Diversity Equity and Inclusion

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's a suggestion: stop asking people what " race " they are on every application, form and survey

Have job applicants apply by initials only with their CV

then have a selection of interviewees and choose.

Someone else can study the impacts, but it should work same way female authors got themselves published the last 100 years.

STOP choosing based on race. It does nothing to match the best qualified to the job

+100

I agree with this. Anonymizing resumes is not a new concept and many places do it. And noting race on applications is used to do analysis AFTER the hire. It is not in most case shared with with the people making the selection (and it is actually prohibited to do so with in most parts of the federal government.)

How do you propose handling the interview though?

The whole point of DE&I is to get people eventually to stop choosing on the basis of race. That is, in fact, the historical problem they are trying to solve for. The point is to attract a diverse applicant pool and to educate people about the subconscious ways preference may play a role in their decisions.

How quaint, the modern DE&I industry is absolutely not about race blind anything. It is all about introducing race into all aspects of hiring to make sure the "right" (not best) people get hired.

For example:

"The city’s Commission on Human Rights decided against the musicians, but found that aspects of the orchestra’s hiring system, especially regarding substitute and extra players, functioned as an old boys’ network and were discriminatory. The ruling helped prod American orchestras, finally, to try and deal with the biases that had kept them overwhelmingly white and male. The Philharmonic, and many other ensembles, began to hold auditions behind a screen, so that factors like race and gender wouldn’t influence strictly musical appraisals.

Blind auditions, as they became known, proved transformative. The percentage of women in orchestras, which hovered under 6 percent in 1970, grew. Today, women make up a third of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and they are half the New York Philharmonic. Blind auditions changed the face of American orchestras.

But not enough.

American orchestras remain among the nation’s least racially diverse institutions, especially in regard to Black and Latino artists. In a 2014 study, only 1.8 percent of the players in top ensembles were Black; just 2.5 percent were Latino. At the time of the Philharmonic’s 1969 discrimination case, it had one Black player, the first it ever hired: Sanford Allen, a violinist. Today, in a city that is a quarter Black, just one out of 106 full-time players is Black: Anthony McGill, the principal clarinet.

The status quo is not working. If things are to change, ensembles must be able to take proactive steps to address the appalling racial imbalance that remains in their ranks. Blind auditions are no longer tenable.

...

If the musicians onstage are going to better reflect the diversity of the communities they serve, the audition process has to be altered to take into fuller account artists’ backgrounds and experiences. Removing the screen is a crucial step.

Blind auditions are based on an appealing premise of pure meritocracy: An orchestra should be built from the very best players, period. But ask anyone in the field, and you’ll learn that over the past century of increasingly professionalized training, there has come to be remarkably little difference between players at the top tier. There is an athletic component to playing an instrument, and as with sprinters, gymnasts and tennis pros, the basic level of technical skill among American instrumentalists has steadily risen. A typical orchestral audition might end up attracting dozens of people who are essentially indistinguishable in their musicianship and technique.

It’s like an elite college facing a sea of applicants with straight A’s and perfect test scores. Such a school can move past those marks, embrace diversity as a social virtue and assemble a freshman class that advances other values along with academic achievement. For orchestras, the qualities of an ideal player might well include talent as an educator, interest in unusual repertoire or willingness to program innovative chamber events as well as pure musicianship. American orchestras should be able to foster these values, and a diverse complement of musicians, rather than passively waiting for representation to emerge from behind the audition screen."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/blind-auditions-orchestras-race.html

OK, so first let me briefly put on my editor hat. What the heck has happened to the NYT?

The basic premise doesn't hold. If there were in fact "remarkably little difference between players at the top tier," as they claim, then there would be more than one black player in the orchestra wouldn't there?

If it was just a coin toss difference between different interchangeable players auditioning then there would end up being roughly the "right" number of black players. (which for some reason they think should match the general population in NYC, even though they provide no evidence that black New Yorkers pursue careers as professional classical musicians at the same rate as other races.)

So the obvious reason black players don't get selected in blind auditions is because they aren't as good as musicians of other races. That means a meritocratic race (and gender) blind system needs to be replaced with a system that can be gamed, even if that means selected less talented musicians for an elite orchestra.

...and for the people here lying about what the DE&I people want, this has nothingto do with anyone who was disadvantaged. This is about picking less talented performers based on race.

Bump, nothing substantive from anyone?

What is the goal here? Clearly it isn't "select the best possible musicians."

I think you’re missing the point. The lack of black musicians in orchestra is because orchestra members tend to come from affluent backgrounds. Their families can afford to buy or rent their expensive instruments. They can afford expensive private lessons. They have supportive families that encourage them to do well. A poor black kid living in a ghetto is not going to have the same resources and support, period. So the point of the nyt article is that orchestras should seek out black members because of the poverty and systemic racism that is holding them back.

and the other orchestra members will secretly resent that poor black kid for no fault of her/his own, especially when they can't practice because some overpaid DE&I executive is forcing them to take crummy online Zoom training and reading Robin DiAngelo's "White Fragility"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
It is a political tool designed to unify an unwieldy coalition against a common "foe."

The whole 'equity' push has also taken on a life of its own as a sort of secular religion. It gives school bureaucrats and others something to talk about endlessly to distract the public from their continuing failures.

This is totally true. Case in point: the University of Maryland.

Maryland's VP for the Office of Diversity and Inclusion makes $366,081.57

The VP for Legal Affairs/GC makes $349,623.84

And, the Dean of Maryland's Engineering School (which brings in the most grant money) makes $274,165.80

See: https://salaryguide.dbknews.com

Holy cow look at the salaries of the athletics coaches and heads. Gross.

Kudos to the DE&I grifters. If I was them, I'd be trying to monetize on this newage PR spin.

Wait, those UMD athletics people are DE&I grifters? How so?

PP here. They are grifters in a different way for sure.

They pay themselves? Cite another high level position at UMD that brings in the revenue the football and basketball programs do? The folks running the school see that, see the market place, and pay them accordingly. The fact that you don't make that much and don't like sports doesn't make it "gross" and doesn't make them "grifters". They earn what the market and the school administrations will bear.

Now, what may be gross is that a school has the authority to pay anyone that much money when they are supposed to be a state-run educational, not for profit institution. Take that up with the heads / boards of the universities and/or your state legislature. Start a petition to ban all college athletic scholarships and to cap coach's salaries at the same level as a professor's. Cap all field, facility, and equipment expenditures, level out expenses across all sanctioned sports, and make sports another field of study with majors and the games serving as graded "exams" (8 parts individual performance, 2 parts team result). See how that goes for you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
It is a political tool designed to unify an unwieldy coalition against a common "foe."

The whole 'equity' push has also taken on a life of its own as a sort of secular religion. It gives school bureaucrats and others something to talk about endlessly to distract the public from their continuing failures.

This is totally true. Case in point: the University of Maryland.

Maryland's VP for the Office of Diversity and Inclusion makes $366,081.57

The VP for Legal Affairs/GC makes $349,623.84

And, the Dean of Maryland's Engineering School (which brings in the most grant money) makes $274,165.80

See: https://salaryguide.dbknews.com

Holy cow look at the salaries of the athletics coaches and heads. Gross.

Kudos to the DE&I grifters. If I was them, I'd be trying to monetize on this newage PR spin.

Wait, those UMD athletics people are DE&I grifters? How so?

PP here. They are grifters in a different way for sure.

They pay themselves? Cite another high level position at UMD that brings in the revenue the football and basketball programs do? The folks running the school see that, see the market place, and pay them accordingly. The fact that you don't make that much and don't like sports doesn't make it "gross" and doesn't make them "grifters". They earn what the market and the school administrations will bear.

Now, what may be gross is that a school has the authority to pay anyone that much money when they are supposed to be a state-run educational, not for profit institution. Take that up with the heads / boards of the universities and/or your state legislature. Start a petition to ban all college athletic scholarships and to cap coach's salaries at the same level as a professor's. Cap all field, facility, and equipment expenditures, level out expenses across all sanctioned sports, and make sports another field of study with majors and the games serving as graded "exams" (8 parts individual performance, 2 parts team result). See how that goes for you.

The PP is probably one of those people who think their worth as a person is reflected by how much money they make. So for other people to make more money than him/her, they must be doing something illegal or immoral. For sure.

[Anonymous]

When I first entered the workforce in the early 2000s, the big company that hired me gave a presentation on having a commitment to diversity/no discrimination etc. And, I'm sure most big companies were doing something similar and have been for a long time.

Now, I fully support people of all races and backgrounds being treated fairly. But, when a company talks about a commitment to diversity, what are they really saying? They are saying, we need to hire more people that aren't white, and especially people that aren't white men. And companies have been doing this for years.

Now, how can we have basically every big company in America saying "We need to specifically hire more people that aren't white/white men" for the past 20+ years, and then in 2020, they turn around and say "Oh, by the way, the whole system is rigged in favor of white people and white people are 'privileged'"? Really? Pretty sure I've never seen a company say "We need to make a commitment to hiring more white people" which of course would be ridiculous.

This is why, as I've always said, the commitment should be towards FAIRNESS to all. Not enforced diversity quotas, but rather a commitment to treating everyone fairly regardless of race or background. Now making hires specifically due to diversity might make sense in some scenarios - for instance if you are designing an international product and it is essential that you get a diverse variety of viewpoints to vet the design. That makes sense. In other instances where it is simply a matter of who has the best qualifications and skills for the job, then race or background shouldn't factor into the decision.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When I first entered the workforce in the early 2000s, the big company that hired me gave a presentation on having a commitment to diversity/no discrimination etc. And, I'm sure most big companies were doing something similar and have been for a long time.

Now, I fully support people of all races and backgrounds being treated fairly. But, when a company talks about a commitment to diversity, what are they really saying? They are saying, we need to hire more people that aren't white, and especially people that aren't white men. And companies have been doing this for years.

Now, how can we have basically every big company in America saying "We need to specifically hire more people that aren't white/white men" for the past 20+ years, and then in 2020, they turn around and say "Oh, by the way, the whole system is rigged in favor of white people and white people are 'privileged'"? Really? Pretty sure I've never seen a company say "We need to make a commitment to hiring more white people" which of course would be ridiculous.

This is why, as I've always said, the commitment should be towards FAIRNESS to all. Not enforced diversity quotas, but rather a commitment to treating everyone fairly regardless of race or background. Now making hires specifically due to diversity might make sense in some scenarios - for instance if you are designing an international product and it is essential that you get a diverse variety of viewpoints to vet the design. That makes sense. In other instances where it is simply a matter of who has the best qualifications and skills for the job, then race or background shouldn't factor into the decision.

That’s exactly what these initiatives are trying to do. The problem with relying on the “honor code” as it were is that, while people think they are being objectively fair, they are subconsciously making value judgments left and right and it influences their behavior. Case in point- I am a white working mother of young children. When my similarly situated direct reports started having kids, it took everything in my power to remember that they wanted to work hard on interesting matters and understood and accepted all that entailed - just like I understood that and wanted to continue leaning in- and I’d be doing them no favors by “lightening up” their workload on my own initiative. If they asked for help balancing home and work I’d be happy to step in, but for the most part they did not want to be mommy tracked and I had to fight my own bias assuming that they’d want less travel, etc. That’s how DE&I programs work. They force you to confront your own biases, however innocently held. Now a lot of white guys have a hell of a hard time with this. Plenty get it, but the ones most concerned about “fairness” tend to be the most mediocre and stand to lose a lot once they no longer have the white guy privileges and the automatic assumptions that they deserve to be there, do the best work, and have the best insights and therefore deserve to steer the conversation. Hence this thread.

[Anonymous]

I fight bias by not giving a shit about the details of my employee’s personal lives at all. You do good work? I give you more, harder work & pay you more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When I first entered the workforce in the early 2000s, the big company that hired me gave a presentation on having a commitment to diversity/no discrimination etc. And, I'm sure most big companies were doing something similar and have been for a long time.

Now, I fully support people of all races and backgrounds being treated fairly. But, when a company talks about a commitment to diversity, what are they really saying? They are saying, we need to hire more people that aren't white, and especially people that aren't white men. And companies have been doing this for years.

Now, how can we have basically every big company in America saying "We need to specifically hire more people that aren't white/white men" for the past 20+ years, and then in 2020, they turn around and say "Oh, by the way, the whole system is rigged in favor of white people and white people are 'privileged'"? Really? Pretty sure I've never seen a company say "We need to make a commitment to hiring more white people" which of course would be ridiculous.

This is why, as I've always said, the commitment should be towards FAIRNESS to all. Not enforced diversity quotas, but rather a commitment to treating everyone fairly regardless of race or background. Now making hires specifically due to diversity might make sense in some scenarios - for instance if you are designing an international product and it is essential that you get a diverse variety of viewpoints to vet the design. That makes sense. In other instances where it is simply a matter of who has the best qualifications and skills for the job, then race or background shouldn't factor into the decision.

They didn't "turn around and say this" in 2020. It is what they have been saying for 20 (or 50) years. They just got better/different at articulating it. It moved from "we are not going to actively conciously discriminate in hiring in favor of whites/males" to "we are going to actively work to recruit and retain a better representative workforce." It is movement in a direction, not a reversal.

And again mainstream DE&I is not advocating for quotas.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's a suggestion: stop asking people what " race " they are on every application, form and survey

Have job applicants apply by initials only with their CV

then have a selection of interviewees and choose.

Someone else can study the impacts, but it should work same way female authors got themselves published the last 100 years.

STOP choosing based on race. It does nothing to match the best qualified to the job

+100

I agree with this. Anonymizing resumes is not a new concept and many places do it. And noting race on applications is used to do analysis AFTER the hire. It is not in most case shared with with the people making the selection (and it is actually prohibited to do so with in most parts of the federal government.)

How do you propose handling the interview though?

The whole point of DE&I is to get people eventually to stop choosing on the basis of race. That is, in fact, the historical problem they are trying to solve for. The point is to attract a diverse applicant pool and to educate people about the subconscious ways preference may play a role in their decisions.

How quaint, the modern DE&I industry is absolutely not about race blind anything. It is all about introducing race into all aspects of hiring to make sure the "right" (not best) people get hired.

For example:

"The city’s Commission on Human Rights decided against the musicians, but found that aspects of the orchestra’s hiring system, especially regarding substitute and extra players, functioned as an old boys’ network and were discriminatory. The ruling helped prod American orchestras, finally, to try and deal with the biases that had kept them overwhelmingly white and male. The Philharmonic, and many other ensembles, began to hold auditions behind a screen, so that factors like race and gender wouldn’t influence strictly musical appraisals.

Blind auditions, as they became known, proved transformative. The percentage of women in orchestras, which hovered under 6 percent in 1970, grew. Today, women make up a third of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and they are half the New York Philharmonic. Blind auditions changed the face of American orchestras.

But not enough.

American orchestras remain among the nation’s least racially diverse institutions, especially in regard to Black and Latino artists. In a 2014 study, only 1.8 percent of the players in top ensembles were Black; just 2.5 percent were Latino. At the time of the Philharmonic’s 1969 discrimination case, it had one Black player, the first it ever hired: Sanford Allen, a violinist. Today, in a city that is a quarter Black, just one out of 106 full-time players is Black: Anthony McGill, the principal clarinet.

The status quo is not working. If things are to change, ensembles must be able to take proactive steps to address the appalling racial imbalance that remains in their ranks. Blind auditions are no longer tenable.

...

If the musicians onstage are going to better reflect the diversity of the communities they serve, the audition process has to be altered to take into fuller account artists’ backgrounds and experiences. Removing the screen is a crucial step.

Blind auditions are based on an appealing premise of pure meritocracy: An orchestra should be built from the very best players, period. But ask anyone in the field, and you’ll learn that over the past century of increasingly professionalized training, there has come to be remarkably little difference between players at the top tier. There is an athletic component to playing an instrument, and as with sprinters, gymnasts and tennis pros, the basic level of technical skill among American instrumentalists has steadily risen. A typical orchestral audition might end up attracting dozens of people who are essentially indistinguishable in their musicianship and technique.

It’s like an elite college facing a sea of applicants with straight A’s and perfect test scores. Such a school can move past those marks, embrace diversity as a social virtue and assemble a freshman class that advances other values along with academic achievement. For orchestras, the qualities of an ideal player might well include talent as an educator, interest in unusual repertoire or willingness to program innovative chamber events as well as pure musicianship. American orchestras should be able to foster these values, and a diverse complement of musicians, rather than passively waiting for representation to emerge from behind the audition screen."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/blind-auditions-orchestras-race.html

OK, so first let me briefly put on my editor hat. What the heck has happened to the NYT?

The basic premise doesn't hold. If there were in fact "remarkably little difference between players at the top tier," as they claim, then there would be more than one black player in the orchestra wouldn't there?

If it was just a coin toss difference between different interchangeable players auditioning then there would end up being roughly the "right" number of black players. (which for some reason they think should match the general population in NYC, even though they provide no evidence that black New Yorkers pursue careers as professional classical musicians at the same rate as other races.)

So the obvious reason black players don't get selected in blind auditions is because they aren't as good as musicians of other races. That means a meritocratic race (and gender) blind system needs to be replaced with a system that can be gamed, even if that means selected less talented musicians for an elite orchestra.

...and for the people here lying about what the DE&I people want, this has nothingto do with anyone who was disadvantaged. This is about picking less talented performers based on race.

Bump, nothing substantive from anyone?

What is the goal here? Clearly it isn't "select the best possible musicians."

I'll bite.

1. I can't access the article you reference, but as far as I can tell, this is one guy's opinion that he got published, not an actual practice of the organization? So I'm not sure why you think this can be generalized to the entire DE&I movement, when very explicitly most DE&I initiatives are advocating for a race/gender blind selection system
2. I think you are overlooking the problem DE&I is trying to solve- underrepresentation. So the bolded illustrates the point. The theory is that no, there are not as many black players as the population. That is because the meritocracy that you envision does not exist. There is a historic preference for non-minority in the system that gets people there. Less access to music training in certain areas, less time to pursue, etc. People who oppose DE&I think that we are already in the place that people advocating for it are trying to get to.

3. Why do you think people are lying? You may disagree with their premise or their proposed solution, but I'm not sure why you have reason to doubt their sincerity.

So I have bolded a few thing. Your first assertion is false. Modern DE&I is not advocating for race-blind anything. Just as one example multiple universities have gone to court in recent years to defend their racial preferences in their admissions process. In one of its court filings Harvard revealed that according to their own internal numbers:

"“And we have seen the damage that has been done when race is not allowed to be considered. So from a statistical perspective, it is clear,” added Yang, referencing the numbers that show if Harvard abandoned the consideration of race in its application process, African American and Hispanic enrollment would decline from 14 percent to 6 percent and 14 percent to 9 percent, respectively. " https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/05/harvard-argues-admissions-suit-isnt-worthy-of-supreme-court-review/

That is to say that more than half of the African American students at Harvard would not have gained admission in a race-blind process.


The second thing I bolded, "underrepresentation," how do you measure that? Why assume an orchestra should have a "correct" number of black musicians and who determines that number? How do we know there is simply less interest in classical music among some populations than others?

Certainly this doesn't show that "meritocracy doesn't exist," it is a completely color blind process. If there were black players above the bar they would be selected.


Trying another analogy:

A. The US Olympic track and basketball teams are overwhelmingly black in a country that is majority white.

B. The US Olympic swimming team is overwhelmingly white.

C. The US Olympic badmitton team is 100% Asian.




Which one of these teams is evidence of racism and needs to be corrected?

Onto which of these teams would you preferentially put someone who could not qualify in a merit-based race-blind process?

[Anonymous]

"Plenty get it, but the ones most concerned about “fairness” tend to be the most mediocre and stand to lose a lot once they no longer have the white guy privileges"

Nice of you to throw it that put down simply because I believe in fairness. What would you call it if someone said something similar about a person of a different race that also wanted to be treated fairly? That's what I thought.

The funny thing is, I've only ever been involved in an interview process one time, mainly just to talk about the job position to the candidates who were replacing me. All the applicants were white except for one. And all four interviewers were white. And you know what? We selected the only non-white candidate, and it had nothing to do with race. And it was an immediate consensus - basically all 4 of us looked at each other and said "That's our guy." Because he did the best job in the interview. It was eye opening for me because I saw that if you have good social skills and can make good conversation, you really stand out. Several candidates had the skills, but the guy we selected stood out because the conversation was so relaxed and enjoyable. People liked him so they wanted to hire him. How's that for "bias"?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's a suggestion: stop asking people what " race " they are on every application, form and survey

Have job applicants apply by initials only with their CV

then have a selection of interviewees and choose.

Someone else can study the impacts, but it should work same way female authors got themselves published the last 100 years.

STOP choosing based on race. It does nothing to match the best qualified to the job

+100

I agree with this. Anonymizing resumes is not a new concept and many places do it. And noting race on applications is used to do analysis AFTER the hire. It is not in most case shared with with the people making the selection (and it is actually prohibited to do so with in most parts of the federal government.)

How do you propose handling the interview though?

The whole point of DE&I is to get people eventually to stop choosing on the basis of race. That is, in fact, the historical problem they are trying to solve for. The point is to attract a diverse applicant pool and to educate people about the subconscious ways preference may play a role in their decisions.

How quaint, the modern DE&I industry is absolutely not about race blind anything. It is all about introducing race into all aspects of hiring to make sure the "right" (not best) people get hired.

For example:

"The city’s Commission on Human Rights decided against the musicians, but found that aspects of the orchestra’s hiring system, especially regarding substitute and extra players, functioned as an old boys’ network and were discriminatory. The ruling helped prod American orchestras, finally, to try and deal with the biases that had kept them overwhelmingly white and male. The Philharmonic, and many other ensembles, began to hold auditions behind a screen, so that factors like race and gender wouldn’t influence strictly musical appraisals.

Blind auditions, as they became known, proved transformative. The percentage of women in orchestras, which hovered under 6 percent in 1970, grew. Today, women make up a third of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and they are half the New York Philharmonic. Blind auditions changed the face of American orchestras.

But not enough.

American orchestras remain among the nation’s least racially diverse institutions, especially in regard to Black and Latino artists. In a 2014 study, only 1.8 percent of the players in top ensembles were Black; just 2.5 percent were Latino. At the time of the Philharmonic’s 1969 discrimination case, it had one Black player, the first it ever hired: Sanford Allen, a violinist. Today, in a city that is a quarter Black, just one out of 106 full-time players is Black: Anthony McGill, the principal clarinet.

The status quo is not working. If things are to change, ensembles must be able to take proactive steps to address the appalling racial imbalance that remains in their ranks. Blind auditions are no longer tenable.

...

If the musicians onstage are going to better reflect the diversity of the communities they serve, the audition process has to be altered to take into fuller account artists’ backgrounds and experiences. Removing the screen is a crucial step.

Blind auditions are based on an appealing premise of pure meritocracy: An orchestra should be built from the very best players, period. But ask anyone in the field, and you’ll learn that over the past century of increasingly professionalized training, there has come to be remarkably little difference between players at the top tier. There is an athletic component to playing an instrument, and as with sprinters, gymnasts and tennis pros, the basic level of technical skill among American instrumentalists has steadily risen. A typical orchestral audition might end up attracting dozens of people who are essentially indistinguishable in their musicianship and technique.

It’s like an elite college facing a sea of applicants with straight A’s and perfect test scores. Such a school can move past those marks, embrace diversity as a social virtue and assemble a freshman class that advances other values along with academic achievement. For orchestras, the qualities of an ideal player might well include talent as an educator, interest in unusual repertoire or willingness to program innovative chamber events as well as pure musicianship. American orchestras should be able to foster these values, and a diverse complement of musicians, rather than passively waiting for representation to emerge from behind the audition screen."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/blind-auditions-orchestras-race.html

OK, so first let me briefly put on my editor hat. What the heck has happened to the NYT?

The basic premise doesn't hold. If there were in fact "remarkably little difference between players at the top tier," as they claim, then there would be more than one black player in the orchestra wouldn't there?

If it was just a coin toss difference between different interchangeable players auditioning then there would end up being roughly the "right" number of black players. (which for some reason they think should match the general population in NYC, even though they provide no evidence that black New Yorkers pursue careers as professional classical musicians at the same rate as other races.)

So the obvious reason black players don't get selected in blind auditions is because they aren't as good as musicians of other races. That means a meritocratic race (and gender) blind system needs to be replaced with a system that can be gamed, even if that means selected less talented musicians for an elite orchestra.

...and for the people here lying about what the DE&I people want, this has nothingto do with anyone who was disadvantaged. This is about picking less talented performers based on race.

Bump, nothing substantive from anyone?

What is the goal here? Clearly it isn't "select the best possible musicians."

I think you’re missing the point. The lack of black musicians in orchestra is because orchestra members tend to come from affluent backgrounds. Their families can afford to buy or rent their expensive instruments. They can afford expensive private lessons. They have supportive families that encourage them to do well. A poor black kid living in a ghetto is not going to have the same resources and support, period. So the point of the nyt article is that orchestras should seek out black members because of the poverty and systemic racism that is holding them back.

Even if we assumed that was true, a huge assumption, how does it help to place an unqualified player in an elite orchestra?

If you wanted to argue that "there should be music programs for poor kids," who would disagree with you?


The leaping to the assumption that any disparity must be because or racism, "systemic" or otherwise is a huge flaw in modern DE&I thinking. Maybe black musicians are simply more interested in other styles of music? Who says they should pursue classical music? You?


75% of veterinary students are female. Is that because males are discriminated against? Are men fighting "systemic misandry?"

Maybe more women want to be vets.

[Anonymous]

It takes about 10 years of practice to become an expert. We accept and believe that elite athletes in the U.S.A. have reached the pinnacle of elite status because they practiced.

Why is it so challenging to believe that in other fields years of practice are required to become an expert?

Athletics is very lucrative for those who become experts at it. Perhaps some cultures more than others insist their children practice at a young age in not only sports but math, science, reading, dancing, singing, playing a musical instrument. Children can't practice in every field. Some children practice sports, and some practice for spelling competitions. As we have seen with the most recent national spelling bee champion who happens to be black, race doesn't matter as much as the time spent practicing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When I first entered the workforce in the early 2000s, the big company that hired me gave a presentation on having a commitment to diversity/no discrimination etc. And, I'm sure most big companies were doing something similar and have been for a long time.

Now, I fully support people of all races and backgrounds being treated fairly. But, when a company talks about a commitment to diversity, what are they really saying? They are saying, we need to hire more people that aren't white, and especially people that aren't white men. And companies have been doing this for years.

Now, how can we have basically every big company in America saying "We need to specifically hire more people that aren't white/white men" for the past 20+ years, and then in 2020, they turn around and say "Oh, by the way, the whole system is rigged in favor of white people and white people are 'privileged'"? Really? Pretty sure I've never seen a company say "We need to make a commitment to hiring more white people" which of course would be ridiculous.

This is why, as I've always said, the commitment should be towards FAIRNESS to all. Not enforced diversity quotas, but rather a commitment to treating everyone fairly regardless of race or background. Now making hires specifically due to diversity might make sense in some scenarios - for instance if you are designing an international product and it is essential that you get a diverse variety of viewpoints to vet the design. That makes sense. In other instances where it is simply a matter of who has the best qualifications and skills for the job, then race or background shouldn't factor into the decision.

They didn't "turn around and say this" in 2020. It is what they have been saying for 20 (or 50) years. They just got better/different at articulating it. It moved from "we are not going to actively conciously discriminate in hiring in favor of whites/males" to "we are going to actively work to recruit and retain a better representative workforce." It is movement in a direction, not a reversal.

And again mainstream DE&I is not advocating for quotas.

No, they do advocate for quotas, but they will definitely tell you when you have too few. We are all told endlessly that we must "improve diversity" by preferentially hiring and promoting on the basis of race... oh but that isn't a quota.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"Plenty get it, but the ones most concerned about “fairness” tend to be the most mediocre and stand to lose a lot once they no longer have the white guy privileges"

Nice of you to throw it that put down simply because I believe in fairness. What would you call it if someone said something similar about a person of a different race that also wanted to be treated fairly? That's what I thought.

The funny thing is, I've only ever been involved in an interview process one time, mainly just to talk about the job position to the candidates who were replacing me. All the applicants were white except for one. And all four interviewers were white. And you know what? We selected the only non-white candidate, and it had nothing to do with race. And it was an immediate consensus - basically all 4 of us looked at each other and said "That's our guy." Because he did the best job in the interview. It was eye opening for me because I saw that if you have good social skills and can make good conversation, you really stand out. Several candidates had the skills, but the guy we selected stood out because the conversation was so relaxed and enjoyable. People liked him so they wanted to hire him. How's that for "bias"?

You’re kind of proving my point here, Buddy. Most of the time, a white panel consisting of white men will choose a white male applicant because that’s who they “like”. In your case you chose an extroverted non-white man you liked, and not necessarily the best one for the job. Cultural “fit” is a big driver of discrimination because guess who doesn’t fit?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I fight bias by not giving a shit about the details of my employee’s personal lives at all. You do good work? I give you more, harder work & pay you more.

You can do this when you are a small company, but as you get larger, you 1) can't control what your managers do and 2) you might run the risk of giving the appearance of bias. This is why larger companies have to make an effort to remind everyone to be fair to the employees when evaluating their work and giving assignments.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Plenty get it, but the ones most concerned about “fairness” tend to be the most mediocre and stand to lose a lot once they no longer have the white guy privileges"

Nice of you to throw it that put down simply because I believe in fairness. What would you call it if someone said something similar about a person of a different race that also wanted to be treated fairly? That's what I thought.

The funny thing is, I've only ever been involved in an interview process one time, mainly just to talk about the job position to the candidates who were replacing me. All the applicants were white except for one. And all four interviewers were white. And you know what? We selected the only non-white candidate, and it had nothing to do with race. And it was an immediate consensus - basically all 4 of us looked at each other and said "That's our guy." Because he did the best job in the interview. It was eye opening for me because I saw that if you have good social skills and can make good conversation, you really stand out. Several candidates had the skills, but the guy we selected stood out because the conversation was so relaxed and enjoyable. People liked him so they wanted to hire him. How's that for "bias"?

You’re kind of proving my point here, Buddy. Most of the time, a white panel consisting of white men will choose a white male applicant because that’s who they “like”. In your case you chose an extroverted non-white man you liked, and not necessarily the best one for the job. Cultural “fit” is a big driver of discrimination because guess who doesn’t fit?

"Most of the time, a white panel consisting of white men will choose a white male applicant"

And if that were actually true - how would you solve it? You are claiming - without evidence - that white men are biased towards white men no matter what. So...think about that if you can. Even if you did solve it...20 years from now another enlightened young person could some along and say the exact same thing (also without evidence.)

You never have to prove your claims. We are all biased because you say so. And, we are somehow supposed to eliminate this bias which you claim is impossible not to have. Ok, then. Plus, I just provided an example that directly counters your theory, yet you say I am "proving your point."

You know what, believe whatever you want to believe. I've spelled it out as clearly as I can for you.