I guess it depends on perspective, but I disagree about equality being achieved decades ago. The laws have been in place for decades, but acceptance of those laws is still far from universal. I've heard people say, in this forum as well, hires should be based on merit only. I agree with that 100%. The problem is, for multiple generations those hires weren't based on merit only. They were based on the merit of the best white male candidate. There is a difference. What you have now, by and large, are those same white male candidates making the hiring decisions. With absence of malice, people like people, like them. Companies should be able to hire whomever they want, but if all those hires are "like me" hires then everything remains the same.
So you're basically saying that some immeasurable and abstract bias in one direction should be countered by deliberate bias in the other direction? When those people hired thanks to this bias move forwards in their career, won't they then begin to favor people representing their ethnicity when they start to hire people?
I'm not denying your assertion that managers are subconsciously more likely to hire people who are closer to being like them. They've done psychological research on this and concluded that people are in general more likely to trust people who look like them. It's not even just white people, it's all races and most probably goes back to our tribal stage of societal development. However what I am saying this is so abstract and hard to put into numbers it's not strong enough to put into a justification for deliberate favoritism based on gender or race.
In essence you're basically arguing for trying to fight fire with fire, which in my opinion is just a bad idea all around. There aren't any simple solutions to a problem as abstract and difficult to measure as people hiring people like them. One way would be to have human resources departments screen and interview people and let managers make hiring decisions based on resumes and assessments with data relating to gender and ethnicity stripped out. Another one would be to have a diverse human resources department and let the biases cancel each other out.
A fairly serious flaw in your argument I'm going to have to point out that these days in big companies hiring decisions are not done by managers, but by human resources departments and those generally have a female majority. Thus your assessment that hiring in the tech sector is biased in favor of men because of people being biased towards people who look more like them is something of an oxymoron. Hiring should actually be biased in favor of women, not men, because hiring decisions are mostly done by other women.
Systemic and institutionalized discrimination is alive and well in this country. Obviously you've never been subjected to it, therefore you proudly proclaim it doesn't exist. I'm surprised that you didn't end your post with some of my best friends are Black.
Well that's a really mature response... Talk down to and just insult your opponent.
Seriously thou, I haven't really encountered any solid proof of discrimination in general, just anecdotal evidence with little in terms of proof and studies with serious flaws in their methods. The usual "send the same applications except with the applicant being of a different gender or race" studies never send the same applications to the same people, they send the same applications to different people in which case it just becomes completely invalid as different employers will have different skills differently. The end result of something like this is just going to be random and you can repeat it until you get the result you want.
So it is interesting when Apple donates money for scholarships for students, that it devolves into "this is racist because hiring due to race is racist". This is scholarships... for students.
People wouldn't have an issue if Apple was donating money for scholarships intended to help disadvantaged people in general, but this is Apple handing out money for scholarships awarded based on racial background.
