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Racism and privilege

Question (kind of tangential to moe's post): to stop being racist what do we have to do when we get no applicants, or very few, for any kind of posted position (say a job opening or college admissions)? So for the supervisor spot we are hiring for, I got a grand total of 48 resumes. I am going through them all now and picking out people to interview. I make copies and cut the names off of each one (actually my secretary does) and that has actually been my practice for years, not due to the whole race thing, but more because I tend to tie experiences to people and names, so if someone applied named, oh let's say Dave, I don't want to be biased because of that terrible experience I had with Dave that one time (what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas my ***). So after I pare the list down to a dozen or so, if none of them happen to be of color, am I obligated to go back through the list to generate a better racial profile or something so I can make sure I am getting a representative sample and not allowing my automatic built-in racism to taint the results?
 
LogGrad98 said:
Question (kind of tangential to moe's post): to stop being racist what do we have to do when we get no applicants, or very few, for any kind of posted position (say a job opening or college admissions)? So for the supervisor spot we are hiring for, I got a grand total of 48 resumes. I am going through them all now and picking out people to interview. I make copies and cut the names off of each one (actually my secretary does) and that has actually been my practice for years, not due to the whole race thing, but more because I tend to tie experiences to people and names, so if someone applied named, oh let's say Dave, I don't want to be biased because of that terrible experience I had with Dave that one time (what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas my ***). So after I pare the list down to a dozen or so, if none of them happen to be of color, am I obligated to go back through the list to generate a better racial profile or something so I can make sure I am getting a representative sample and not allowing my automatic built-in racism to taint the results?
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If you are removing the names (and similar identifying markers) entirely before you even read the resumes, I don't think anything else can be done at the reading step.

However, if you business has, say, 12% black people/50% female, and in the past five times you've done this, none or one person was black/female, perhaps you should ask yourself why. Do they feel like their resumes will be taken seriously? Have they been getting the same opportunities to have mentors and role models? When you decide ahead of time what the standards are, do you account for the possibly diminished opportunities they have received to get college degrees, school recognition, etc.?

Has there been a particular absence from your applicant stack, say a worker with very good scores, perhaps one that even is known to be helpful to other new employees, whose applications haven't made it to your desk? Did you even think about asking them why? Some won't be interested in any sort of promotion, of course, but you might be surprised that there are some you think should apply, but who don't think they'll be considered seriously.
 
Log, OneBrow. . . . . I just gotta say if poor white men are disproportionately hobbled with problems like this in our post-modern society, social justice demands that we just shut down the whole product-obsessed economy so more poor white men can become successful couch potatos staying at home and living the good life of managing the TV "controllers", eating oh, say. . . . Doritos. . .or whatever snack hasn't yet been forbidden by the lords of liberalism yet. . . .

How can we deny any class of folks the glories of our post-productive fiat economic opportunities?
 
No thanks, babe.
I think the world is sinking under the weight of all the fat-assed white men and women we already have.
 
babe said:
Log, OneBrow. . . . . I just gotta say if poor white men are disproportionately hobbled with problems like this in our post-modern society, social justice demands that we just shut down the whole product-obsessed economy so more poor white men can become successful couch potatos staying at home and living the good life of managing the TV "controllers", eating oh, say. . . . Doritos. . .or whatever snack hasn't yet been forbidden by the lords of liberalism yet. . . .

How can we deny any class of folks the glories of our post-productive fiat economic opportunities?
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Best. Potato. Chip. Ever.

41mq1yBkmBL.jpg
 
LogGrad98 said:
Best. Potato. Chip. Ever.

41mq1yBkmBL.jpg
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So this is your company's product that you work day and night to sufficiently distribute over the face of the planet.

I've eaten some. . . mmmmmmm. . . . need some more. . . . .

any possibility you could arrange to have a truck dump a load at my place?
 
babe said:
So this is your company's product that you work day and night to sufficiently distribute over the face of the planet.

I've eaten some. . . mmmmmmm. . . . need some more. . . . .

any possibility you could arrange to have a truck dump a load at my place?
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I wish. If so I would be well into shamu territory by now. These are just my favorite chips. The only problem with them is that they are perfectly balanced, crunchy, sweet, salty, tangy, mmmm, so you can sit and eat an entire large bag (or 3) in one sitting.
 
One of the cases cited in the report was William Andrews in Utah. Interesting.
 
One Brow said:
https://today.duke.edu/2012/04/jurystudy

When you have an all-white jury, the conviction rate for black people goes up, and for white people goes down, compared to when there are black people in the jury pool.
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Interesting that it references the jury pool rather than the actual jury that is seated. There are typically 27 in the pool, from which 6 are chosen to be seated on the jury (plus alternates). And the local population in the 2 counties studied is less than 5% black.

More interesting stuff from the Duke report:

Among the key findings:
-- In cases with no blacks in the jury pool, blacks were convicted 81 percent of the time, and whites were convicted 66 percent of the time. The estimated difference in conviction rates rises to 16 percent when the authors controlled for the age and gender of the jury and the year and county in which the trial took place.

-- When the jury pool included at least one black person, the conviction rates were nearly identical: 71 percent for black defendants, 73 percent for whites.

-- About 40 percent of the jury pools they examined had no black members and most of the others had one or two black members.

-- When blacks were in the jury pool, they were slightly more likely to be seated on a jury than whites. The eligible jury population in these counties was less than 5 percent black.
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I wonder what the overall racial breakdown is for those two counties - less than 5% black probably does not mean greater than 95% white, I would imagine there are Hispanics and other minorities in the mix.

But that is quite an influence exerted by those 1 or 2 black people in the jury pool. Not sure what exactly it means, but they are having some major influence if just by their presence in a group of 27 they can change the outcomes of the trials so dramatically, even if they're not on the actual jury.


Black privilege?

:wink:


Or perhaps a degree of political correctness? Or maybe a humanizing effect of seeing a black person as a potential juror that lessens in some small degree some inherent racial bias among the others?
 
moevillini said:
Black privilege?

:wink:


Or perhaps a degree of political correctness? Or maybe a humanizing effect of seeing a black person as a potential juror that lessens in some small degree some inherent racial bias among the others?
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Since the conviction rates go from bascally equal when the black member is present, to very unequal when not, I find the first unlikely. The second two are in some ways the same thing.
 
One Brow said:
Since the conviction rates go from bascally equal when the black member is present, to very unequal when not, I find the first unlikely. The second two are in some ways the same thing.
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If you wanted a fair comparison you would have to analyze all black jurys conviction rates for black and white defendants. Since there are probably no stats like that it makes it easy for you play it off as unlikely.

Political correctness is not humanizing.
 
Stoked said:
If you wanted a fair comparison you would have to analyze all black jurys conviction rates for black and white defendants. Since there are probably no stats like that it makes it easy for you play it off as unlikely.
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This comment makes me think you didn't understand what I said.

Stoked said:
Political correctness is not humanizing.
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Political correctness is one person's term for another person's request to treat humans with the respect they deserve as humans.
 
Just another anecdote.

I got a call from the school security officer today. My daughter's boyfriend was identified as being involved in some altercation in a park about a mile from where we live. Since he was in our house at the time, we were able to substantiate his alibi.

This is routine stuff, of course.
 
I wonder what the percentage of false convictions were. I didn't read the whole thing, so it might be in there, but is there any way to validate the results of the different juries? Are a much larger percentage of all-white juries falsely convicting, or was the conviction still warranted, and vice versa? It seems there is an underlying assumption that the 81% conviction rate with all-white juries is "wrong" and the 71% with at least one black on the jury is "right". In other words the assumption is that since the conviction rate is higher with an all-white jury it automatically means a higher false-conviction rate, while the lower conviction rate with at least one black juror is a lower false conviction rate, but is that really accurate? Is there any data showing false conviction rates, either way (convicting when innocent, acquitting when guilty)?
 
One Brow said:
This comment makes me think you didn't understand what I said.



Political correctness is one person's term for another person's request to treat humans with the respect they deserve as humans.
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No it is not. It is one persons attempt to control the words and thoughts of another based on how that first person views the world.
 
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