Apple Releases Employee Diversity Report, 7 out of 10 Workers Are Male, 55% White

[Piggie]

I hear you but thats business. I still would always hire the best person for the job/company or move the jobs to countries in which I find the best environment for the company.
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But the law states that you cannot put an advert out there or be seen to pick the best person YOU want for the job.

Is Pretty, Thin, Female, Male, Tall, Straight, Gay, White, Black, Large Breasted, Willing to sleep with you, legal to state in an advert and what you want from your new employee ?

 

[CmdrLaForge]

But the law states that you cannot put an advert out there or be seen to pick the best person YOU want for the job.

Is Pretty, Thin, Female, Male, Tall, Straight, Gay, White, Black, Large Breasted, Willing to sleep with you, legal to state in an advert and what you want from your new employee ?

Well what you want from the employee does depend on the job right?

For example if you would take assembly lines for their products even so subcontracted into account it won't show an advantage for white males anymore. Suddenly the whole picture would dramatically change.

 

[SarcasticJoe]

Yeah, the IQ thing has always been a sticking point in the nature vs. nurture debate. But even it can have 10,000 different explanations that extend beyond the idea of fundamentally different human races. You could chalk it up as anything from slight cultural differences putting different emphases on different ideals, to nutritional needs not being met, and education being entirely abscent (in the more extreme African cases).

That whole thing about IQ being all nurture actually falls apart when you look at black kids that have been adopted into white families from a very early age. They don't have the environment holding them back, but on average they still test lower than white kids.

I'm not claiming that IQ is the ultimate tool for measuring intelligence, it's far from it, but it is a pretty good tool for measuring mathematical aptitude and technology is pretty heavy on math when you get down to the more fundamental things.

You can't point at one group of people and say they're genetically destined to be less intelligent than this other group of people, because even the supposedly most stupid of people can produce geniuses or other people of great worth at random moments.

While the talk about blacks having lower IQ on average meets a lot of resistance from people solely based on it clashing with their sense of social justice, it's not completely without merit. While a lower average IQ doesn't mean everyone in the group in question is going to have a low IQ, this kind of thing does mean that it's going to have an effect on the larger scale. We are after all talking about minorities in the work force and that's literally millions of people (i.e a pretty good size chunk).

As for Asian Flush, it falls under the same category as sickle cell. Having a mutation that tends to follow along racial lines isn't proof in and of itself that there are fundamental differences between the races. Only that if you're X, you're more likely to have a predisposition to Y. It's like familial diseases, taken one step beyond. Different people from different regions propagate different mutations, but the mutations themselves are small, and don't equate to an entirely new physiology.

The point there was to show that race can be a lot deeper than skin, not that a single difference can make a huge difference like you seem to think I was saying.

 

[QCassidy352]

But the law states that you cannot put an advert out there or be seen to pick the best person YOU want for the job.

Is Pretty, Thin, Female, Male, Tall, Straight, Gay, White, Black, Large Breasted, Willing to sleep with you, legal to state in an advert and what you want from your new employee ?

You're not entirely correct. Employers certainly CAN discriminate on the basis of attractiveness, height, weight, or breast size, and they can state those preferences in their advertisements. Employers can discriminate in hiring on any basis except a basis that is specifically prohibited (e.g. race, gender, disability), and of course they can't make sleeping with the boss a job requirement.

Employers can also explicitly state things such as "Minorities, women, and persons with disabilities are strongly encouraged to apply" (quoted straight off a local government hiring page), though they cannot say that they will ONLY hire from those groups.

(as an aside, although an employer may discriminate for any reason except a prohibited reason, they cannot of course use an allowed reason, such as hair color, to serve as a proxy for a disallowed reason, such as race or ethnicity. So you can't say "we only hire redheads and blondes" because even though people with dark hair are not a protected class, that ad would clearly be a backdoor way of saying "we only hire white people of certain backgrounds."

 

[SarcasticJoe]

An IQ test isn't "a test in mathematical pattern recognition."

There are elements of pattern recognition, and there are elements of math, but there aren't really many "mathematical pattern recognition" elements. Math is also only one portion of an IQ test. The verbal part (which actually comprises math, as well as vocabulary, digit span [basically a short term mem test], writing fluidity, writing quality, general knowledge, and more.) The Performance part is more about the right side of the brain; spatial ability, pattern recognition, visual memory etc. Unfortunately I was foolish enough to major in neuropsychology.

What an IQ test consists of can vary pretty wildly and specially in the U.S there's a lot more focus on the non-mathematical part as it tends to be an area where blacks don't do very well.

In most of the world it is basically mathematical aptitude because various cultural and language related factors can have an effect making the test more difficult for some and less difficult for others. For instance the PISA tests for the skills of school students can vary pretty wildly from country to country as the countries themselves are allowed to make changes to the tests to account for cultural differences. The end result of this is that not all tests are actually equal and kids in some countries have a slight advantage.

Also, studies have proven that when you control for all the variables (wealth, expectiations, social class, parent eduction, etc.), there is actually little to no performance difference between any of the races. Yes, this means Asians do no better than Whites OR Blacks. There is of course still plenty of individual variation.

From what I've read you can get a lot of the difference ironed out by controlling the variables, but it doesn't completely obliterate the racial differences in average. This in my opinion lends credibility to intelligence being part nature and part nurture. However I'm pretty sure there are a lot of people, including scientists involved in this kind of research, who will not accept nature being any part in it because the very idea of one race having higher average intelligence than another race doesn't fit into their world view.

The point about race specific mutations was more just to prove that race does go more than skin deep, not to imply that genetics equal destiny or something else that's really far flung. As for the use of the asian flush as an example, I didn't say their liver couldn't process it, I said that they couldn't process it properly and clearly mentioned turning it into acetaldehyde, which causes the effects I mentioned. Producing acetaldehyde at a rate that causes those kinds of side effect is what I at least consider not being able to process it properly. I originally read the definition from my dad's old medical textbook when he showed it to me after the asian flush somehow came up when we were watching some Wong Kar Wai flick with the family.

Well, to be fair, in the social sciences the definition of "minority" is a group or class which is underrepresented and lacking influence and power. Women are a minority, despite making up more than half the population on Earth.

So basically it's just a you-know-what kind of redefinition of the word to suit an agenda?

 

[noodlemanc]

It's absolutely retarded actively trying to pick different races and genders. Who cares?

Agreed. Companies should hire the people who are best for the job -- and if that happens to be mostly white males, then that's what the company should consist of. Simple as that.

 

[Toltepeceno]

.

...sigh. Internet people.

Agreed.

 

[mrhick01]

I guess this link will make some posters spin in their graves...

http://www.urbanfaith.com/2011/10/steve-jobs’-passion-for-diversity.html/

 

[jonnyb098]

At what point can we stop looking at people in terms of their race, and instead just view them as people? In five years? In ten? In fifty?

How about now?

This is a great point. Racisim and inequalities will never end as long as people request special treatment for their race. You cant have claim to want to be treated equal then still want perks for being a minority.

Apple wants to hire smart and well educated people. Statistically, many "minorities" are from inner cities and lower socioeconomic situations. Therefor they most likely wont be getting the education and/or experience possible to even work at Apple.

Im not trying to rain on anyones parade. But none of us have a choice where and under what conditions we are born into and grow up in. So in the end people can whine all they want but those are the facts. Its IMPOSSIBLE to have an remotely close to equal race workforce. Its that simple. Hopefully that changes over time.

 

[TheHateMachine]

http://www.urbanfaith.com/2011/10/steve-jobs’-passion-for-diversity.html/

So much for all the "Steve wouldn't have allowed this" posts prior to yours!

 

[mrhick01]

That article covered Steve Jobs himself making efforts to recruit/encourage more Black engineers for Apple, Inc. Steve.

Not finding "B" or "C" candidates to make employees. Consulting people working directly with promising youth to craft new talent and innovation to the company.

As I have said before, it must be great to run around this world with historical blinders on, to disregard others' lives and histories just to keep your own narratives warm and comfortable.

 

[QCassidy352]

From what I've read you can get a lot of the difference ironed out by controlling the variables, but it doesn't completely obliterate the racial differences in average. This in my opinion lends credibility to intelligence being part nature and part nurture. However I'm pretty sure there are a lot of people, including scientists involved in this kind of research, who will not accept nature being any part in it because the very idea of one race having higher average intelligence than another race doesn't fit into their world view.

I think what you're missing is that "race" as the term is often used is pretty much arbitrary. Even if there were certain *ethnic* groups that have evolved to have more cognitive (or athletic) ability based on the different selective pressures they felt, trying to apply that to *racial* groups as we use the term in the US is laughable because when we talk about "whites," "blacks" "Asians" "Hispanics" etc we're in fact lumping together many many different ethnic groups which are enormously geographically diverse. So even if a certain tribe in Kenya faced pressures that made them better endurance athletes than the rest of the world, generalizing that to all "blacks" - a word that really just means a particular range of skin tones - would be completely irrational. Same goes for any intelligence-based argument.

 

[Gutwrench]

It's not discrimination at all, it's leveling the playing field. And it only hurts white people in the sense that they now have more competition. The job isn't automatically theirs like it may have been in the past. But I understand wanting to hold onto privilege, it's a beautiful thing.

I'm all for America becoming more colorblind, but I'm unclear on your point.
Being offered an opportunity for the precise reason one doesn't want to be excluded seems a bit of a rub.

 

[scottsjack]

I'm all for America becoming more colorblind, but I'm unclear on your point.
Being offered an opportunity for the precise reason one doesn't want to be excluded seems a bit of a rub.

America will never be colorblind. Too many people and organizations thrive on us not being colorblind. Also, humans are extremely tribal. There will always be plenty of "outsiders" to discriminate against.

 

[steve333]

Screw diversity, just hire the best people and be done with it.
So fed up with this PC garbage
Oh no, look, a white man oohhhhhhh

 

[theanimaster]

Interesting.. coz I applied several times and failed to make the mark. Maybe it was because at the time I didn't have a car. So my poor Asian arse didn't get hired because I rode a bike to work (and yes, a bicycle), but they did choose a couple mindless mixed-race hippies who couldn't identify the difference between a 2011 macbook pro and a 2007 one.

At least the Apple geniuses I talked to are actually... genius. I always get some camaraderie from those guys. But on the floor -- wow. I had this chick who treated me like I was going to run away with MY own macbook before paying the bill. Like... idiot, my macbook is in PRISTINE condition, unlike the usual stuff I see being brought in... I was just shocked. Maybe I was being stereotyped because of my Asian ethnicity by this white chick. Hmm.

On another note, services here on the east coast suck. The quality is a joke compared to what it is in countries I've live in, in Asia and including Australia -- and guess what -- I think it's BECAUSE of how lax we are getting towards immigrations. Yes, I said it -- we have so many immigrants on the east coast that their lower expectations have become THE expectations on the east coast. It sucks. Balls. Really. I go a little more toward the Mid-West and I can pick up some DECENT hamburgers and meals. What does that say? It says that white people there still love what they do -- they work, and they work well. They don't feel like they are entitled to get paid for doing nothing.

In any case, I wonder if Apple will consider hiring me now that I drive four wheels. Maybe I should consider putting on an Asian accent or something when I come in for the interview. Oh, and perhaps I should say I'm gay as well.

 

[mrhick01]

I'm all for America becoming more colorblind, but I'm unclear on your point.
Being offered an opportunity for the precise reason one doesn't want to be excluded seems a bit of a rub.

Colorblindism is the moral equivalent of racism. Yes, I said it.

To say "I don't see your color" is to assume that by seeing that by witnessing my person you would see something wrong or problematic with it. What you can do is respect who I am by the ways I react to and treat others around me, Golden Rule.

Again, my link...Steve Jobs himself was on the hunt for the world's best and brightest, wherever he could find it. Genius comes from many places and I am encouraged by Cook's efforts to pursue it wherever it may be.

 

[SarcasticJoe]

I think what you're missing is that "race" as the term is often used is pretty much arbitrary. Even if there were certain *ethnic* groups that have evolved to have more cognitive (or athletic) ability based on the different selective pressures they felt, trying to apply that to *racial* groups as we use the term in the US is laughable because when we talk about "whites," "blacks" "Asians" "Hispanics" etc we're in fact lumping together many many different ethnic groups which are enormously geographically diverse. So even if a certain tribe in Kenya faced pressures that made them better endurance athletes than the rest of the world, generalizing that to all "blacks" - a word that really just means a particular range of skin tones - would be completely irrational. Same goes for any intelligence-based argument.

So you're basically trying to throw out the figures because they're too general and not focused on small enough groups? We are after all talking about the workforce of the U.S and looking at how Apple apparently has too few that fall within certain categories based on race.

Thus it's completely valid to talk about blacks of the U.S in general because this is about people claiming this particular group is underrepresented.

You clearly seem to try to turn this argument into one of blacks all being stupid, when the reality is that we're talking about averages of larger groups. Of course there are going to be a lot of highly intelligent individuals in a group numbering in the millions, however we are talking about averages, not the existence of highly intelligent individuals in said group.

 

[WhoDaKat]

I'm happy that you are perfectly capable of imagining what I would reply, at least.



Have you ever seen a company stating "100% of our workers are white males"? Meanwhile, here we have Apple stating they have 55% of white workers (less than the percentage of white people in their state), with Tim Cook stating he would like to improve those numbers. Guess why? Because of diversity. Because it's important to tell minorities that they are represented and to show them how, despite everything they have suffered, they can succeed. Why do you think Cook has even talked about this subject?

It's not surpring that Mr "heterossexual white male who has always had an easy life" cannot understand the concept; but if the goal behind the diversity talk is to empower minorities, the fact Cook hides his homossexuality is very far from being empowering. And for those who missed their English classes, hiding is not the same as not screaming something on the street; if Cook simply didn't hide it and just lived his life, so eventually he would be seen with a partner, it would make his diversity efforts far more sincere than they are.



Cook's comments have a no small degree of hipocrisy. He claims to cherish diversity, but through his actions what he actually provides is an example of how diversity must stay hidden and muffled in order to succeed. Does he believe that if he stopped hiding his sexuality — if he were actually seen with a man — that he would be less successful? And if he really believes that, what does it tell us about what he really thinks about diversity?

Dude, seriously. Tim Cook has made OUTs Power 50 three years in a row, and when he became CEO the headlines were "The most powerful gay man in America". Everyone knows Tim is a homosexual. Where is your evidence that he is "hiding" his sexual preference? He doesn't draw attention to it for the same reasons I don't draw attention to the fact that I'm heterosexual. Its no big deal. Don't you and your pals at Westboro have a funeral to picket?

 

[Digital Skunk]

They don't have the environment holding them back, but on average they still test lower than white kids.....

Actually, this and everything else you say after this is terribly wrong.

In impoverished environments, blacks score lower, obviously.

In "well-off" environments, blacks score HIGHER than their white counter parts.

Ooh, look links!

Also, things you fail to mention that lead to prejudices and your misunderstanding of how IQ tests work include:

- The nature of the person taking the test. e.g. are they stressed?
- The fact that IQ varies over our lifespans
- Psychology and behavior
- Perspectives of merit and achievement

and

- Of course prejudice and racism

So while your post is at the heart sincere, you're still carrying along the traditional forms of racism and prejudice that science has dispelled over a half century ago.

Colorblindism is the moral equivalent of racism. Yes, I said it.

Yes, this is all very true. It's just sad that there's no way to show white people how ignorant they sound when they say it. Most tend to believe they are the "STANDARD" when it comes to race and ethnicity. So not seeing race really just means I won't see or acknowledge other races; and that everyone should just be like me.

In any case, I wonder if Apple will consider hiring me now that I drive four wheels. Maybe I should consider putting on an Asian accent or something when I come in for the interview. Oh, and perhaps I should say I'm gay as well.

If you were in Baltimore, Maryland they would have hired on you on the spot if you had an accent AND you where gay. /s

Agreed. Companies should hire the people who are best for the job -- and if that happens to be mostly white males, then that's what the company should consist of. Simple as that.

This makes no sense.

You make it sound like Apple isn't hiring people that are best for the job. You do realize that such a thing is illegal right?

What makes you think that hiring a minority instantly means they aren't suitable for the job?

Do you look at minorities, women, and gays and assume they got the job ONLY because they are a minority?

Conversely do you assume that whites only got the job because they are white?

Neither has happened or ever will happen.

Why is it that a simple statement like:

"We seek diversity!"

Immediately means that they are just hiring under-qualified minorities to fill a quota, like there is no such thing as a qualified minority?

 

[DUCKofD3ATH]

Also, studies have proven that when you control for all the variables (wealth, expectiations, social class, parent eduction, etc.), there is actually little to no performance difference between any of the races. Yes, this means Asians do no better than Whites OR Blacks. There is of course still plenty of individual variation.

I'm wondering just how researchers go about controlling for those variables you listed. Take "expectations"--do you control for expectations by making the test easier for those from whom you expect less?

Please post a link so I can read up on this.

 

[Renzatic]

I'm wondering just how researchers go about controlling for those variables you listed. Take "expectations"--do you control for expectations by making the test easier for those from whom you expect less?

It's pretty easy. You look at your applicants background information, current level of income and education, profession, group by commonality, then test amongst that peer group.

 

[DUCKofD3ATH]

It's pretty easy. You look at your applicants background information, current level of income and education, profession, group by commonality, then test amongst that peer group.

That doesn't sound workable at all. You'd have too many categories to be able to draw general conclusions about IQ differences between races.

Also, studies have proven that when you control for all the variables (wealth, expectiations, social class, parent eduction, etc.), there is actually little to no performance difference between any of the races. Yes, this means Asians do no better than Whites OR Blacks. There is of course still plenty of individual variation.

After checking wikipedia:

The 1996 Task Force investigation on Intelligence sponsored by the American Psychological Association concluded that there are significant variations in IQ across races.​

Your assertion that it's been proven that there is "little to no performance difference between any of the races" doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

 

[MacSince1990]

What an IQ test consists of can vary pretty wildly and specially in the U.S there's a lot more focus on the non-mathematical part as it tends to be an area where blacks don't do very well.

Well, given that on average Blacks are much poorer than Whites and receive much, much poorer educations, this can hardly be surprising. I mean unless you honestly make it your business to learn what they aren't teaching you in school, you simply aren't going to do very well on math, which is something that does need to be taught, for the most part (if it was easy to figure out by oneself, it wouldn't have taken mathematicians millennia to amass the proofs, theorems and algorithms we have today.) Extrapolating to poverty and education, I'd imagine Native Americans do even worse.

The tests I cited are part of the WISC/WAIS, which is the most commonly used test in the US. I don't know a great deal about the Stanford-Binet, but I believe it's of relatively similar structure. Those are the two most common by a very wide margin.

In most of the world it is basically mathematical aptitude because various cultural and language related factors can have an effect making the test more difficult for some and less difficult for others.

Which would make it more or less useless. My subtest score on the math section (verbal, mental math) was a 19, which correlates with a (subtest math IQ) of 150+. However, while my language, logic, reasoning and critical thinking skills are probably equally strong, my spatial abilities and visual memory are abysmal. Giving me a full-scale IQ of 150 would be silly.

For instance the PISA tests for the skills of school students can vary pretty wildly from country to country as the countries themselves are allowed to make changes to the tests to account for cultural differences. The end result of this is that not all tests are actually equal and kids in some countries have a slight advantage.

I agree that a lot of the school stuff ought to be removed. I remember taking it at 15 and thinking it was awfully stupid to have things learned in school (in this case, math, and I suppose general knowledge, though that *does* correlate nicely with intelligence) on the test. Though it's possible this was a bit self-serving as I was a D student with no ability to pay any attention whatsoever.

From what I've read you can get a lot of the difference ironed out by controlling the variables, but it doesn't completely obliterate the racial differences in average.

It actually does. They had to prime the Black test takers beforehand-- basically in order to raise their own expectations of themselves to that of Whites-- and this then erased the gap entirely.

This in my opinion lends credibility to intelligence being part nature and part nurture. However I'm pretty sure there are a lot of people, including scientists involved in this kind of research, who will not accept nature being any part in it because the very idea of one race having higher average intelligence than another race doesn't fit into their world view.

The truth is, of course, "race" is an entirely manufactured label (albeit a useful one). There isn't any biological distinction that validates the idea of race. Hell, we can barely decide on what constitutes a distinct species. The only reason we even have the idea of race is because we're human. Notice we don't apply it to any of the other (7.5-10) million species on the planet.

The term "Black" covers people from the 53 countries of Africa (as genetically diverse-- actually, more diverse than the gene pool within Whites, e.g. Germans/Ashkenazi Jews/Irish/Scottish/Greeks/Spaniards etc.), not to mention Jamaica and Haiti. It wouldn't shock me if people of certain nationalities in Africa, or at least different regions were smarter than others in the least, but I would be very surprised if the average of all people of African decent was lower (at least by more than a few tenths of an IQ point).

You'll remember we didn't depart Africa that long ago.

That said, of course IQ is very largely genetic. There just happen to be a myriad of other factors that can get in the way. (What I mean by this is that nutrition, education, lifestyle, stresses and upbringing can all have negative effects on potential. Unfortunately I don't know of anything that can actually increase potential

The point about race specific mutations was more just to prove that race does go more than skin deep, not to imply that genetics equal destiny or something else that's really far flung. As for the use of the asian flush as an example, I didn't say their liver couldn't process it, I said that they couldn't process it properly and clearly mentioned turning it into acetaldehyde, which causes the effects I mentioned. Producing acetaldehyde at a rate that causes those kinds of side effect is what I at least consider not being able to process it properly. I originally read the definition from my dad's old medical textbook when he showed it to me after the asian flush somehow came up when we were watching some Wong Kar Wai flick with the family.

Ah. My mother, I think, still has a medical textbook around somewhere, but it's so outdated we don't ever bother with it. Pretty sure my grandfather's would likely list hysteria as a real psychological/medical ailment. Best to avoid old ones from med school days

So basically it's just a you-know-what kind of redefinition of the word to suit an agenda?

Well, no. If that's how he was using the term, then what he said was true. I was merely pointing this out

----------

That doesn't sound workable at all. You'd have too many categories to be able to draw general conclusions about IQ differences between races.

Untrue, of course. There are a lot of people in the US. Not twelve.

The 1996 Task Force investigation on Intelligence sponsored by the American Psychological Association concluded that there are significant variations in IQ across races.

Your assertion that it's been proven that there is "little to no performance difference between any of the races" doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

I'm not entirely sure how one twenty-year-old study, entirely without context, proves your point. (Your "link" to the study links to a quoted reply of your post.) Care to explain?

That said, you're a duck. What do you know.

 

[Renzatic]

That doesn't sound workable at all. You'd have too many categories to be able to draw general conclusions about IQ differences between races.

After checking wikipedia:

The 1996 Task Force investigation on Intelligence sponsored by the American Psychological Association concluded that there are significant variations in IQ across races.​

Your assertion that it's been proven that there is "little to no performance difference between any of the races" doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

When taken across an entire demographic, that seems to be the case, and there are countless number of nature/nuture reasons for why that could be. But if you were to get, say, a racially diverse bunch of quantum physicists in a room together and test them out, they'd all end up scoring about the same.

So while the black population as a whole tends to score lower, it says nothing about the potential of an individual of that group.