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Racial Bias, Even When We Have Good Intentions

nytimes.com

11–20 of 56 posts

Re: Racial Bias, Even When We Have Good Intentions

#11
I do a lot of hiring. It drives me crazy that applicant names (which signal gender and ethnicity) are literally the first thing I see in our candidate screening system.

So I wrote a GreaseMonkey script to replace candidate names with dictionary words. It isn't perfect -- names show up on resumes, and every other stage if the hiring process. I wish name-substitution were a standard feature of these systems!

Re: Racial Bias, Even When We Have Good Intentions

#12

Why is the belief that the human species has races just like cats, dogs, cows, horses, etc. so widespread in the US culture? Even anti-racism rhetoric takes this absurd proposition as a fact. Take this article for example: all the cases where the author talks about ethnicity he uses "race" instead.

No, there's the belief that the human species has races unlike cats, dogs, etc.

Just because the word is shared with the scientific concept doesn't mean it's believed to be the same thing. It's simply a remnant of the times when that was the general belief.

Re: Racial Bias, Even When We Have Good Intentions

#14

The term "white names" drives me insane. It usually exemplifies the cultural ignorance and Anglocentrism of the speaker more than anything.

I'm sure mr. Sendhil Mullainathan, born in a small farming village in India, is completely ignorant about non-anglophone cultures.

Re: Racial Bias, Even When We Have Good Intentions

#15

Articles like this always leave out Asians because it does not fit the narrative and forces you to think about culture as a main factor.

Bias goes both ways and biases effecting social status for Asians are typically positive. For example, if hiring for a Mathematician from three resumes, 1 White, 1 Black, and 1 Asian and being unaware of actual skill, the Asian would likely be considered first. In this case bias helped the Asian get a job that will raise their social status.

There are negative biases towards Asians as well, but they don't have much effect on social status, such as being bad drivers.

There are also positive biases towards Blacks, but the those positive biases don't have much effect on social status. An example would be if basketball team had to be constructed from a pool of available players, again unaware of actual skill, the Black players would likely be picked first.

I think the real point is that bias does have an effect on social status. Depending on what those biases are it could be a positive or negative effect.

Re: Racial Bias, Even When We Have Good Intentions

#16
post #5
post #2

Interesting article. For the "black names" thing, though, I would be curious to know if there were any studies also comparing "stereotypical white-but-not-anglophone" names, for example Greek, East-European, or South-European names. And also, for example, non-traditional names that have no racial implications, like "Rainbow" or similar.

I don't know about other ethnic names, but there have been studies with male name versus female name, which show men get offered more jobs and more money.

Yeap. And regardless of the gender of the person evaluating the candidate.

Re: Racial Bias, Even When We Have Good Intentions

#18

Why is the belief that the human species has races just like cats, dogs, cows, horses, etc. so widespread in the US culture? Even anti-racism rhetoric takes this absurd proposition as a fact. Take this article for example: all the cases where the author talks about ethnicity he uses "race" instead.

No, there's the belief that the human species has races unlike cats, dogs, etc. Just because the word is shared with the scientific concept doesn't mean it's believed to be the same thing. It's simply a remnant of the times when that was the general belief.

"There is great genetic diversity within all human populations. Pure races, in the sense of genetically homogenous populations, do not exist in the human species today, nor is there any evidence that they have ever existed in the past." - American Association of Physical Anthropologists, 1996 - http://www.virginia.edu/woodson/courses/aas102%20%28spring%2...

Re: Racial Bias, Even When We Have Good Intentions

#19
post #6

This article raises a question: how does one train their "fast" thinking? If someone reads this article and recalls all of the times that at least internally they passed a wrong judgement based on another's race, what can they do to prevent immediately thinking such things? I don't much like this intuitive answer: if you're simply aware of your tendency to erroneously judge, you can consciously act against it. Is the…

One way is to hide the information from yourself. I've heard of orchestras hiring by getting the applicant to play their instrument behind a screen. You can't see them, can't see their race/ethnicity, or gender. The only information you can use is the only information you should be using: how they play.

Re: Racial Bias, Even When We Have Good Intentions

#20

Why is the belief that the human species has races just like cats, dogs, cows, horses, etc. so widespread in the US culture? Even anti-racism rhetoric takes this absurd proposition as a fact. Take this article for example: all the cases where the author talks about ethnicity he uses "race" instead.

American-English is weird like that.
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