Another accusation Elon made was that payments are going to people missing SSNs.
A much simpler answer is that not all Americans actually have an SSN. The Amish for example have religious objections towards insurance, so they were allowed to opt out from social security and therefore don’t get an SSN.
I agree first point is evil and third should really be a non issue. But you may want to avoid using this strategy:
Your second two points just aren’t happening at any sort of scale
Since you probably want voters to care about trans issues, despite them not having anywhere the scale many other voter issues have. Comes across a bit hypocritical to say we should not care how these points affect a different small group of people.
does the US generally let firms have such leeway and lack of paperwork with hiring?
I don’t know for sure. With their at will employment, I would be surprised if they had such requirements in most states. In Czechia, we have no such requirements. We brainstormed interview questions in the office hours before the interview.
UK job applications have the requirements, essential and ideal, written out beforehand
Writing them ahead of time does not really change my point much. Write many requirements if you prefer hiring “on merit” or as few as possible if you want to give preference to diverse candidates.
Thank you for the time, effort, and thought out replies.
Thank you as well, it is so refreshing to be able to genuinely discuss and find common ground about topics like this these days.
On the main point, I agree that there is often a perception/“PR” problem for these policies.
I think calling it perception/PR problem is misleading, because it implies it is just misunderstood. If that was the case, it would just be a question of how to inform people. The issue is informed people dislike these policies as well, because they genuinely are unfair towards individuals and people are rarely willing to to be treated unfairly for the good of the society. People are also extra sensitive to governments and other people in positions of power treating people unfairly, arguably for a good reason.
But then, in the UK where the policy was just “when deciding between two equally qualified candidates, choose the under represented one” still got done in the right wing media as “law mandating hiring on unqualified individuals”, so I don’t think that adjusting would do a huge amount of work.
Yeah, obviously political parties fear mongering about the policies to get votes is a very big issue on it’s own. But even if the criticism is way over exaggerated, can you rationally defend even that policy? Two simple points:
And again, I don’t see how you could defend it other than insisting it makes things more fair overall even if it is unfair to individuals.
If the hiring process has an interview stage, how to make it identity-blind? How to deal with the perception of people, especially women, in a management position?
Yeah, it is a really difficult issue that probably does not have a single answer that can be applied everywhere. There probably have to be individualised solutions for various scenarios. There even may be situations where it can’t be fixed at all until peoples perceptions improve and biases erode. Hopefully, showing people their biases are incorrect in different situations will be enough to do that. I really think normalizing diversity through means people perceive as fair could do that.
I do agree that the main thing is hitting the underlying perception issues, but how to do that without creating a world where they’re visibly untrue is trickier. But if it was an easy problem there’d probably be less division on how to tackle it.
Yeah, unfortunately, it is one of the most difficult issues our society faces. :(
I feel like instead of trying to implement one solution right now, we maybe should try to encourage workplaces to experiment with various policies and collect data back. Try to find working solutions by iterating and continuously improving policies like we do in engineering. Hopefully, it can help find decent enough solutions to chip at peoples biases.
First, maybe this will help fill in as a starter on the French situation.
So they picked extremely stupid ones, got it.
Secondly, I do agree that targets and statistics inevitably distort and pervert any goals. So it will tend towards failure, but that’s government. It never really works, and since I assume we’re talking about the system we’re in rather than a new one I don’t think it’s a deal-breaker.
Depends on how much they get “perverted and distorted”. It absolutely is a deal breaker if it makes things worse than before.
Thirdly, and most pertinently: due to systemic racism/prejudices there is a barrier to various arbitrary socially constructed groups that other arbitrary socially constructed groups do not need to deal with.
By ignoring that there is a barrier to some in the form of systemic prejudice you don’t actually help those more discriminated against groups. You just help the arbitrary groups that are less discriminated against. Maybe you have less inequality overall because the discriminated against group is a minority, but I don’t think either of us think that that makes it “better”.
I don’t think we understand each other. I am not saying we should do nothing. We should try to create policies that enforce color blind hiring, rewarding, etc. E.g. have people evaluate work before knowing whose work it is where possible. I am not saying there can’t be any color/gender-aware policies anywhere. I am certainly not saying we should stop collecting statistics and put our heads into the sand. But we shouldn’t hire/promote/reward people based on their race/gender in either direction.
How would such a policy even work? You measure by how much is each minority disadvantaged on average and give them advantage by that amount via whatever mechanism? So the individuals that were already treated fairly now have an advantage even compared to the majority, those that were disadvantaged most are still disadvantaged, but a bit less and some random people from the majority are disadvantaged, because hiring is a zero sum game. You arguably did not make the system any more fair. The only good part is that it probably reduces by how much the most disadvantaged people are disadvantaged by.
More importantly, you do nothing to fix the impression people have, that minorities are doing less/worse work, yet show everyone they are treated preferentially. This will cause people from the majority to wonder with every failure, whether it is because of the unfair advantage minorities are given. You can’t even try to disprove it, because it is true in some cases. Rare cases perhaps, but very few people would care.
Then act surprised when this creates conscious racists and the majority tells you to fuck off and elects a candidate that cancels DEI initiatives entirely. See the issue?
In a democracy, you will never be able to enact policies that fix subconscious racism without fixing peoples perceptions. You will get voted out. That’s why the policies have to be color-blind, even if they are less effective (take longer to work).
And if we are lucky and do the policies well, we may even fix plenty of other biases unrelated to race and gender and eventually have much better results than color-aware.
PS: If you know how to say color-aware and color-blind in a way that includes gender and other minorities, can you let me know? I think you understand what I mean but it still bothers me I am using the wrong word.
Look, I don’t know what exactly France did, maybe colorblind measures are not very effective. Maybe France picked stupid ones and implemented them badly. Let’s not pretend there is only one way to do colorblind hiring.
But my counter question is this. You say it did not help in France. How do you measure that? If one black person has it much easier while another was not helped at all, is that success? That is what I have issue with. Color-aware policies are extremely likely to just fake the statistics about groups, while if you actually compare random person to random person, it is just as (if not more) unfair as before. I believe it does not create real equity, it just fools statistics.
You should not measure inequity between arbitrary groups. You should measure inequity between individuals to get a reliable metric.
I think it would considerably vary from place to place, even workplace to workplace. In some (rare) places not at all, in some places considerably. I would be entirely guessing if I was to say what the average was.
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I have general ideas in what direction to look at, but I don’t see how I could post them without this inevitably devolving into off-topic discussion of hiring policies.
Do you think systemic racism exists and is a large problem in the USA or France?
Yes.
“Badly implemented colorblind policies didn’t stop racism in this one country, so let’s have explicitly racist policies.”
If they are still racist, they are not colorblind. Make stronger colorblind policies and enforce them. Color aware policies don’t do anything either if they are only on paper.
Besides, you ignore the point of my criticism. Color aware policies don’t prevent inequity, they shift it elsewhere. They keep some places and aspects of life racist while having other be reverse racist. On individual level, the inequity increases, but people pat themselves on the back because when you only look at it based on color, it averages out. It is like saying we should increase the pay of Billionaires to increase average wages. The statistic looks better, but it did not help most people.
Color blind hiring policies. We were talking about hiring.
If there are issues not related to the hiring process that make disadvantaged people less qualified, you fix those issues at the source. Ignoring them at hiring just hides the issues making it less likely to be fixed while creating new issues I pointed out.
Besides, what issue is actually not colorblind? Race is basically always a proxy for a different cause. You should not be lazy and identify the real cause, then solve it based on that to ensure people don’t fall through the cracks.
So how do you account for the fact that, in many instances where a white person and a black person have the exact same qualifications, the white person will be far more likely to be hired?
By making policies to prevent that. Color blind policies. Just don’t swing all the way to racist in the other direction.
How do you account for the fact that many people who are racial minorities aren’t born into families that can afford things like living in a house that doesn’t already have leaded paint on the walls, meaning that a black person who has the exact same qualifications as a white person has had to work a lot harder to overcome their disadvantages to get those qualifications?
I answered this question in my original comment. By helping people based on their situation, not skin color. There are rich black people. There are poor white people. Extremely poor people need support, rich people don’t. Skin color is irrelevant.
There are so many reasons why “equity based on gender or skin color” for hiring and college applications and so on is absolutely necessary to address the inequities in our society, and why the baby steps that we’ve made since the civil rights movement haven’t been nearly enough to address the problems that they were meant to address.
Sure, baby steps are slow. Cheating with this “affirmative action discrimination” hides the underlying issues while making them significantly worse. The white people they discriminate against are largely not the same people who profiteered on slavery and discrimination. You are just creating a new group of disadvantaged and oppressed people and push them towards raising up against your policies and to hate the people who benefit on their expense. This is what Trump took advantage of to win despite most people knowing what a shitty person he is.
Frankly we should be talking about reparations in the form of just straight up giving large swathes of land and fat stacks of cash to certain groups, especially African Americans and American Indians, not these piddly little affirmative action programs that only kind of exist in colleges but everyone assumes exist everywhere else too.
You are not entirely wrong, but there is a reason statues of limitations exist. Good luck finding the people who perpetuated and profited from racism and slavery or the people that were directly hurt. And making random rich white people, or even worse working people pay for it will cause so many more issues than it solves. I think it is too late to do this.
Nobody is brought down in the name of equity.
Maybe you don’t do that, which, good for you. Many people do that. I don’t like people who do that. If you don’t do that, why are you so defensive?
What is brought down are the systems that privilege certain people based on aspects of themselves that they cannot control.
I explicitly wrote we should do that.
No argument here, Hollywood has always had lazy and awful shit and their attempts at lazy and awful inclusion are bad. Often the very groups that Hollywood directors purport to represent come out hard against bad representation too - like that french trans cartel leader film that just came out where the director said he didn’t bother researching Mexico or Mexican culture before making a film that takes place there and where everyone speaks Spanish really badly.
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I know what you mean. The whole being incredibly hostile to like minded people over minor disagreements is it’s own massive issue, but let’s only open one can of worms at a time.
You know what, let’s give it a shot. 3 things I dislike.
Equity based on gender or skin color. So many people pretend that somehow one average working class person should be put ahead in line compared to another, if the other person has the same skin color as some unrelated asshole slaver whose descendants still profit from their riches.
Most of you would probably agree that a world where the majority are exploited by a few billionaires is not equitable just because the billionaires are diverse. So why push policies that pretend all is equitable as long as you give a few minorities preferential treatment.
Not only does it not make any real sense, but more importantly, it is divisive. No person struggling in this f**ked up economy wants to hear they should be even worse of, because they have the same skin color as the billionaires exploiting them and they should feel ashamed for that. I would not be surprised if these ideas are intentionally pushed by the rich to divide the working class people and turn them on each other.
Bringing people down in the name of Equity. Equity is definitely what we should strive for, but by lifting disadvantaged people up, not tearing “privileged” people down. The whole message that you should be ashamed for not being disadvantaged is ridiculous to me. Maybe you should be ashamed if you are in a privileged position and you refuse to use it to help the disadvantaged, but just be ashamed of privilege period is a wild take to me. We should be aiming to make everyone privileged enough that they don’t have to fear being shot every time they see a cop, that they can make a living wage, …
If your movements/policies are hostile towards the very people whose support can help you most, then no wonder you can’t make any progress and radicals like Trump take advantage of the divisiveness.
Low quality diversity in media. Adding diverse characters to media should ideally be like adding trees. You add them when it makes sense without even thinking about it and don’t add them when it doesn’t make sense. We should work slowly and carefully towards that goal. Unfortunately, so many movies, shows and games have tried to awkwardly add diversity with no regard for how it negatively affects the enjoyability of the product. So your goal presumably was to make diverse people feel included and to normalize diversity in peoples mind. But the result for minorities often is that they repeatedly see character like them being badly and lazily written, either by having no proper character beyond being diverse or conversely feel like straight cis white character that just happens to mention they are diverse. On the other hand, the majority just sees these poorly made products and associate diversity and DEI with bad products. So failure on both goals. The answer is of course quality over quantity. It may take a while to get where we want to be, but it will get there without making things even worse with good intentions.
By the way, there of course are great examples of well made diverse shows, but they are drowned out by the slop. My favorite example is the Owl house. The plot of the first episode is literally about being captured and placed into “the conformatorium” for being different and then escaping and dismantling the place. And it did this so smoothly I did not even realize there was any messaging in it until long after seeing it.
My bad, I thought it was about payments in general (including other programs) but it says social security database. Sorry.