DreamlandLividity

Wouldn't that make Bernie in charge at this point?

First, maybe this will help fill in as a starter on the French situation.

So they picked extremely stupid ones, got it.

Secondly, I do agree that targets and statistics inevitably distort and pervert any goals. So it will tend towards failure, but that's government. It never really works, and since I assume we're talking about the system we're in rather than a new one I don't think it's a deal-breaker.

Depends on how much they get "perverted and distorted". It absolutely is a deal breaker if it makes things worse than before.

Thirdly, and most pertinently: due to systemic racism/prejudices there is a barrier to various arbitrary socially constructed groups that other arbitrary socially constructed groups do not need to deal with.

By ignoring that there is a barrier to some in the form of systemic prejudice you don't actually help those more discriminated against groups. You just help the arbitrary groups that are less discriminated against. Maybe you have less inequality overall because the discriminated against group is a minority, but I don't think either of us think that that makes it "better".

I don't think we understand each other. I am not saying we should do nothing. We should try to create policies that enforce color blind hiring, rewarding, etc. E.g. have people evaluate work before knowing whose work it is where possible. I am not saying there can't be any color/gender-aware policies anywhere. I am certainly not saying we should stop collecting statistics and put our heads into the sand. But we shouldn't hire/promote/reward people based on their race/gender in either direction.

How would such a policy even work? You measure by how much is each minority disadvantaged on average and give them advantage by that amount via whatever mechanism? So the individuals that were already treated fairly now have an advantage even compared to the majority, those that were disadvantaged most are still disadvantaged, but a bit less and some random people from the majority are disadvantaged, because hiring is a zero sum game. You arguably did not make the system any more fair. The only good part is that it probably reduces by how much the most disadvantaged people are disadvantaged by.

More importantly, you do nothing to fix the impression people have, that minorities are doing less/worse work, yet show everyone they are treated preferentially. This will cause people from the majority to wonder with every failure, whether it is because of the unfair advantage minorities are given. You can't even try to disprove it, because it is true in some cases. Rare cases perhaps, but very few people would care.

Then act surprised when this creates conscious racists and the majority tells you to fuck off and elects a candidate that cancels DEI initiatives entirely. See the issue?

In a democracy, you will never be able to enact policies that fix subconscious racism without fixing peoples perceptions. You will get voted out. That's why the policies have to be color-blind, even if they are less effective (take longer to work).

And if we are lucky and do the policies well, we may even fix plenty of other biases unrelated to race and gender and eventually have much better results than color-aware.

PS: If you know how to say color-aware and color-blind in a way that includes gender and other minorities, can you let me know? I think you understand what I mean but it still bothers me I am using the wrong word.

Look, I don't know what exactly France did, maybe colorblind measures are not very effective. Maybe France picked stupid ones and implemented them badly. Let's not pretend there is only one way to do colorblind hiring.

But my counter question is this. You say it did not help in France. How do you measure that? If one black person has it much easier while another was not helped at all, is that success? That is what I have issue with. Color-aware policies are extremely likely to just fake the statistics about groups, while if you actually compare random person to random person, it is just as (if not more) unfair as before. I believe it does not create real equity, it just fools statistics.

You should not measure inequity between arbitrary groups. You should measure inequity between individuals to get a reliable metric.

I think it would considerably vary from place to place, even workplace to workplace. In some (rare) places not at all, in some places considerably. I would be entirely guessing if I was to say what the average was.

Honestly, if the app was open-source so we can check it does not leak data, I would probably have no issue with it.

Making it a separate app makes sense if google wants to allow other apps to re-use the code. No reason to have the same functionality bundled into each app separately.

And the feature, as long as it is configurable, seems useful.

The auto-install is bad but understandable. As far as I am aware, there is no easy way to mark an app as a dependency of another app so it gets automatically installed only when needed. This should be fixed, but auto-install for all is not terrible temporary solution. This does not apply when the app is closed source and may steal your data.

I have general ideas in what direction to look at, but I don't see how I could post them without this inevitably devolving into off-topic discussion of hiring policies.

Do you think systemic racism exists and is a large problem in the USA or France?

Yes.

"Badly implemented colorblind policies didn't stop racism in this one country, so let's have explicitly racist policies."

If they are still racist, they are not colorblind. Make stronger colorblind policies and enforce them. Color aware policies don't do anything either if they are only on paper.

Besides, you ignore the point of my criticism. Color aware policies don't prevent inequity, they shift it elsewhere. They keep some places and aspects of life racist while having other be reverse racist. On individual level, the inequity increases, but people pat themselves on the back because when you only look at it based on color, it averages out. It is like saying we should increase the pay of Billionaires to increase average wages. The statistic looks better, but it did not help most people.

Color blind hiring policies. We were talking about hiring.

If there are issues not related to the hiring process that make disadvantaged people less qualified, you fix those issues at the source. Ignoring them at hiring just hides the issues making it less likely to be fixed while creating new issues I pointed out.

Besides, what issue is actually not colorblind? Race is basically always a proxy for a different cause. You should not be lazy and identify the real cause, then solve it based on that to ensure people don't fall through the cracks.

So how do you account for the fact that, in many instances where a white person and a black person have the exact same qualifications, the white person will be far more likely to be hired?

By making policies to prevent that. Color blind policies. Just don't swing all the way to racist in the other direction.

How do you account for the fact that many people who are racial minorities aren't born into families that can afford things like living in a house that doesn't already have leaded paint on the walls, meaning that a black person who has the exact same qualifications as a white person has had to work a lot harder to overcome their disadvantages to get those qualifications?

I answered this question in my original comment. By helping people based on their situation, not skin color. There are rich black people. There are poor white people. Extremely poor people need support, rich people don't. Skin color is irrelevant.

There are so many reasons why "equity based on gender or skin color" for hiring and college applications and so on is absolutely necessary to address the inequities in our society, and why the baby steps that we've made since the civil rights movement haven't been nearly enough to address the problems that they were meant to address.

Sure, baby steps are slow. Cheating with this "affirmative action discrimination" hides the underlying issues while making them significantly worse. The white people they discriminate against are largely not the same people who profiteered on slavery and discrimination. You are just creating a new group of disadvantaged and oppressed people and push them towards raising up against your policies and to hate the people who benefit on their expense. This is what Trump took advantage of to win despite most people knowing what a shitty person he is.

Frankly we should be talking about reparations in the form of just straight up giving large swathes of land and fat stacks of cash to certain groups, especially African Americans and American Indians, not these piddly little affirmative action programs that only kind of exist in colleges but everyone assumes exist everywhere else too.

You are not entirely wrong, but there is a reason statues of limitations exist. Good luck finding the people who perpetuated and profited from racism and slavery or the people that were directly hurt. And making random rich white people, or even worse working people pay for it will cause so many more issues than it solves. I think it is too late to do this.

Nobody is brought down in the name of equity.

Maybe you don't do that, which, good for you. Many people do that. I don't like people who do that. If you don't do that, why are you so defensive?

What is brought down are the systems that privilege certain people based on aspects of themselves that they cannot control.

I explicitly wrote we should do that.

No argument here, Hollywood has always had lazy and awful shit and their attempts at lazy and awful inclusion are bad. Often the very groups that Hollywood directors purport to represent come out hard against bad representation too - like that french trans cartel leader film that just came out where the director said he didn't bother researching Mexico or Mexican culture before making a film that takes place there and where everyone speaks Spanish really badly.

👍

I know what you mean. The whole being incredibly hostile to like minded people over minor disagreements is it's own massive issue, but let's only open one can of worms at a time.