
Ask HN: Why are some US companies/non-profits allowed to openly discriminate? - wtfthrowaway
Came across this, on the website of a non-profit supported by lots of &quot;big names&quot; (some of the usual suspects and more):<p>&gt;[REDACTED] internships are open internationally to women (cis and trans), trans men, and genderqueer people. Internships are also open to residents and nationals of the United States of any gender who are Black&#x2F;African American, Hispanic&#x2F;Latin@, Native American&#x2F;American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander. We are planning to expand the program to more participants from underrepresented backgrounds in the future.<p>I&#x27;m from North-Africa and even there the labour code forbids that kind of stuff.
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lsiebert
This isn't illegal. It's no different then having a scholarship, these are
sponsored internships with other companies, not with the non profit. you can
still intern with the companies outreachy works with, they are just
specifically supporting and seeking members of underrepresented groups.

In other words, all things being equal, with a big enough sample size, a
companies intern's racial, ethnic, sexual orientation and gender identities
should proportionally reflect the country's population.

If that's not happening, that means some, possibly subtle or systemic issue is
depressing the number of an under represented group. Attempting to compensate
for systemic underrepresentation is not discrimination, but a response to it.

After all these are interns, not normal employees. Internships are meant to be
education opportunities.

And diversity is definitely beneficial to a business, even if it is for
employees.
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/ekaterinawalter/2014/01/14/reap...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/ekaterinawalter/2014/01/14/reaping-
the-benefits-of-diversity-for-modern-business-innovation/#41abfcfb2a8f)

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jfaucett
Here's what people get wrong about discrimination laws IMHO.

If you accept the premise that humans are anything significantly more than
just a sum total of arbitrary biological attributes that they can't control
i.e. skin color, gender, sexual orientation, etc. then you have to admit that
diversity or anti-discrimination laws are the antithesis of what they claim to
be. This is because the laws actively reduce individuals to a minutiae of
attributes which the people themselves cannot control and then judge those
people based on this gross reduction, actively ignoring - in this diversity
equation - personal character, abilities, achievements, and essentially
everything which an individual can indeed manipulate and claim some
responsibility for.

On top of this ill-defined diversity metric, the laws draw broad
generalizations of groups and apply them always and only to individuals,
regardless of the wants and desires of the particular individual. Thus, the
proponents of anti-discrimination always speak of "whites" or "blacks" or
"men" or "women", but at the end of the day it is a particular person who is
given a job and another particular person who is refused a job all based on
absolutely nothing which either one of them could control.

To me this seems to be the worst form of discrimination, for it is completely
unfounded and truly morally malevolent.

~~~
usgroup
Descrimination happens on broad characteristics (sex, race,etc) because that's
how people descriminate. The central issue is that they descriminate unfairly
and that the scope is broad. It's an empirical phenomena rather than a
theoretical one. There are laws in many places that protect some
characteristics. The laws are reactionary and there to fix an empirically
scoped problem.

Positive descrimination aims to fix a similar problem with a different
prescription.

~~~
jfaucett
> It's an empirical phenomena rather than a theoretical one.

Agree.

> The laws are reactionary and there to fix an empirically scoped problem. The
> laws are reactionary and there to fix an empirically scoped problem.

Again agree with the statement. Its the scope definition that I think is ill-
defined, and in the main, my point is that the actual repercussions of these
laws on individuals are ignored. If groups had feelings and emotions and human
rights positive discrimination would make more sense. However, only
individuals have feelings, desires, a sense of moral right and wrong, and
without knowing any details how can someone punish one individual and reward
another based off of nothing either of those individuals can control and while
simultaneously knowing no relevant details about the actual context in which
the supposed "fairness" action should take place?

Imagine in a society the distribution of people of attribute X has a lower
mean educational attainment than those of Y and that both distributions are
normal - this is the empirical datum. As a legislator you see this datum and
think its horrible, as you rightly would, and so you enact some positive
discrimination laws which make it more difficult for Y's to get accepted into
and graduate from schools and easier for X's to get accepted into and graduate
from schools. This all seems fine and in a few years perhaps the distributions
close in on each other. The actual question is this: was that a morally and
ethically good thing to do?

How can you find out? You could look at the group distributions and you might
be happy, but I think this ignores the ethic responsibility a society has to
being just and fair towards every individual in a like manner. Thus if Bob has
a score of 250 and Jane has a score of 300 on a collegiate entrance exam -
ceteris paribus - then Jane should be admitted to the school irrespective of
her being a member of set Y because to not do so is to act out unfairly
against a real individual, who has done nothing to deserve this, who has
feelings and a right to self-actualization of her own.

At the very least, each society should look at the effects positive
discrimination laws have on real individuals, detailed subcategories based on
controllable factors such as personality, skills, etc - instead of groups, and
honestly weigh the costs. As a last example, how many Asians get turned down
each year who would otherwise have been admitted to ivy league schools and
made better lives for themselves and their families if it were not for the
unfortunate fact that they were arbitrarily shoved to some group labeled
Asians, which had been assigned higher entrance exams scores than the rest of
the applicants, and their worth weighted heavily based on this group
assignment? Is this fair and justifiable at the level of the individual
applicant?

~~~
usgroup
Having to hire 30% women and how you choose to find the right ones is
unrelated.

Again descrimination happens categorically. The positive descrimination also
happens categorically offsets that.

I get your point about individuals but talking about means is not the same as
talking about the emotions of groups (as if they could have them). I think
"levelling playing fields" is a better metaphor.

Just as the best boxer doesn't win every fight, policy hopes for fairer
outcomes in the main. Often positive descrimination policy is introduced based
on measurably successful precedent set elsewhere.

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ssijak
My answer is "i dont know and i dont understand it either". But I know there
would be a public witch hunt if someone posted an ad that they are looking
only for white males.

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pizza
Look at the footer for [REDACTED]: This program and all offers related to it
are void where prohibited or restricted by law or where operation of the
program would violate any law or right. All participants in the program must
agree to the terms and conditions of the program which will be provided to the
selected applicants.

;)

Though it isn't illegal..

Here's my economics 2 cents on discrimination: if "white" firms discriminate
against minorities, the result is for them to behave as if they would rather
pay their own money (the savings not spent on costly searches by successfully
hiring an employee/having more business partners available) just to avoid
transactions with members of a community. The tendency, then, is for them to
prosper less than the non-anti-minority firms, so over the long term the
discriminatory element of the economy just decreases more and more over time.

However if you go ahead and do the _opposite_ , namely increasing diversity in
a sector typically overrepresented by whites (compared to composition of
national demographics) so that it matches the nation's diversity, I think
there are two benefits for the corporations: one, the direct benefit of being
able to promote their diversity initiatives as a type of signaled altruism
which could be attractive to potential future interns, and two, the indirect,
long-term benefit of having greater access to a population whose compensation
is often much cheaper. The programs may be instituted with good in mind, but I
remain cynical that there aren't also special interests who realize they can
invest in making this a common practice now, just so the price to hire a STEM
employee in the future decreases greatly as the pool of applicants is much
much less limited.

As for the morality of the "virtue signalling" and underhanded & cynical
investments... I don't think is so bad. The only time poorer minorities
significantly 'catch up' with the opportunities to the majority's wealth, and
social capital in general, is during times of war. Since I don't think war is
preferable to diversity initiatives, I think these things do more good in the
long term.

(I say all of this as a minority, too, but opportunities given only to those
allowed to bear "true authentic identities from wounds of history" leave me
incredibly skeptical nowadays, much more than they used to)

Would you say that your country is one where, if discrimination happens, it's
mostly like "whites forbidding nonwhites" instead of "whites compensating lack
of nonwhites"? I wouldn't be surprised if a good deal of the reason
desegregation took ~100 years after the abolition of slavery to become law is
because the economy had a selection pressure for that, regardless of
hostilities...

