Oscars -- Thoughts About Racial Inequality

[fairweatherfan]

People are either willfully ignorant or naive to believe that people will pick the most qualified person or of two equally qualified people, the black person, if the other one is white. It's just not reality based!

Viola Davis said it much better than I ever could...


https://youtu.be/Sf0kDGVkVzQ

If you’re talking about in general (not Hollywood) you couldn’t be further from the truth. Companies have hiring quotas and universities have separate sat scales for black and white candidates. If two candidates are truly equal, the black guy will always win with respect to employment and education. The black guy will even win if he’s less qualified. This is called racism and does blacks no justice because it makes society constantly wonder if they’re actually qualified on merit. Nowadays SJWs like to pin this wonder on white privilege. Yeah, it’s such a privilege to be docked 200 points on the SAT due to being white.

I don't know what the factual basis of these claims about hiring is, but controlled studies on hiring behavior consistently find precisely the opposite.

Here's a summary of a recently published meta-analysis covering 28 studies with 55000 job applicants over a quarter century.  It finds persistent, severe discrimination against black applicants, and to a lesser degree Latino applicants.

https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2017/september/research-finds-entrenched-hiring-bias-against-african-americans/

Here's one where they just changed the names on otherwise identical resumes. Stereotypically white names received 50% more callbacks than stereotypically black names with the same qualifications. The gap in response to black- and white-associated names was equivalent to the effect of having 8 more years of experience for what were mostly entry-level jobs.

http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html

This is one of my favorites because just to eliminate the racial disparity in callbacks and job offers, they had to give only the white applicants felony convictions for cocaine dealing with 18 months served.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2915472/


It's not a subtle trend. Control for qualifications but attach them to different races and the patterns jump out. Shak's characterization isn't true for each and every employer but in general it's spot on.

[green_bballers13]

People are either willfully ignorant or naive to believe that people will pick the most qualified person or of two equally qualified people, the black person, if the other one is white. It's just not reality based!

Viola Davis said it much better than I ever could...


https://youtu.be/Sf0kDGVkVzQ

If you’re talking about in general (not Hollywood) you couldn’t be further from the truth. Companies have hiring quotas and universities have separate sat scales for black and white candidates. If two candidates are truly equal, the black guy will always win with respect to employment and education. The black guy will even win if he’s less qualified. This is called racism and does blacks no justice because it makes society constantly wonder if they’re actually qualified on merit. Nowadays SJWs like to pin this wonder on white privilege. Yeah, it’s such a privilege to be docked 200 points on the SAT due to being white.

A) We're talking about Hollywood

B) "If two candidates are truly equal, the black guy will always win with respect to employment and education. The black guy will even win if he’s less qualified." Is this an opinion, or is there any data to back this up?

C) I am white and was not docked 200 pts. Is this a new initiative that I missed?

[Roy H.]

C) I am white and was not docked 200 pts. Is this a new initiative that I missed?

It’s from a Princeton study.

Lee's next slide shows three columns of numbers from a Princeton University study that tried to measure how race and ethnicity affect admissions by using SAT scores as a benchmark. It uses the term “bonus” to describe how many extra SAT points an applicant's race is worth. She points to the first column.

African Americans received a “bonus” of 230 points, Lee says.

She points to the second column.

“Hispanics received a bonus of 185 points.”

The last column draws gasps.

Asian Americans, Lee says, are penalized by 50 points — in other words, they had to do that much better to win admission.

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-adv-asian-race-tutoring-20150222-story.html

Asians need to score 280 points better than blacks to be on equal footing. Whites need to score 230 points.  In what world is a 1550 SAT score the same as a 1270? 

[smokeablount]

Double post.

[smokeablount]

Yes, we’re talking about Hollywood, where the top people can get up to $50-75mm for 6-9 months of work (this includes hitting the marketing trail), plus royalties for life, plus potential equity since most people that make that much these days want to get into producing (since getting old is bad for biz for actors, especially women).

Where one product is expected to make nine figures in 2-3 days. There aren’t many businesses where employees can make 50 million a year just in salary, without equity/stock options/endorsements. And most companies that expect to make 9 figures in 2-3 days from one product don’t rely primarily on 2-3 people to drive that, it usually takes a village in most businesses.

All this is to say, again, the stakes here are very high for the people making the decisions. This is not like an employee quota, where dozens, if not hundreds of employees are crucial to making the business profitable.  In business the CEOs are paid a ton, but the CEO isn’t paid more than everyone else combined. That happens in Hollywood. The color of the star doesn’t matter if they make money and the execs look good.

 If women and POC made the most money, they would get cast the most. The issue is the market where studio execs don’t take risks, and perhaps that white people are more interested in movies about white people, and they spend more money. But I’m not sure why that would be ‘bad’, when the whole argument here is around changing the status quo because POC are more interested in movies about POC.

To me, this bias is a byproduct of a unique market, but also consumer tastes that at best look to be tribal and at worst, racist. I would tackle this more by figuring out alternatives to a $30mm marketing budget, which is an industry change that would allow for more competition and IMO be good for the consumer, or trying hard to get black and female capital to fund great stories that wouldn’t otherwise get told. 

To me, simply telling major studio execs who are afraid of losing their jobs not to make decisions based on the economic criteria that will keep their careers alive another day doesn’t seem like it’s going to work. Progress was definitely made in 2017-2018 toward righting some of the past wrongs, but it will take time to keep getting better.

[kozlodoev]

C) I am white and was not docked 200 pts. Is this a new initiative that I missed?

It’s from a Princeton study.

Lee's next slide shows three columns of numbers from a Princeton University study that tried to measure how race and ethnicity affect admissions by using SAT scores as a benchmark. It uses the term “bonus” to describe how many extra SAT points an applicant's race is worth. She points to the first column.

African Americans received a “bonus” of 230 points, Lee says.

She points to the second column.

“Hispanics received a bonus of 185 points.”

The last column draws gasps.

Asian Americans, Lee says, are penalized by 50 points — in other words, they had to do that much better to win admission.

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-adv-asian-race-tutoring-20150222-story.html

Asians need to score 280 points better than blacks to be on equal footing. Whites need to score 230 points.  In what world is a 1550 SAT score the same as a 1270?

1. SAT is not the only criteria for admission. Heck, SAT often isn't the main criteria for admission these days, or even a criteria at all.
2. This argument assumes that each point of SAT above the admission cutoff is is important, and that it is important at the same linear rate. Not necessarily true.
3. Dumb clickbait is dumb. Even if it comes from Princeton.

[smokeablount]

C) I am white and was not docked 200 pts. Is this a new initiative that I missed?

It’s from a Princeton study.

Lee's next slide shows three columns of numbers from a Princeton University study that tried to measure how race and ethnicity affect admissions by using SAT scores as a benchmark. It uses the term “bonus” to describe how many extra SAT points an applicant's race is worth. She points to the first column.

African Americans received a “bonus” of 230 points, Lee says.

She points to the second column.

“Hispanics received a bonus of 185 points.”

The last column draws gasps.

Asian Americans, Lee says, are penalized by 50 points — in other words, they had to do that much better to win admission.

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-adv-asian-race-tutoring-20150222-story.html

Asians need to score 280 points better than blacks to be on equal footing. Whites need to score 230 points.  In what world is a 1550 SAT score the same as a 1270?

Im not a SJW at all, and they are mostly confusing race with economics IMO, but I kind of agree with this specifically about the SAT, and I got a 1520 and an 800 on the writing SAT2 about 15 years ago. The SAT is somewhat culturally biased and will certainly be biased depending on the quality of school systems, any tutoring, etc. Someone who was trained since age 7 to take the SAT and got a 1400 can have less potential than a black kid just trying to survive who pulls a 1200 with no one encouraging his education.

The only blatant issue to me here is it should be economics that determine this, not race. A black son of a cardiologist and lawyer in Wellesley is likely to do better than a poor white kid from Lynn, so if we’re giving that black kid a 200 point cushion and not the white kid, yeah, that’s backwards. There is nothing inherently worse about being black. Being poor with a broken home in a bad school is worse.

[kozlodoev]

Im not a SJW at all, and they are mostly confusing race with economics IMO, but I kind of agree with this specifically about the SAT, and I got a 1520 and an 800 on the writing SAT2 about 15 years ago. The SAT is somewhat culturally biased and will certainly be biased depending on the quality of school systems, any tutoring, etc. Someone who was trained since age 7 to take the SAT and got a 1400 can have less potential than a black kid just trying to survive who pulls a 1200 with no one encouraging his education.

By and large, this is true. Also, it's one of the reasons why many top schools are stepping away from standardized tests as an admission criteria.

https://blog.prepscholar.com/the-complete-guide-to-sat-optional-colleges

[Moranis]

Im not a SJW at all, and they are mostly confusing race with economics IMO, but I kind of agree with this specifically about the SAT, and I got a 1520 and an 800 on the writing SAT2 about 15 years ago. The SAT is somewhat culturally biased and will certainly be biased depending on the quality of school systems, any tutoring, etc. Someone who was trained since age 7 to take the SAT and got a 1400 can have less potential than a black kid just trying to survive who pulls a 1200 with no one encouraging his education.

By and large, this is true. Also, it's one of the reasons why many top schools are stepping away from standardized tests as an admission criteria.

https://blog.prepscholar.com/the-complete-guide-to-sat-optional-colleges

I'd rather they do IQ tests.  At least that tells far more about a person's potential and aptitude than anything else.  Someone who is poor and poorly educated (if at all) could have an IQ of 150, but essentially fail something like a SAT, while someone who is rich and over educated might have an IQ of 100, but score significantly better on the SAT then the poor and uneducated kid.  Given the same opportunity in college though, the smarter kid would likely do better than the more educated kid.

[kozlodoev]

Im not a SJW at all, and they are mostly confusing race with economics IMO, but I kind of agree with this specifically about the SAT, and I got a 1520 and an 800 on the writing SAT2 about 15 years ago. The SAT is somewhat culturally biased and will certainly be biased depending on the quality of school systems, any tutoring, etc. Someone who was trained since age 7 to take the SAT and got a 1400 can have less potential than a black kid just trying to survive who pulls a 1200 with no one encouraging his education.

By and large, this is true. Also, it's one of the reasons why many top schools are stepping away from standardized tests as an admission criteria.

https://blog.prepscholar.com/the-complete-guide-to-sat-optional-colleges

I'd rather they do IQ tests.  At least that tells far more about a person's potential and aptitude than anything else.  Someone who is poor and poorly educated (if at all) could have an IQ of 150, but essentially fail something like a SAT, while someone who is rich and over educated might have an IQ of 100, but score significantly better on the SAT then the poor and uneducated kid.  Given the same opportunity in college though, the smarter kid would likely do better than the more educated kid.

It doesn't make much difference. IQ testing is standardized, too, and as such is sensitive to practice and preparation.

[Erik]

I don't know what the factual basis of these claims about hiring is, but controlled studies on hiring behavior consistently find precisely the opposite.

Here's a summary of a recently published meta-analysis covering 28 studies with 55000 job applicants over a quarter century.  It finds persistent, severe discrimination against black applicants, and to a lesser degree Latino applicants.

https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2017/september/research-finds-entrenched-hiring-bias-against-african-americans/

Here's one where they just changed the names on otherwise identical resumes. Stereotypically white names received 50% more callbacks than stereotypically black names with the same qualifications. The gap in response to black- and white-associated names was equivalent to the effect of having 8 more years of experience for what were mostly entry-level jobs.

http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html

This is one of my favorites because just to eliminate the racial disparity in callbacks and job offers, they had to give only the white applicants felony convictions for cocaine dealing with 18 months served.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2915472/


It's not a subtle trend. Control for qualifications but attach them to different races and the patterns jump out. Shak's characterization isn't true for each and every employer but in general it's spot on.

I would be very interested to see the methodology here. Are these mom and pop stores or major corporations? My point was to corporations because small businesses could have personal biases. I doubt that major corporations would risk having incredibly bad PR and lawsuits, however, if it is, I'd like to know which ones they are so that I can boycott them as I find it unacceptable.

Im not a SJW at all, and they are mostly confusing race with economics IMO, but I kind of agree with this specifically about the SAT, and I got a 1520 and an 800 on the writing SAT2 about 15 years ago. The SAT is somewhat culturally biased and will certainly be biased depending on the quality of school systems, any tutoring, etc. Someone who was trained since age 7 to take the SAT and got a 1400 can have less potential than a black kid just trying to survive who pulls a 1200 with no one encouraging his education.

The only blatant issue to me here is it should be economics that determine this, not race. A black son of a cardiologist and lawyer in Wellesley is likely to do better than a poor white kid from Lynn, so if we’re giving that black kid a 200 point cushion and not the white kid, yeah, that’s backwards. There is nothing inherently worse about being black. Being poor with a broken home in a bad school is worse.

Yes, the problem is confusing economics with race. I'm all for giving kids in broken homes some  extra points, because if they're close enough, it's pretty [dang] impressive. But when you generalize additional merit based on skin color, that's basically the definition of racism.

The metric of highest correlation to a child's failure is single parent homes, NOT their DNA.

[kozlodoev]

I don't know what the factual basis of these claims about hiring is, but controlled studies on hiring behavior consistently find precisely the opposite.

Here's a summary of a recently published meta-analysis covering 28 studies with 55000 job applicants over a quarter century.  It finds persistent, severe discrimination against black applicants, and to a lesser degree Latino applicants.

https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2017/september/research-finds-entrenched-hiring-bias-against-african-americans/

Here's one where they just changed the names on otherwise identical resumes. Stereotypically white names received 50% more callbacks than stereotypically black names with the same qualifications. The gap in response to black- and white-associated names was equivalent to the effect of having 8 more years of experience for what were mostly entry-level jobs.

http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html

This is one of my favorites because just to eliminate the racial disparity in callbacks and job offers, they had to give only the white applicants felony convictions for cocaine dealing with 18 months served.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2915472/


It's not a subtle trend. Control for qualifications but attach them to different races and the patterns jump out. Shak's characterization isn't true for each and every employer but in general it's spot on.

I would be very interested to see the methodology here. Are these mom and pop stores or major corporations? My point was to corporations because small businesses could have personal biases. I doubt that major corporations would risk having incredibly bad PR and lawsuits, however, if it is, I'd like to know which ones they are so that I can boycott them as I find it unacceptable.

Yes, "mom and pop stories" published by the NBER. Do bother to at least read the article abstract before asking questions that are already answered.

[Moranis]

Im not a SJW at all, and they are mostly confusing race with economics IMO, but I kind of agree with this specifically about the SAT, and I got a 1520 and an 800 on the writing SAT2 about 15 years ago. The SAT is somewhat culturally biased and will certainly be biased depending on the quality of school systems, any tutoring, etc. Someone who was trained since age 7 to take the SAT and got a 1400 can have less potential than a black kid just trying to survive who pulls a 1200 with no one encouraging his education.

By and large, this is true. Also, it's one of the reasons why many top schools are stepping away from standardized tests as an admission criteria.

https://blog.prepscholar.com/the-complete-guide-to-sat-optional-colleges

I'd rather they do IQ tests.  At least that tells far more about a person's potential and aptitude than anything else.  Someone who is poor and poorly educated (if at all) could have an IQ of 150, but essentially fail something like a SAT, while someone who is rich and over educated might have an IQ of 100, but score significantly better on the SAT then the poor and uneducated kid.  Given the same opportunity in college though, the smarter kid would likely do better than the more educated kid.

It doesn't make much difference. IQ testing is standardized, too, and as such is sensitive to practice and preparation.

Sure if you practice you can get better (and certainly less likely to be nervous), but there is only so much you can do since it really does measure your intelligence. 

[Erik]

I don't know what the factual basis of these claims about hiring is, but controlled studies on hiring behavior consistently find precisely the opposite.

Here's a summary of a recently published meta-analysis covering 28 studies with 55000 job applicants over a quarter century.  It finds persistent, severe discrimination against black applicants, and to a lesser degree Latino applicants.

https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2017/september/research-finds-entrenched-hiring-bias-against-african-americans/

Here's one where they just changed the names on otherwise identical resumes. Stereotypically white names received 50% more callbacks than stereotypically black names with the same qualifications. The gap in response to black- and white-associated names was equivalent to the effect of having 8 more years of experience for what were mostly entry-level jobs.

http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html

This is one of my favorites because just to eliminate the racial disparity in callbacks and job offers, they had to give only the white applicants felony convictions for cocaine dealing with 18 months served.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2915472/


It's not a subtle trend. Control for qualifications but attach them to different races and the patterns jump out. Shak's characterization isn't true for each and every employer but in general it's spot on.

I would be very interested to see the methodology here. Are these mom and pop stores or major corporations? My point was to corporations because small businesses could have personal biases. I doubt that major corporations would risk having incredibly bad PR and lawsuits, however, if it is, I'd like to know which ones they are so that I can boycott them as I find it unacceptable.

Yes, "mom and pop stories" published by the NBER. Do bother to at least read the article abstract before asking questions that are already answered.

Says the guy who called a study shattering his societal view of white privilege "clickbait."

[kozlodoev]

I don't know what the factual basis of these claims about hiring is, but controlled studies on hiring behavior consistently find precisely the opposite.

Here's a summary of a recently published meta-analysis covering 28 studies with 55000 job applicants over a quarter century.  It finds persistent, severe discrimination against black applicants, and to a lesser degree Latino applicants.

https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2017/september/research-finds-entrenched-hiring-bias-against-african-americans/

Here's one where they just changed the names on otherwise identical resumes. Stereotypically white names received 50% more callbacks than stereotypically black names with the same qualifications. The gap in response to black- and white-associated names was equivalent to the effect of having 8 more years of experience for what were mostly entry-level jobs.

http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html

This is one of my favorites because just to eliminate the racial disparity in callbacks and job offers, they had to give only the white applicants felony convictions for cocaine dealing with 18 months served.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2915472/


It's not a subtle trend. Control for qualifications but attach them to different races and the patterns jump out. Shak's characterization isn't true for each and every employer but in general it's spot on.

I would be very interested to see the methodology here. Are these mom and pop stores or major corporations? My point was to corporations because small businesses could have personal biases. I doubt that major corporations would risk having incredibly bad PR and lawsuits, however, if it is, I'd like to know which ones they are so that I can boycott them as I find it unacceptable.

Yes, "mom and pop stories" published by the NBER. Do bother to at least read the article abstract before asking questions that are already answered.

Says the guy who called a study shattering his societal view of white privilege "clickbait."

I think the popular progressive white privilege narratives are largely hogwash. Was that view "shattered" somewhere in that horrible clickbait article that took one particular aspect of college admissions completely out of context? I must have blinked.