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Racial Bias, Even When We Have Good Intentions

nytimes.com

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Re: Racial Bias, Even When We Have Good Intentions

#41

Post by mwana »

This is quite interesting. In my relations, I have subconsciously witnessed racial bias at play without people seemingly aware. I guess a lot of associations we make are based off things we see and not consciously decide on in a forceful way that reinforces those beliefs to us as something we stand by.

Much of it is down to nature. Minorities usually don't get preferential treatment when dealing with people who just don't relate naturally with someone they don't share natural similarities with, first-off physically.

I think it's really great that we have strong movements against racism and other forms of stigma stereotypically-related but doing away with it totally remains a job of nature...and people just being naturally different. Am I painting a gloomy-picture, I hope not. I haven't come to a good conclusion on what needs to be done to shake the associations we make in our subconscious minds that affect others unfairly.

Re: Racial Bias, Even When We Have Good Intentions

#42

Post by potatolicious »

steveeq1 wrote: post #39
potatolicious wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two concepts are IMO not so easily separable - see the widespread finding of blacks in the US to be "unattractive". Attractiveness is, despite the loud griping of evo-psych proponents, largely cultural. Our perceptions of race, of gender roles, of etc etc, contribute greatly to attraction. Discrimination in all its forms are often hard to disentangle.

Not always. Short people, for example, are biased against in job interviews and most people don't care.

The short people thing IMO supports my argument. There's a lot of evolutionary psychology drivel about how we're genetically predisposed to disliking short people due to lack of fitness, etc etc.

But a lot of the bias against short people is cultural in origin and hasn't always been the case. See the historically shifting attitudes towards fat people (from envy to disdain, as societies have industrialized).

We're taught by our upbringing and our surroundings to be biased against certain features in certain contexts - whether that's skin color, height, gender, orientation, or anything else. Some of this is colored by racism, sexism, or any number of other -isms we suffer from.

Re: Racial Bias, Even When We Have Good Intentions

#43

Post by [deleted] »

steveeq1 wrote: post #39
potatolicious wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two concepts are IMO not so easily separable - see the widespread finding of blacks in the US to be "unattractive". Attractiveness is, despite the loud griping of evo-psych proponents, largely cultural. Our perceptions of race, of gender roles, of etc etc, contribute greatly to attraction. Discrimination in all its forms are often hard to disentangle.

Not always. Short people, for example, are biased against in job interviews and most people don't care.

[deleted]

Re: Racial Bias, Even When We Have Good Intentions

#44

Post by steveeq1 »

potatolicious wrote: post #42
steveeq1 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not always. Short people, for example, are biased against in job interviews and most people don't care.

The short people thing IMO supports my argument. There's a lot of evolutionary psychology drivel about how we're genetically predisposed to disliking short people due to lack of fitness, etc etc. But a lot of the bias against short people is cultural in origin and hasn't always been the case. See the historically shifting attitudes towards fat people (from envy to disdain, as societies have industrialized). We're tau…

The shortness-bias is fairly culturally-universal, actually. And your point does little to refute that no one makes a big deal about this particular bias. (Not that I'm saying they shouldn't).

Re: Racial Bias, Even When We Have Good Intentions

#45

Post by rmc »

Houshalter wrote: post #28

It's not just race. Ugly people are incredibly discriminated against. Attractive politicians receive two and a half times as many votes as unattractive ones. Attractive people are far more likely to get hired and get paid 14% more. Unattractive people are twice as likely to be convicted for the same crimes in court, and have to pay damages twice as high on average. http://lesswrong.com/lw/lj/the_halo_effect/

And gender too. Studies with a male name/female name, show men get offered more money & jobs.

Re: Racial Bias, Even When We Have Good Intentions

#46

Post by rmc »

steveeq1 wrote: post #32
Houshalter wrote: post #28

It's not just race. Ugly people are incredibly discriminated against. Attractive politicians receive two and a half times as many votes as unattractive ones. Attractive people are far more likely to get hired and get paid 14% more. Unattractive people are twice as likely to be convicted for the same crimes in court, and have to pay damages twice as high on average. http://lesswrong.com/lw/lj/the_halo_effect/

Good point. Whenever I read articles like this, I often wonder if we are over-optimizing for racial discrimination and under-optimizing for other other forms. Interestingly, the people who cry out the loudest for racial discrimination often could care less about the type of discrimination you just pointed out (from my experience).

There are pleanty of groups fighting to end other forms of discrimination (incl. unconsciencous), such as ending gender, or sexuality based discrimination.

"Intersectionality" is a term for what happens when you're at the short end of the stick of several forms.

Re: Racial Bias, Even When We Have Good Intentions

#47

Post by UrMomReadsHN »

aaronharnly wrote: post #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!

Great thinking.

Perhaps its me but I know for me, a woman in software engineering, I constantly worry about what my name signals to potential employers. I wish my gender could be erased while being evaluated as I don't wish for it to be unintentionally or intentionally a factor in evaluating my job qualifications. Or the quality of any work I might publish online. No matter if it works out in my favor or not. I am kinda disturbed by the trend of LinkedIn profiles because I believe you are (apparently? I think...) encouraged to upload a picture of yourself. We did away with including a picture with your resume for a reason, now it seems to be coming back?

Seems as if employer tend to hire "potental friends" over potentally over more qualified applicants [http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2012/12/03/employers-...] which I think is part of the gender/race/ethnicity divide. People want to surround themselves with others like them.

As an aside, my experience seems to be that many employers of middle class jobs seem to expect candidates to come from a middle class upbringing and perhaps don't understand the opportunities that weren't available to some candidate due to growing up poor.

Just my opinions and thoughts on the matter.

Re: Racial Bias, Even When We Have Good Intentions

#48

Post by UrMomReadsHN »

fcanela wrote: post #3

Being caucasian I have a hard time finding objective examples of etnic discrimination which I could give to people who thinks that it's a solved issue. This article provided me few of them, thanks.

Blacks make up about 13% of the population but they make up 40% of male inmates in jail or prison. With such a huge disparity one can start thinking cultural issues (whatever they are) may be at play. Unless you subscribe to 19th Century "scientific racism."

Re: Racial Bias, Even When We Have Good Intentions

#49

Post by michaelfdeberry »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #26
michaelfdeberry wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

I'm not sure that "positive" is the right word here. Biases seem to be frequently double-edged at a minimum. The negative consequence is more obvious in your basketball example. Picking blacks for a basketball team simply because they are black is not positive. It is part of a system of thinking, which says that "blacks are good at these things". The corollary is that "blacks are not good at these other things". So,…

You are correct positive may not be the best term, but I think we are in agreement otherwise

Re: Racial Bias, Even When We Have Good Intentions

#50

Post by Houshalter »

stefantalpalaru wrote: post #35
Houshalter wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is far from universally agreed on. >when examining the frequency of different alleles (variants of a particular gene) at an individual locus (the location of a particular gene) between individuals, it is nonetheless possible to classify individuals into different racial groups with an accuracy that approaches 100 percent when one takes into account the frequency of the alleles at several loci at the same time. T…

The quantitative aspect is more important than the qualitative one. Take dog races (breeds) for example: "We also showed that the genetic variation between dog breeds is much greater than the variation within breeds. Between-breed variation is estimated at 27.5 percent. By comparison, genetic variation between human populations is only 5.4 percent. Thus the concept of a dog breed is very real and can be defined not o…

No one is disputing that dogs are far more genetically diverse than humans. But saying that humans don't cluster into different genetic groups is factually wrong.
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