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[Reelya]

AA can totally fuck up if it's applied as a band-aid at the final stage of the pipeline however.

Any sort of diversification effort needs to apply small biases at each stage in the pipeline, rather than one big bias right at the output end.

For example, say that you've decided that <target group> is seriously under-represented in your <education course>. So, you apply an aggressive Affirmative Action policy, by giving some sort of bonus points to the under-represented minority. So, therefore the number of <target group> is instantly increased to be representative. Quick fix solved all the problems, right?

Well not really. If there was any type of merit-based entrance criteria, you'd have to exclude e.g. the worst-scoring white people, and bring in a large number of black people who scored below the "previous worse" point. This means you've engineered a significant gap between the measured ability level of the lowest-remaining white person and the best-performing black person in the new admissions group. The net result is that the "average score" of white people in the class increased (because you excluded the bottom-scoring whites), and the average score of black people decreased (because you admitted a significant number of even lower-scoring blacks). This causes a racial division in average scores within the classroom, which can exacerbate or even create stereotypes about ability vs race, even when none existed before.

With TV writers, I'd ask, what's the racial breakdown of college-level writing courses? Does the hiring of professional writers mirror what's coming out of graduate schools?
https://www.clevelandfed.org/newsroom-and-events/publications/economic-trends/2015-economic-trends/et-20150331-racial-and-ethnic-differences-in-college-major-choice.aspx
If you take a look there, only about 2.8% of English majors are black in American universities. People can't hire people who aren't doing the appropriate courses of study.

[Orange Wizard]

Well, of course institutionalized racism isn't going to be the major cause of most of this stuff. It's the subconscious stuff, the stuff that feeds into your perception based on something as simple as culture and environments. Not just on the employers' end, either; you'd be surprised how true self-fulfilling prophecies can be.

So any affirmative action policy that targets individual companies' hiring is probably aiming too narrow, if anything.

I think I suggested earlier some kind of programme in secondary+tertiary education to address that kind of racialised thinking, which in history has proven very effective at changing the public mindset in the long run.

Fakedit: Ninja'd by Reelya who said it in fewer words

[mainiac]

So hiring minorities is too radical but brainwashing is acceptable?

[Reelya]

But what proportion of English majors are black at college? It is one of the top 10 choices for white people, but much lower for black people:
https://www.clevelandfed.org/newsroom-and-events/publications/economic-trends/2015-economic-trends/et-20150331-racial-and-ethnic-differences-in-college-major-choice.aspx

2.8% of whites choose English majors. It's not clear, but somewhere less than 2.0% of black people choose it. Since blacks are 1/7th of the population, that would give an upper limit of about 9% black in English majors, but the actual figure is probably around 4-6%, I'm guessing.

[mainiac]

About 2.8% of English majors are black. 97% of hired English majors would be entirely proportional given that information.

Not really, no.  English majors do a lot of things after college besides write for the BBC.  BBC writers do a lot of things in college besides get English degrees.

And there's always the Uhura reason:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2015/07/31/how-martin-luther-king-jr-convinced-star-treks-uhura-to-stay-on-the-show/

[Willfor]

I don't know what y'all are smoking to equate English majors with TV writers. The qualifications for being a TV writer is basically "can you write a decent* script" and "does someone with hiring power like you". With the oversaturation of people trying to be TV writers, there is literally no way to contest whether an individual case of discrimination has taken place. You would think that with so many good candidates to choose from, people would choose the best, and if you've watched a TV show in your life you would quickly realize that this is not the case. It's not 100% knowing the right person if you want a job, but it's probably somewhere in the high 80s to low 90s percentage-wise.

* decent is somewhat optional.

[Frumple]

Hired and english major in the same sentence. There's a combination I haven't heard in a long time :V

E: Though thinking on it a bit, I guess it being someone's go-to example really does show the economy is improving! English majors getting hired again, truly the wheels of capitalism turn once more.

[mainiac]

if you've watched a TV show in your life you would quickly realize that this is not the case.
* decent is somewhat optional.

Why I never!  Are you saying that some TV writing isn't excellent?  Have you never even seen The Big Bang Theory?

[Strife26]

Go start your own production studio, hire whoever you want, dodge the regulations that you want and can dodge, and make your fortune that way.

Crap sells.

[mainiac]

Crap sells.

Whelp, there goes my innocence.

[Orange Wizard]

It's not 100% knowing the right person if you want a job, but it's probably somewhere in the high 80s to low 90s percentage-wise.

Nepotism trumps all

Also:

So hiring minorities because they're part of a minority is too radical but telling minorities that they can be hired if they work for it is acceptable?

[Shadowlord]

Also:

So hiring minorities because they're part of a minority is too radical but telling minorities that they can be hired if they work for it is acceptable?

I don't remember him saying that.

[Orange Wizard]

No, but he likes misrepresenting what I say.

[Baffler]

I almost forgot; some folks brought up scholarships ealier.

Spoiler: Rant (click to show/hide)

Be glad you even had a choice. Most of the scholarships that you were able to apply for carried citizenship requirements. I didn't even get to meet that checkmark. 19 fucking years in this country being denied almost every opportunity, and you, who holds citizenship in this country, are complaining about how you are bei,g sleighted over such a small deal as being white? Be glad that you even has a choice. Be glad that you get options when you graduate college, too; I will still fail the citizenship requirement, even then. Be glad that you aren't constantly being taunted with a carrot that you can never obtain over a fucking technicality.

Every fucking inch, my family has fought to grab and bled to hold, and you complain over the lack of help? My father didn't even graduate high school; he got equivalncy a few years later. He then got a technical degree in enterprise software in 2 years, doing 32 credit hour semesters. He got 2 hours total of sleep a night, interspaced throughout. When we immigrated here from Canada, we were doing a bit well. Then the dot-com popped. 3 months of unemployment, paying the mortgage on 2 homes, since the sale on the first fell through. Only job we found required moving halfway across the country; we had no choice, so we did. No government program could help us; hell, we were technically illegals for those 3 months. It was only with the reveal that said company wouldn't sponor our greencard did we tell them to fuck off and returned to Arzona.

This is why I hate discussions on "reverse racism". Be glad you had any fucking options at all. My family has spent several thousand dollars for even the chance at something better, all while this country perpetually shits on us, and you're the one to complain on the off chance the government craps on you for once?

Note- it is late at night; emotions m8ght run a bit hot in that there rant. Apology if it is too aggressive. I mean no offense.

And there are starving children in Africa, too!

[Orange Wizard]

We're not at fault for your government doing piss all welfare support.

E: Unless your point is that you're struggling because you're part of an ethnic minority, which would make more sense given the context, but I think you might be misattributing things here.