As phrased, I don't think the first would be illegal. It probably doesn't actually meet the definition of a quota, although use of the word "quota" is likely to receive stricter scrutiny.
If it can be met without illegal practices, it's perfectly fine, and if you don't actually institute a quota, even if you call it a quota, it's fine.
If the goal can be met by expanding the talent pool or by reducing discrimination, it doesn't matter what you call it.
> Say an orchestra adopts anonymous auditions, and the representation of women rises from 33% to 50%. That's a non-discriminatory hiring policy.
> Another orchestra issues a "goal" or "representation target" or "diversity milestone" or some other euphemism that allocates 50% of the orchestra seats to women. That's a discriminatory hiring policy.
Now what if they are the same orchestra, that is, they set a goal of hiring 50% women, and meet it by blinding auditions? Again, my contention is that it is not necessary to undertake illegal activities to achieve a diverse hiring goal.
You seem to agree with this in theory, but when given any concrete policy proposal, even ones that are widely accepted and have been adopted by wide swaths of the US for the better part of a century, you claim that they are illegal. You're simply incorrect.
> Not regularly, only when companies are successfully sued for discriminating.
This is approximately a weekly occurrence (they settle about 2 cases per week), I'd say that's fairly regular.
Further, such goals were required by all federal contractors from 1965 to Jan 20 of this year (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_11246), its kind of silly to continue to claim that diversity goals are illegal when they've been required by every federal contractor for longer than any of the companies you've mentioned have existed.
> As phrased, I don't think the first would be illegal
"Your performance review score is reduced if you don't meet a quota of X% women" You think this is legal?
> Now what if they are the same orchestra, that is, they set a goal of hiring 50% women, and meet it by blinding auditions?
And what happens if they blind the auditions, but the share of women still falls short of 50%? Well, then they have to adjust the results of the blind auditions to match the quota.
You've repeatedly done this sneaky rhetorical slight of hand, where you endorse explicitly discriminatory policies and justify it with the claim that it could be achieved through non-discriminatory means. But that doesn't change the fact that the policy is discriminatory, and almost certainly would result in discrimination.
If I tell my employers that I don't want to hire any pregnant women - say, we institute a "diversity goal" of 100% non-pregnant employees - they could achieve this goal without actually discriminating against any pregnant women. That doesn't change the fact that such a goal is discriminatory.
> Again, my contention is that it is not necessary to undertake illegal activities to achieve a diverse hiring goal.
I've witnessed firsthand companies setting diversity "goals" of 40% women electrical engineers. 10% of electrical engineers are women. There's no way this can be feasibly achieved without resorting to gender discrimination.
> You seem to agree with this in theory, but when given any concrete policy proposal, even ones that are widely accepted and have been adopted by wide swaths of the US for the better part of a century, you claim that they are illegal. You're simply incorrect.
I've listed numerous hiring policies that I explain are not illegal:
* Anonymous resume review
* Adopting objective evaluation criteria
* Create and send resumes to your recruiters, identical save for identifying information like names, and follow up on any discrepancies on call-backs.
> This is approximately a weekly occurrence (they settle about 2 cases per week), I'd say that's fairly regular.
~100 cases a year nation wide makes it an extremely rare occurrence.
> Well, then they have to adjust the results of the blind auditions to match the quota.
No they don't, they can (and in cases I've seen!) fail to reach the goals! Or they can adopt other legal policies such as additional ones I've suggested, or they can change the goal. But in any case the mere presence of a goal is not evidence of illegal activity, even here you yourself show that the actual illegal activity wouldn't be having the goal, but doing some illegal activity to meet the goal if the legal methods weren't enough.
Which is to say, we agree: a diversity goal itself is not illegal. You should instead say that you believe that the diversity goals you are criticizing are too high to be met by legal means. That's potentially an interesting conversation, but its much less punchy than what you're saying now, which is functionally that "the mere act of committing to diversity in a quantifiable way is criminal".
> Your performance review score is reduced if you don't meet a quota of X% women" You think this is legal?
As long as the methods of increasing representation are legal, yes. You yourself have said as much. Consider a sufficiently low X, such as 1%. I don't think it would be illegal for a company to punish managers who hire > 50 employees per year for failing to hire even a single woman over the course of a year. I think that would be strong evidence of discrimination on the part of those managers, and the companies would be right to discipline or fire employees who engaged in such discrimination.
> You've repeatedly done this sneaky rhetorical slight of hand, where you endorse explicitly discriminatory policies and justify it with the claim that it could be achieved through non-discriminatory means.
No, I've been consistent that it is not illegal to have a hiring goal. Such a goal can be met in legal or illegal ways. You appear to consistently claim that even stating a goal and holding people accountable to it is illegal. I disagree. It depends entirely on what methods are chosen. The pursuit of diversity is not inherently illegal.
> I've listed numerous hiring policies that I explain are not illegal
And you've additionally claimed that a number of perfectly legal policies which are unlawfully discriminatory. Pipeline expansion policies with the aim of creating diverse candidate pool are perfectly legal, especially when they aim to account for flaws in existing talent pipelines that may be biased by missing underrepresented candidates.
Your objection to to these programs is that you claim meta announced that the goal of one of their programs was to delay giving interviews and offers to certain candidates with the intent of having those candidates drop out, so they could instead extend more offers to diverse candidates, and that you saw numerical documentation of these delays and their impact. And all I'm going to say so that's the most bullshit thing I've ever heard, because of it were in fact that well documented, it would be a slam dunk case and have been front page news.
The fact that no one else I've ever spoken to about such pipeline expansion and slate diversity programs has ever mentioned such a concern suggests that this "fact" you have is not as well documented or as clearly intentioned as you make it seem.
I'm going to disengage after this post, because we aren't getting anywhere, you're accusing me of various bits of rhetorical sleight of hand that I'm not doing, and you appear to be inventing more and more elaborate lies to prop up your objection to these programs. That's your right, but it's not something I want to entertain further.
> ~100 cases a year nation wide makes it an extremely rare occurrence.
But I'll note you ignored the part where I mentioned every federal contractor has done things you claim are unlawful for 60 years.
As phrased, I don't think the first would be illegal. It probably doesn't actually meet the definition of a quota, although use of the word "quota" is likely to receive stricter scrutiny.
If it can be met without illegal practices, it's perfectly fine, and if you don't actually institute a quota, even if you call it a quota, it's fine.
If the goal can be met by expanding the talent pool or by reducing discrimination, it doesn't matter what you call it.
> Say an orchestra adopts anonymous auditions, and the representation of women rises from 33% to 50%. That's a non-discriminatory hiring policy.
> Another orchestra issues a "goal" or "representation target" or "diversity milestone" or some other euphemism that allocates 50% of the orchestra seats to women. That's a discriminatory hiring policy.
Now what if they are the same orchestra, that is, they set a goal of hiring 50% women, and meet it by blinding auditions? Again, my contention is that it is not necessary to undertake illegal activities to achieve a diverse hiring goal.
You seem to agree with this in theory, but when given any concrete policy proposal, even ones that are widely accepted and have been adopted by wide swaths of the US for the better part of a century, you claim that they are illegal. You're simply incorrect.
> Not regularly, only when companies are successfully sued for discriminating.
This is approximately a weekly occurrence (they settle about 2 cases per week), I'd say that's fairly regular.
Further, such goals were required by all federal contractors from 1965 to Jan 20 of this year (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_11246), its kind of silly to continue to claim that diversity goals are illegal when they've been required by every federal contractor for longer than any of the companies you've mentioned have existed.