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Racism and Meritocracy

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Re: Racism and Meritocracy

#41

Post by jnordell »

philwelch wrote: post #7

One of the problems with racism in particular is that it has effects on people from birth. Past racism may have hurt their parents' socioeconomic prospects, forcing them to be born in an economically depressed ghetto with poor schools and gang violence. Even if there's no racism past that point, if their parents were prevented from ascending to the middle class, they won't pass on middle-class virtues emphasizing the…

Mitch Kapor also has an interesting take on this: http://mkapor.posterous.com/beyond-arrington-and-cnn-lets-lo...

Re: Racism and Meritocracy

#42

Post by guard-of-terra »

_pius wrote: post #38
guard-of-terra wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide us with the model of what you think is happening? Because "I think that something bad is happening but I don't know what" does not lead to a constructive discussion at all.

To the contrary, I think it is constructive to question sweeping and inflammatory claims backed up by little more than adverbs.

Sorry, but while there is only one model of what's happening it would remain both questionable AND popular.

To make it move you have to provide a new one.

Re: Racism and Meritocracy

#43

Post by maxklein »

raganwald wrote: post #12
maxklein wrote: post #10

I really fail to see how anyone can see racism in this. The current people trying to make it big in silicon valley now did not start the process now, they started 10 or 15 years ago when they started fiddling around with computers or learning to code or reading business books. And it's at that stage that the current audience was created, and not right now. The people applying and the selection is just a result of tha…

And clearly, many african-americans and many women were not doing the steps needed to be talented enough to be able to make it big now. The most likely reason they did not do that, is probably because it just did not occur to them. You use words like "clearly" and "probably" but provide neither explanation nor evidence to back up your suppositions. Clearly, you expect your audience thinks exactly the way you do and w…

The "clearly" comes out of logic. If you assume that my "result" statement is correct, then the reason would also have to be correct.

Do you think African American students, 15 years ago, were spending time studying how to use computers? I think it's rather likely because:

- I've never heard of this

- Such playing-with-computers is something that was confined to the somewhat richer and educated people in American society, which the african-americans were not, 15 years ago.

I doubt that my audience thinks the exact way I do, and I doubt I have any bias that needs to be confirmed.

Re: Racism and Meritocracy

#44

Post by rsheridan6 »

raganwald wrote: post #12
maxklein wrote: post #10

I really fail to see how anyone can see racism in this. The current people trying to make it big in silicon valley now did not start the process now, they started 10 or 15 years ago when they started fiddling around with computers or learning to code or reading business books. And it's at that stage that the current audience was created, and not right now. The people applying and the selection is just a result of tha…

And clearly, many african-americans and many women were not doing the steps needed to be talented enough to be able to make it big now. The most likely reason they did not do that, is probably because it just did not occur to them. You use words like "clearly" and "probably" but provide neither explanation nor evidence to back up your suppositions. Clearly, you expect your audience thinks exactly the way you do and w…

You don't need statistics to tell you that the programming community 10-15 years ago was overwhelming male and white/Asian. Some things are obvious by inspection. Do you seriously doubt this? Would it really change your mind about anything if the OP wasted 15 minutes trying to find a study proving it?

Re: Racism and Meritocracy

#45

Post by Anechoic »

maxklein wrote: post #40
Anechoic wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The most likely reason they did not do that, is probably because it just did not occur to them. Is your stated reason ("it just did not occur to them") more likely than "they didn't have the opportunity to take those steps because of (economics/insert reason)"? A quick Google search give this link: http://www.brookings.edu/articles/1998/spring_education_darl... which indicated that in the 1990's, minority students…

I believe it did not occur to them. I doubt that asian students had much more resources 15 years ago.

Do you have any evidence either way?

edit: downvotes for asking for evidence? I provided some, I'd be happy to evaluate more.

Re: Racism and Meritocracy

#46

Post by moldbug »

pg wrote: post #21
amirnathoo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eric is not suggesting that the applicant pool is diverse and the selection process biased. Instead, I think he's suggesting that different selection processes can result in different applicant pools: "Imagine that you were a professional musician thinking about which orchestra to audition for. You have a choice between an all-male orchestra that conducts interviews out in the open, and a mixed-gender orchestra that…

The Railsconf audience images refute that explanation too. Since there is no screening process at all, potential attendees can't be deterred by biases in it.

Whatever natural, social or political phenomenon causes this insidious effect, it is also clearly visible at (a) Burning Man, (b) Occupy Wall Street, and (c) any fashionable restaurant in San Francisco.

What is this phenomenon? Of course it could be some kind of unconscious conspiracy. If it's an unconscious conspiracy, it's a pretty unconscious one.

If it's a conscious conspiracy - but the thought is too terrible to think. As vile as the KKK and as insidious as communism! The Vast White Conspiracy, now on TechCrunch.

We Jews are often accused (at least on the danker corners of teh internets) of conspiring unconsciously against you goyim. Indeed if you had a camera with built-in Jew-dar - I'd hate to know what it would pick up at Ruby conferences, OWS, raw-food restaurants, BM, etc. Good lord! The Mossad must prevent it!

Stormfront can probably also fill you in on the percentage of Jewish lawyers in Berlin in 1932. Versus the percentage in the population, of course.

In modern EEO parlance, any disparity in these figures is called "disparate impact." Hundreds of thousands of Americans today work in the disparate-impact industry - so how can we be surprised to see it on TechCrunch?

Re: Racism and Meritocracy

#47

Post by thaumaturgy »

pg wrote: post #21
amirnathoo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eric is not suggesting that the applicant pool is diverse and the selection process biased. Instead, I think he's suggesting that different selection processes can result in different applicant pools: "Imagine that you were a professional musician thinking about which orchestra to audition for. You have a choice between an all-male orchestra that conducts interviews out in the open, and a mixed-gender orchestra that…

The Railsconf audience images refute that explanation too. Since there is no screening process at all, potential attendees can't be deterred by biases in it.

Of course they can, and in fact the article touched on this:

> Remember, part of the defense against the racism theory is that the applicants are already skewed before any selection is done.

> I once spent time with a promising entrepreneur who was not a white man. Because their startup sold a product that a lot of tech entrepreneurs buy, many of their customers were graduates of Y Combinator. So I asked if they were planning to apply. Their response: “oh, no, it’s a waste of time. Y Combinator doesn’t accept people like me.” Where did they get that idea? Surely not from YC’s partners, who as far as I can tell are scrupulously fair in their dealings with entrepreneurs. Rather, they got that impression by inferring that there is probably implicit bias in YC’s admissions process, and that they’d be better off spending their time doing something else other than applying to YC.

I realize you're talking about Railsconf and not YC, but is it really a leap of logic to suppose that there might be a similar mechanism at work at Railsconf, or other social conferences? Is it possible that individuals of certain minorities in tech -- women or various ethnicities -- are more sensitive to discriminatory undertones that other people aren't conscious of? e.g., they feel like they just won't "fit in" there, and are more inclined to spend their time elsewhere.

I think the article was well-written, thoughtful, and presented solid evidence as it gradually built its case point-by-point. I think it merits more consideration than a link to Google Images.

Re: Racism and Meritocracy

#48

Post by pg »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #47
pg wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Railsconf audience images refute that explanation too. Since there is no screening process at all, potential attendees can't be deterred by biases in it.

Of course they can, and in fact the article touched on this: > Remember, part of the defense against the racism theory is that the applicants are already skewed before any selection is done. > I once spent time with a promising entrepreneur who was not a white man. Because their startup sold a product that a lot of tech entrepreneurs buy, many of their customers were graduates of Y Combinator. So I asked if they were…

I used images of a conference audience because it's the best way I could think of to get a sample of what the hacker community looks like. If you can think of a better one, let me know.

(The point of that link, for anyone who didn't get it, is that the lack of diversity Eric Ries perceives in the output of our filter is also present in the input, which implies it's not caused by bias in the filter.)

Re: Racism and Meritocracy

#49

Post by philwelch »

yummies wrote: post #19
philwelch wrote: post #7

One of the problems with racism in particular is that it has effects on people from birth. Past racism may have hurt their parents' socioeconomic prospects, forcing them to be born in an economically depressed ghetto with poor schools and gang violence. Even if there's no racism past that point, if their parents were prevented from ascending to the middle class, they won't pass on middle-class virtues emphasizing the…

I think this train of thought would be considered a violation of the author's "No hand-wringing" rule. The last half of this article is dedicated towards debunking the "pipeline problem" which you are describing. Now whether or not he effectively debunked it is up to debate, but at least in the case of women entrepreneurs he offers some compelling data: "...women receive only about 30% of degrees in CS. But 30% is a…

The observed pattern seems to be that women make more risk-averse career choices, which founding a startup definitely isn't. The pipeline theory applies much better to blacks than to women.

Further, pg somewhere argued that there's a multiplicative factor once you factor in cofounders--cofounding a startup implies an extremely close platonic relationship, people are more likely to form extremely close platonic relationships with members of the same sex, and hence men have a wider range of possible cofounders than women. I think this argument is at least partially flawed--many businesses are started by husband-and-wife teams and there's no clear reason why opposite-sex platonic cofounder relationships couldn't work either.

Re: Racism and Meritocracy

#50

Post by jphackworth »

At my company, we're hiring mobile developers. We have received over 100 resumes. 2 of them were from women. I wish we could hire a more diverse group, but it's pretty obvious that changing our selection process isn't enough.
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