What is not a white male? Will this be a self declared sort of thing?
They'll use the Potter Stewart test: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it
California outlawed all-white-male boardrooms – reshaping corporate America
101–110 of 208 posts
Re: California outlawed all-white-male boardrooms – reshaping corporate America
#102Road the hell is paved with good intentions. As much as I support equality and diversity, I'm even more strongly opposed government over-reach. The state shouldn't have a say in who gets a job at a private (non owned by state) company. As the article state, I hope this will get over-turned by the courts. This would set a bad precedent. If the state can dictate the kind of person gets a highly coveted job, what else c…
It’s not just CA though. Nasdaq is doing it. US chamber of commerce has thrown its support as well.
Re: California outlawed all-white-male boardrooms – reshaping corporate America
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Federal government already says you can't discriminate. They aren't saying, "you have to hire this person". They're saying you can't hire exclusively this type of person that currently dominates the top of society. Given that these boardrooms don't diversify themselves, what is the actual problem with it?
A national government requiring that hiring decisions be made on the basis of gender or race, and the response is "what is the actual problem with it?"
You seem to think that hiring decisions aren't already largely made on the basis of race and gender.
Re: California outlawed all-white-male boardrooms – reshaping corporate America
#104The comments here as I write this are quite shocking. I would have imagined that HN's readership would be quite progressive. Maybe not. I do not think it is unreasonable for a corporate board to be required to include at least one woman or at least one non-white person. I also think it's quite shocking that all-white-male boards are so common that this is even necessary. It's an artifact of institutional racism and s…
I agree with you, about HN's audience, which is I guess what "bro culture" devolves into, and that the idea isn't crazy. Board room implies scale. If you don't have diversity at scale, in so many senses of the word, your doomed to fail anyway. So many knee jerk reactions are a sad reflection of this community, though.
> If you don't have diversity at scale, in so many senses of the word, your [sic] doomed to fail anyway.
Then why do we need a law banning it? If these white-male-only-board-led companies are doomed to fail, they should be outcompeted by sufficiently-diverse-board-led companies.
I have a feeling the physical attributes of the board doesn't actually matter when it comes to a company's performance.
Re: California outlawed all-white-male boardrooms – reshaping corporate America
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Punishing someone based on “wrong” color/gender is evil.
Yes it is. And that's what we've done as a society for hundreds of years in the US. That we are now attempting to fix that will obviously be seen as an attack, because losing privilege is never easy.
“Privilege” is getting a job over a better candidate just because of inclusion in an artificial social construct.
Re: California outlawed all-white-male boardrooms – reshaping corporate America
#106Road the hell is paved with good intentions. As much as I support equality and diversity, I'm even more strongly opposed government over-reach. The state shouldn't have a say in who gets a job at a private (non owned by state) company. As the article state, I hope this will get over-turned by the courts. This would set a bad precedent. If the state can dictate the kind of person gets a highly coveted job, what else c…
Federal government already says you can't discriminate. They aren't saying, "you have to hire this person". They're saying you can't hire exclusively this type of person that currently dominates the top of society. Given that these boardrooms don't diversify themselves, what is the actual problem with it?
> They aren't saying, "you have to hire this person". They're saying you can't hire exclusively this type of person that currently dominates the top of society.
No, that's not what Federal anti-discrimination law says. It only says you can't refuse to hire certain people on the basis of a protected characteristic (of which race is one, but not the only one). It says nothing about refusing to hire certain people for other reasons that don't have to do with a protected characteristic.
(Btw, corporate boards of directors aren't even "hired"; they aren't employees. So it's not even clear what, if any, Federal anti-discrimination laws about hiring and employment would apply to them.)
> Given that these boardrooms don't diversify themselves, what is the actual problem with it?
There are two actual problems. One is that you can't have a government that only exercises its power wisely. For every mandate the government makes that happens to move things in the right direction, there will be many more that move things in the wrong direction. The people who are attracted to government jobs where they get to tell other people what to do aren't benevolent helpers; they're people who like power. All history shows that such people are precisely the people you don't want telling other people what to do.
The second problem is that dictating that people of certain races must belong to corporate boards is just as wrong as dictating that people of certain races can't belong to corporate boards. Both are looking at something that is irrelevant to the actual job, which means they aren't actually improving the corporations; the corporations can still do just as much damage as they did before, just now they'll be doing it with a "diverse" board.
The only real way to fix corporate governance is for people who would do better jobs than the board members of current corporations to form their own corporations and out-compete the current corporations.
Re: California outlawed all-white-male boardrooms – reshaping corporate America
#107The comments here as I write this are quite shocking. I would have imagined that HN's readership would be quite progressive. Maybe not. I do not think it is unreasonable for a corporate board to be required to include at least one woman or at least one non-white person. I also think it's quite shocking that all-white-male boards are so common that this is even necessary. It's an artifact of institutional racism and s…
While we are at it, just off the top of my head, lets make it required to include at least one bald person, at least one person with blood type AB, and at least one person with freckles. We shouldnt descriminate against them should we?
Re: California outlawed all-white-male boardrooms – reshaping corporate America
#108[deleted]
Re: California outlawed all-white-male boardrooms – reshaping corporate America
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
If we were ever at the point where companies were hiring the best people for the job, this wouldn't be necessary as the companies would already have a diverse board.
Assuming skill is equally distributed by race. Except that everywhere, including when admission is solely based on performance on a test you can study for, there end up being massive racial disparities. Other races need to be shoehorned in.
And you believe that's due to innate differences and not anything about the environments in which these disparities arise?
Re: California outlawed all-white-male boardrooms – reshaping corporate America
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
If we were ever at the point where companies were hiring the best people for the job, this wouldn't be necessary as the companies would already have a diverse board.
Assuming skill is equally distributed by race. Except that everywhere, including when admission is solely based on performance on a test you can study for, there end up being massive racial disparities. Other races need to be shoehorned in.
But these are board positions. They are not chosen based on measurable skills, but rather almost always on some combination of connections and a specific mindset.
This has often been called the "old boys club", and the persistent pattern of boards being overwhelmingly white and male is great evidence that there has a (predominately unconscious) bias in the selections.
Since the makeup of these boards affects the decisions made by these companies, and those decisions have a large impact on society, society (California) has decided that they have to clean up their act and make those decision makers at least vaguely reflect the makeup of that society.