4 ms·

Imagine a city where the schools woefully underserve minority students. Despite equal budgets etc. there is a persistent gap, probably due to income gaps but th

by JackFr 1mo ago

Imagine a city where the schools woefully underserve minority students. Despite equal budgets etc. there is a persistent gap, probably due to income gaps but that’s not the point. Within the education system there is no one institutional factor to blame. Now imagine a civil service exam in that same city, entirely race neutral but resulting in a disparity because it tests general skills. The test is de jure racist when all it does is expose the poor education system. Because the education is so poor, the only remediation is to hire unqualified people. So you end up with a deficient civil service in the name of fairness. There are other ways to examine whether a test or policy is racist.

deleted 1mo ago
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usernomdeguerre 1mo ago
>Because the education is so poor, the only remediation is to hire unqualified people. So you end up with a deficient civil service in the name of fairness. I think there's more solutions to that, no? The poor school might make more poor students, but statistically it probably also has some good ones too. So maybe given a basket of roughly equal candidates to a position, one can treat those with a diverse background as having a benefit, rather than looking at their school background and assuming they're unqualified or setting them aside. If your candidates don't meet the bar then fine, but i'm not convinced that's the default case in life.
- solidsnack9000 1mo ago
  I'm not sure how the approach you're proposing addresses the example JackFr offers. One reason is that the exam still results in disparate outcomes -- it only tests basic skills -- even though it is not in its design or operation discriminatory. It is a good example of a system that has disparate impact simply as a reflection of some other factor, outside of its control. Your proposal is to combine the exam with a hiring evaluation that weights some factors besides scores on the exam, but "...given a basket of roughly equal candidates to a position..." is doing a lot of work in that proposal. Is that a given? Is that even likely? That depends on the underlying education system, again; and as long as those baskets of roughly equal candidates are rare, the system you propose would also have considerable disparate impact.

by JackFr 1mo ago

deleted 1mo ago

[deleted]

usernomdeguerre 1mo ago

>Because the education is so poor, the only remediation is to hire unqualified people. So you end up with a deficient civil service in the name of fairness. I think there's more solutions to that, no? The poor school might make more poor students, but statistically it probably also has some good ones too. So maybe given a basket of roughly equal candidates to a position, one can treat those with a diverse background as having a benefit, rather than looking at their school background and assuming they're unqualified or setting them aside. If your candidates don't meet the bar then fine, but i'm not convinced that's the default case in life.

solidsnack9000 1mo ago
I'm not sure how the approach you're proposing addresses the example JackFr offers. One reason is that the exam still results in disparate outcomes -- it only tests basic skills -- even though it is not in its design or operation discriminatory. It is a good example of a system that has disparate impact simply as a reflection of some other factor, outside of its control. Your proposal is to combine the exam with a hiring evaluation that weights some factors besides scores on the exam, but "...given a basket of roughly equal candidates to a position..." is doing a lot of work in that proposal. Is that a given? Is that even likely? That depends on the underlying education system, again; and as long as those baskets of roughly equal candidates are rare, the system you propose would also have considerable disparate impact.