
Blacks with no criminal record have same sucess geting jobs as whites out prison - elberto34
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/03/opinion/sunday/when-whites-just-dont-get-it-part-6.html?_r=0
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misterbowfinger
He links to a study on unjust school funding:

[http://viz.edbuild.org/maps/2016/cola/resource-
inequality/#s...](http://viz.edbuild.org/maps/2016/cola/resource-
inequality/#stateAvg)

The analysis here is flawed. An example that doesn't make sense is NYC. If you
use the dropdown to go to New York and checkout NYC, your conclusion would be
that all NYC students are unjustly funded and have much less than everyone
else. But.... that makes no sense. New York City has some of the best public
schools in the country.

Yes, the funding is imbalanced and unjust. But it doesn't support his claim
that it's biased towards whites _and_ asian-americans. Asian-Americans are in
many poorer neighborhoods in NYC but perform well in test scores despite the
lack of funding.

I should clarify - I'm not saying that school funding shouldn't be more
balanced, or that imbalanced funding doesn't have a strong impact in other
municipalities. But suggesting a one-to-one mapping of school funding to
education quality by race is ridiculous. And yet, people make that lazy
argument all the time. No one wants to dig into root causes.

~~~
Shivetya
Segregation has always been bad in North but that was and has been
continuously swept under the rug for decades. Even Malcolm X called them out
on it when everyone was going after the South.

Still I want to see job prospects numbers across fields and education levels.
Are we comparing apples to apples here? If you just say "all whites" and "all
blacks" that discounts people with good education versus poor ones. So does
this trend hold true at all income levels? All education levels? All areas of
the country?

Obama blew such an opportunity to change the culture of destruction many black
Americans face in cities. He had eight years to lead that change through being
inspirational, through challenging the young men and women, even the adults
into, working towards a better day for their own children. When your focus is
your party and not the people you have made the wrong choice.

~~~
infosample
Obama gave plenty of respectability politics[0] speeches. This argument is as
old as U.S. Reconstruction. The problem isn't inspiration, working hard, or
wanting a better day for their children.

Actual laws set up these neighborhoods, schools, prisons, and employment
consequences.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respectability_politics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respectability_politics)

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anothercomment
Article talks a lot about blame on white people, yet it doesn't even contain
the information that black employers hire differently than white employers.

Also, project implicit, the unconscious bias test referenced in the article,
has been debunked: [http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2017/01/psychologys-racism-
meas...](http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2017/01/psychologys-racism-measuring-
tool-isnt-up-to-the-job.html)

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beat
Hard numbers are ugly numbers. This is important stuff.

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clock_tower
Could the headline be a little clearer? The typos in particular threw me
off...

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heynowletsgo
That's because racism is just the extreme version of difference intolerence.
Doesn't matter what the original group has in common, they will gang up on who
is different, whatever the difference. The conversation shouldn't be limited
to racial matters, the problem is lack of awareness that difference in and of
itself causes the unaware to oppress.

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beloch
"Why do we discriminate? The big factor isn’t overt racism. Rather, it seems
to be unconscious bias among whites who believe in equality but act in ways
that perpetuate inequality."

\--------

Aliefs[1] are a useful concept here. i.e. You may believe in equality but,
thanks to the culture you live in, act against that belief unconsciously.
There are a lot of reasons for people to alieve that blacks are less
employable. Take, for example, Gangsta rap and it's continuing popularity.
Here you have an art-form that glorifies materialism, violence, and
lawlessness and is dominated by black artists. Few employers are likely to
explicitly believe it is logical to fear or mistrust black job applicants
because of gangsta rap, but its popularity nevertheless plants aliefs that
contribute to the difficulties faced by black job-seekers.

\--------

"Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, an eminent sociologist, calls this unconscious bias
“racism without racists,” and we whites should be less defensive about it.
This bias affects blacks as well as whites, and we also have unconscious
biases about gender, disability, body size and age. You can explore your own
unconscious biases in a free online test, called the implicit association
test."

\--------

It's important to draw a distinction between acting on racist _beliefs_ and
racist _aliefs_. Some would say the latter is being racist without knowing it,
which is offensive to most and probably counterproductive to say. At present,
racists are popularly viewed as demons to be mocked and punished. Even if
there is a basis for calling someone acting on their aliefs racist, doing so
is going to offend and hurt them and likely turn them against you. Subtler
language is required here.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alief_(mental_state)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alief_\(mental_state\))

~~~
sidlls
"Aliefs" are what I think of as the "privilege" in "white privilege." It's
very real. We have distinct, systemic advantages that influence how we
interact with others who aren't white, and one way this manifests is through
this sort of "racism without racists" concept.

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astrodust
Are there techniques for neutralizing the effects of things like race during
the hiring process that could help make these sorts of decisions more
objective?

I'm reading _The Undoing Project_ by Michael Lewis and it digs into things
like this with great enthusiasm. Making people aware of their own inherent
biases and devising criteria that help make objective decisions is not easy,
but often necessary.
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Undoing_Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Undoing_Project))

~~~
maxerickson
Blinding.

An example is orchestras. They use a screen so that the people deciding
between musicians can't see the person auditioning.

~~~
astrodust
You can only get so far with this, that's the problem. Eventually the
candidate will show up and people will make snap judgements.

"He's wearing gang clothes" or "I thought he was a rapper" and you're going to
have massively skewed data.

A coding interview conducted via online chat only, no voice, could be
educational, but it might also over-select those used to texting and online
chatting.

~~~
infosample
> You can only get so far with this

Is improving a problem not worthwhile without completely eliminating it?

> "He's wearing gang clothes" or "I thought he was a rapper"

Are gang clothes business attire now? That's what I see people of color
wearing to interviews and work.

~~~
astrodust
I'm speaking about impressions, not the actuality of it. One person's casual
attire, which is the norm for a lot of interviews now, might be interpreted as
"gang clothes" even when they're clearly not.

Like is a simple Kangol t-shirt "gang clothes"? By the same token a Lulu Lemon
or Izod shirt is, they're just different "gangs". People have a way of reading
into things. A well-dressed black person might look "like a drug dealer" while
a scruffy white dude might look "like a real programmer". It's a matter of
perception. Our pattern matching is often badly distorted by the media.

Improving is always a good idea, but if it completely handicaps entire groups
of people it's not necessarily an improvement, it's just shifting the
artificial rejection criteria.

~~~
infosample
Please don't use clothing as a straw man for a real issue.

Blind interviewing does not handicap anyone. The way to improve the perception
of an applicant as a gangster or a rapper is for them to prove it on the job.
You want the most qualified right? Hire based on actual qualifications.
Implement a dress code for your conscience and get back to business.

~~~
astrodust
It's a real issue. Many people have found that clothing is often the biggest
impediment to being treated seriously on the job.

It affects women and minorities in different but equally profound ways.
Meanwhile white males can wear _whatever_ and nobody cares. Bath robe to work?
"He's a 10x coder, we just let him do his own thing..."

This isn't about a "dress code", this is about _perception_. You could have a
company mandated uniform where everyone wears exactly the same thing and
they'd still find reason to be suspicious of people.

I use the clothing problem as an example because it's the biggest one. There
are too many stories of people not being taken seriously because of what they
wear when what they're wearing isn't the least bit unprofessional or
inappropriate. It's just how people project things onto appearances.

> Blind interviewing does not handicap anyone.

Can you name one company that uses an actual blind interview _for a technical
positions_ successfully? How about a company that can apply the same rigour to
technical and performance reviews?

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tabeth
I hate to go on my regular rant on this, but anonymous interviewing is the
only answer. I could post literally thousands of studies, but everyone is
already familiar with one of the more infamous.

Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment
on Labor Market Discrimination

[http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873](http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873)

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partycoder
There are studies that show that given names associated with black culture are
less successful in the job market.

[http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873](http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873)

Not only in the job market but, also receive a worse treatment at schools and
libraries.

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liberte82
The headline makes it sound like "blacks who get out of prison with no
criminal record have same success getting jobs as whites". That's how I read
it, anyway, and I was wondering how you get out of prison without a criminal
record. :)

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WorkingClassDev
I take it this is in America and not an international study?

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XJOKOLAT
Why was this flagged?

