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Why should this even matter in the first place? How can we be a supposedly post-racial society and yet have this level of scrutiny on the racial makeup of a co

• Mangalor 12y ago
  > a company that is clearly not actively discriminating based on race 1. There's no way to tell whether they are or aren't just from exposing this data. 2. Racism/Sexism is discussed a lot in American culture, but I fail to see how "ignoring" actual data (which Google is proactively choosing to share) would somehow fix these issues.
  • ekianjo 12y ago
    2. The problem when you talk about the data is that you fix yourself on numbers, you try to set objectives and you end up with quota, instead of actually understanding that's the underlying problem. You don't and you shouldn't start addressing these issues with numbers.
    • seanmcdirmid 12y ago
      Numbers allow us to identify problems. Without numbers, there are no problems, so there are no issues to address; I see how that would solve the problem!
      • ekianjo 12y ago
        > Without numbers, there are no problems Who said that? Of course you can identify problems without having any number. That's called qualitative understanding.
        • seanmcdirmid 12y ago
          How does unbiased qualitative reasoning work if counting isn't allowed. Genuinely curious, citations would be helpful. In science, we call out qualitative reasoning as being biased and unscientific.
          • ekianjo 12y ago
            > In science, we call out qualitative reasoning as being biased and unscientific. Ha! I'm a scientist by training, and your claim makes me smile. Most of Science starts by qualitative reasoning and observation. It's because you notice phenomena that you emit hypotheses as to why they occur, and then you design experiments to generate data and verify your hypothesis (i.e. whether your qualitative understanding is correct or not).
            • seanmcdirmid 12y ago
              Right, we use qualitative reasoning at the beginning and try to temper our biases separately, but how can you do unbiased evaluation without numbers? Even the social sciences has to rely at numbers and statistics eventually.
              • ekianjo 12y ago
                > but how can you do unbiased evaluation without numbers? First, collecting data must be made to answer a question. The current way of asking ethnicity based on unvalidated criteria (basically what you identify yourself as) does not mean anything. It's rubbish as data, because there are almost no "pure" individuals in the US anymore, people have been mixed for generations. The way the current data is used is to reach a political agenda to say that we are in a state of inequality between races and sexes and that the government has to step in to fix things, hence you need the government to spend money and resources on this, etc... It's NOT a scientific study at work, it's data used for political purposes. Plus, it's not unbiased either because it's not in an observational state. Individuals and companies are aware of these ratios in these companies and know that they are expected to do something about it. That's not science at work, it's social pressure at work.
      • AnthonyMouse 12y ago
        > Numbers allow us to identify problems. The problem is in these sorts of cases the numbers are generally useless. Even if we eliminated 100% of all racial discrimination from society, fewer African Americans would attend college because fewer of their parents can afford to send them, and those type of consequences would carry down for generations completely regardless of continuing racism. So you say you want to stick with the numbers anyway and try to account for income level. OK boss, that will reduce your confidence interval by a good bit but we can do it. The trouble is poverty is not the only issue. The fertility rates are different. African Americans on average have more children than whites and Asians according to the most recent census (2.1 vs. 1.8), so for the same parental income level the money is split between more children, as is parental time and attention. African Americans are also significantly more likely to grow up in single parent families. That one's 65% for African Americans vs. 23% white and 16% Asian. Ouch. So we have to account for that stuff too. And those all interact. If you have three children being raised by one parent making $30,000/year as compared with two children being raised by two parents each making $50,000/year, expecting to get anything resembling the same results is bonkers.
        • Mangalor 12y ago
          Experiments through data are by no means impossible when it comes to race or gender. That's the lifeblood of social science. Throwing your hands up and saying "too many numbers! no conclusions could ever be possibly found!" would be completely unacceptable in any other discipline. You're now picking and choosing which fields can even use basic statistics.
          • AnthonyMouse 12y ago
            > Experiments through data are by no means impossible when it comes to race or gender. That's the lifeblood of social science. It's also why hard science majors make fun of them. > Throwing your hands up and saying "too many numbers! no conclusions could ever be possibly found!" would be completely unacceptable in any other discipline. That's because just about any other discipline is capable of conducting a controlled experiment. The problem with statistics in social sciences is that you don't control anything. You can't just order families of a particular race to stop having more or less children than other races so that you can get a good control group, so you have no control group. You only have data from something you hope is a reasonable approximation of a control group, without even any good way to tell when it isn't.
  • ekianjo 12y ago
    Forgot to mention that these questionnaires themselves are at fault - they perpetuate the concept of "race" while we should know better in the 21st century that races are an invention of the 18-19th Century. Look at actual genetic differences between people, and while you may certainly define subgroups here and there, it's certainly not as simple as having a dozen of groups defined mostly by the color of your skin and your appearance. Races are BS, period. So these questionnaire make the BS go on and on.
• anologwintermut 12y ago
  Because if there are large systemic racial inequalities (not that I think employment at Google is worthy of the title, compared to things like education and incarceration rates), then we manifestly aren't in a post racial society. Given the history of legal and social discrimination in the US, the impetus is on the people claiming we live in a post-racial society to back that fact up.
  • rdtsc 12y ago
    One then has to ask what does it mean that there are racial inequality? It is not in general, it has to be constrained to a particular domain. Say look at customers in a store and notice there is inequality, more people of a certain race visit it. What does it mean? Should something be done about it? Then, there is like you said, prisons. There is something disturbing going on, and something has to be done there, more urgently, than say figure out why there is racial misrepresentation at that one mall or store. Ok two extremes. What about Google? There is racial inequality at Google. What does it mean? Should something be done about it? Should Google hire based on racial profiles. Minority X gets Y slots based on some weighted criteria. Will that solve anything? Will it make things worse. Should anything be done at all at Google? Is that a big priority. Should we be looking at prisons instead...
    • enneff 12y ago
      Google is looking to address inequality in the tech sector, because that's where its expertise and experience lies. Its is not doing this by hiring based on racial profiles. It is doing this by trying to encourage people from diverse backgrounds to a) enter the field in the first place and b) actually apply for jobs at Google.
      • rdtsc 12y ago
        > It is doing this by trying to encourage people from diverse backgrounds to a) enter the field in the first place and b) actually apply for jobs at Google. Is there anything in the data (I haven't looked too much in dept) about the application pool. Because it seems to me, b) kind of sidesteps deeper issues and kind of says (figuratively) "Minorities just don't know to apply to Google. If that is the sentiment I am not sure I agree with it. (Unless of course Google and just then turn around and implement racial quota hiring decision and then in effect we back to that. As "just apply, we'll make sure you get in"). I have seen companies do that. One company I worked for hired a minority into upper management. Her skill set, experience and competence was not up to par. Compared to the rest of the managers. The belief was that she was there as a token "minority" person. Not necessarily disagreeing with that. Maybe those kind of steps are needed. But just saying companies do that. Now on a) I know Google does some good work. They have good programs for Women in tech. But not familiar too much with their program geared for racial minorities. Can you point me to some?
• blazespin 12y ago
  African Americans and women need better role models and tech companies can help with that. Culturally, we all need to understand that we need to admire people who do these things. It will encourage us to seek partners (even in our own cohort) that are good at these things and have children which are even better. Obama gave fantastic advice to all African american men (to all men, really): marry someone smarter than you. Everyone needs to follow that advice. We no longer have evolution looking out for us, and this is how we avoid idiocracy.
• deleted 12y ago
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• mudil 12y ago
  It is incredible that in American melting pot, there are some races that are constantly manipulated for political ends, and others are not. And witness: those races that are left alone, and not made into an issue, do quite well. It is my sincere belief that African-Americans or Latinos if they were left alone would do much better.
  • was_hellbanned 12y ago
    those races that are left alone, and not made into an issue, do quite well. Consider an alternative: those non-white races who predominantly arrived here as a result of passing modern immigration requirements, often having secondary education and a drive to succeed, tend to be more successful. I technically agree with your statement, though. If we had never pushed out the people who were here before us, and never enslaved blacks, both populations would probably be doing much better.
    • eli_gottlieb 12y ago
      My ancestors went to the United States in the days of Ellis Island and had just enough education to work as bakers and butchers. Many other Asians, Irish, and Jews worked as outright laborers, often in hazardous conditions. Many died as a result of the way society treated them. The immigration system of the old days wasn't meritocratic; it was simply exploitative. And really, so is the immigration system today, except that it exploits largely by keeping the threat of deportation hanging over the immigrant's head (including, yes, under the H1-B program for white-collar workers).
      • was_hellbanned 12y ago
        I fail to see how your comment is the least bit relevant. in the days of Ellis Island and had just enough education to work as bakers and butchers So in other words, for the time in which they lived, they were pretty skilled. The immigration system of the old days wasn't meritocratic; it was simply exploitative That's irrelevant to the parent comments claim that societal meddling has left some population groups behind. It's also irrelevant to my point distinguishing between people who were already here and pushed out, or forcibly brought here, compared to population groups primarily composed of modern, legal immigrants. However, it doesn't matter. Coming here in "the days of Ellis Island" required a tremendous amount of dedication and daring, and the places they were coming from were likely even worse off. It was self-selecting for driven people.
• aptwebapps 12y ago
  Why should what matter? Google's composition? That wasn't the main point of the piece at all. "How can we be a supposedly post-racial society and yet ..." We simply are not a post-racial society, not by a long way. The way to get there is not to pretend that we are and hope it all goes away. Google's data is just more information that can be used in the discussion. It is not particularly surprising, though. I think that their publication of it is more significant that the data itself, in this case.
• killwhitey 12y ago
  >How can we be a supposedly post-racial society Where did you get the impression that we are?
• adventured 12y ago
  The people pushing this agenda most heavily do not want a post racial society. They feed off the conflict, they profit off the ability to attack companies like Google, they gain power by ensuring there is no post racial end.