Blacks with no criminal record have same sucess geting jobs as whites out prison | Hacker News Reader

Blacks with no criminal record have same sucess geting jobs as whites out prison

nytimes.com

81 pointselberto3425 comments

He links to a study on unjust school funding:

http://viz.edbuild.org/maps/2016/cola/resource-inequality/#s...

The analysis here is flawed. An example that doesn't make sense is NYC. If you use the dropdown to go to New York and checkout NYC, your conclusion would be that all NYC students are unjustly funded and have much less than everyone else. But.... that makes no sense. New York City has some of the best public schools in the country.

Yes, the funding is imbalanced and unjust. But it doesn't support his claim that it's biased towards whites and asian-americans. Asian-Americans are in many poorer neighborhoods in NYC but perform well in test scores despite the lack of funding.

I should clarify - I'm not saying that school funding shouldn't be more balanced, or that imbalanced funding doesn't have a strong impact in other municipalities. But suggesting a one-to-one mapping of school funding to education quality by race is ridiculous. And yet, people make that lazy argument all the time. No one wants to dig into root causes.

If you use the dropdown to go to New York and checkout NYC, your conclusion would be that all NYC students are unjustly funded and have much less than everyone else. But.... that makes no sense. New York City has some of the best public schools in the country.

No, your conclusion, going by the coloring on the map, would not be that "all NYC students are unjustly funded". But rather, that "On average, NYC students are underfunded compared to the statewide average."

Do you understand the distinction?

Yes, exactly! And yet, the schools are still really, really good!

Partially it's because the analysis is at the county level, and not at the district level. But I'd argue that using "averages" in the first place is extremely lossy and a classic Stats 101 mistake.

And yet, the schools are still really, really good!

This is a particularly weird statement to make in regard to NYC school performance, across the board.

Segregation has always been bad in North but that was and has been continuously swept under the rug for decades. Even Malcolm X called them out on it when everyone was going after the South.

Still I want to see job prospects numbers across fields and education levels. Are we comparing apples to apples here? If you just say "all whites" and "all blacks" that discounts people with good education versus poor ones. So does this trend hold true at all income levels? All education levels? All areas of the country?

Obama blew such an opportunity to change the culture of destruction many black Americans face in cities. He had eight years to lead that change through being inspirational, through challenging the young men and women, even the adults into, working towards a better day for their own children. When your focus is your party and not the people you have made the wrong choice.

The Obamas are definitely doing something about it:

http://www.mbkalliance.org/

Obama gave plenty of respectability politics[0] speeches. This argument is as old as U.S. Reconstruction. The problem isn't inspiration, working hard, or wanting a better day for their children.

Actual laws set up these neighborhoods, schools, prisons, and employment consequences.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respectability_politics

Article talks a lot about blame on white people, yet it doesn't even contain the information that black employers hire differently than white employers.

Also, project implicit, the unconscious bias test referenced in the article, has been debunked: http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2017/01/psychologys-racism-meas...

Hard numbers are ugly numbers. This is important stuff.

Could the headline be a little clearer? The typos in particular threw me off...

That's because racism is just the extreme version of difference intolerence. Doesn't matter what the original group has in common, they will gang up on who is different, whatever the difference. The conversation shouldn't be limited to racial matters, the problem is lack of awareness that difference in and of itself causes the unaware to oppress.

"Why do we discriminate? The big factor isn’t overt racism. Rather, it seems to be unconscious bias among whites who believe in equality but act in ways that perpetuate inequality."

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Aliefs[1] are a useful concept here. i.e. You may believe in equality but, thanks to the culture you live in, act against that belief unconsciously. There are a lot of reasons for people to alieve that blacks are less employable. Take, for example, Gangsta rap and it's continuing popularity. Here you have an art-form that glorifies materialism, violence, and lawlessness and is dominated by black artists. Few employers are likely to explicitly believe it is logical to fear or mistrust black job applicants because of gangsta rap, but its popularity nevertheless plants aliefs that contribute to the difficulties faced by black job-seekers.

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"Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, an eminent sociologist, calls this unconscious bias “racism without racists,” and we whites should be less defensive about it. This bias affects blacks as well as whites, and we also have unconscious biases about gender, disability, body size and age. You can explore your own unconscious biases in a free online test, called the implicit association test."

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It's important to draw a distinction between acting on racist beliefs and racist aliefs. Some would say the latter is being racist without knowing it, which is offensive to most and probably counterproductive to say. At present, racists are popularly viewed as demons to be mocked and punished. Even if there is a basis for calling someone acting on their aliefs racist, doing so is going to offend and hurt them and likely turn them against you. Subtler language is required here.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alief_(mental_state)

"Aliefs" are what I think of as the "privilege" in "white privilege." It's very real. We have distinct, systemic advantages that influence how we interact with others who aren't white, and one way this manifests is through this sort of "racism without racists" concept.

Are there techniques for neutralizing the effects of things like race during the hiring process that could help make these sorts of decisions more objective?

I'm reading The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis and it digs into things like this with great enthusiasm. Making people aware of their own inherent biases and devising criteria that help make objective decisions is not easy, but often necessary. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Undoing_Project)

Blinding.

An example is orchestras. They use a screen so that the people deciding between musicians can't see the person auditioning.

You can only get so far with this, that's the problem. Eventually the candidate will show up and people will make snap judgements.

"He's wearing gang clothes" or "I thought he was a rapper" and you're going to have massively skewed data.

A coding interview conducted via online chat only, no voice, could be educational, but it might also over-select those used to texting and online chatting.

> You can only get so far with this

Is improving a problem not worthwhile without completely eliminating it?

> "He's wearing gang clothes" or "I thought he was a rapper"

Are gang clothes business attire now? That's what I see people of color wearing to interviews and work.

I'm speaking about impressions, not the actuality of it. One person's casual attire, which is the norm for a lot of interviews now, might be interpreted as "gang clothes" even when they're clearly not.

Like is a simple Kangol t-shirt "gang clothes"? By the same token a Lulu Lemon or Izod shirt is, they're just different "gangs". People have a way of reading into things. A well-dressed black person might look "like a drug dealer" while a scruffy white dude might look "like a real programmer". It's a matter of perception. Our pattern matching is often badly distorted by the media.

Improving is always a good idea, but if it completely handicaps entire groups of people it's not necessarily an improvement, it's just shifting the artificial rejection criteria.

Please don't use clothing as a straw man for a real issue.

Blind interviewing does not handicap anyone. The way to improve the perception of an applicant as a gangster or a rapper is for them to prove it on the job. You want the most qualified right? Hire based on actual qualifications. Implement a dress code for your conscience and get back to business.

It's a real issue. Many people have found that clothing is often the biggest impediment to being treated seriously on the job.

It affects women and minorities in different but equally profound ways. Meanwhile white males can wear whatever and nobody cares. Bath robe to work? "He's a 10x coder, we just let him do his own thing..."

This isn't about a "dress code", this is about perception. You could have a company mandated uniform where everyone wears exactly the same thing and they'd still find reason to be suspicious of people.

I use the clothing problem as an example because it's the biggest one. There are too many stories of people not being taken seriously because of what they wear when what they're wearing isn't the least bit unprofessional or inappropriate. It's just how people project things onto appearances.

> Blind interviewing does not handicap anyone.

Can you name one company that uses an actual blind interview for a technical positions successfully? How about a company that can apply the same rigour to technical and performance reviews?

I hate to go on my regular rant on this, but anonymous interviewing is the only answer. I could post literally thousands of studies, but everyone is already familiar with one of the more infamous.

Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination

http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873

There are studies that show that given names associated with black culture are less successful in the job market.

http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873

Not only in the job market but, also receive a worse treatment at schools and libraries.

The headline makes it sound like "blacks who get out of prison with no criminal record have same success getting jobs as whites". That's how I read it, anyway, and I was wondering how you get out of prison without a criminal record. :)

I take it this is in America and not an international study?

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