrimination. This practice may still be justified in the big picture, but not on the basis that it's *reducing* discrimination and bias, but rather on the basis that it is practicing "positive discrimination" (as the AA concept is sometimes referred to in England). That is, a major improvement in social justice (represented by the proxy of proportionate hiring) may arguably be more important than the minor hit to merit. However, I wonder if there is any dynamic here which will ensure that the hit to merit really is only minor.