Elena Kagan’s Diversity Fail, or, White Women Can Be Racist Too! | Red Vinyl Shoes
Wait, the definition of racism includes not making overt efforts to increase diversity? How many people of color or minorities would she have had to hire to not be considered racist then?
*sigh*
I’ll answer your second question first: there is no specific number that would make Kagan NOT racist. However, 1 in 32 or once in ten years are pretty glaring numbers. It doesn’t take a mathematician to recognize that these numbers are nowhere near balanced or a fair representation of our society—not even of the upper echelon of our society.
If you are a white person, you might not notice that in the last ten years, you have hired 31 white people to one single non-white person. After all, you are white. You are accustomed to most of the people around you being white, and you are less likely to know what it is to be in an institution or situation where everyone around you is of a different race (an experience most non-white people are very familiar with.) You just don’t pay much attention to the skin color of the people you are hiring.
You might say, “But doesn’t that make that not racist?” Well…not really.
Studies have shown that white people tend to experience a subconscious bias in favor of other white people and against non-white people. Even if you aren’t purposely doing so, you could be unfairly favoring white candidates in the selection process because generations of social training have boiled down to you having a blind spot when it comes to white folks. Failure to be aware of your own bias? It’s still bias, even if it’s unintentional, and having a large, unacknowledged blind spot doesn’t bode well for a Supreme Court justice.
I get irritated with the word “diversity” because it seems to imply a token-ist approach. The point of “improving diversity” should not be to make sure we have every color of the rainbow represented in our academic institutions, businesses, and government. The point should be to make us aware of the factors that keep non-white people out of these areas, which includes the bias of the [usually] white people who serve as gate-keepers.
Although those numbers are probably bad (no matter how you slice the data), I’d be curious how many colored applicants there were, and how many colored potential candidates are in that field nation-wide. (I’m going to say “colored” instead of “none-white” *** the offended and curious can see the explanation below)
Sure it’d be rough data to get, and sure she’d probably still look bad, but I’d like to know. Hearing these kinds of things I always think:
But it hasn’t been that long since Civil Rights, and it hasn’t been that many generations since slavery was abolished (less than 7?)So how far have we moved, are we still feeling these effects? We should certainly be trying to overcome the effects completely no matter how long it’s been, but how long will it take before stats like these are few and far between?
I think government enabled “affirmative action” is wrong, and if a private institution does it, it’s their own business, but I disagree.
That being said I also believe the bias towards people that look like you (and against those that look different), but I wouldn’t call that racism. I think it’s bigger than that, I find it’s closer to xenophobia.
Perceived difference in dress, skin color, orientation, religion or any number of other things all tie into that bias. “Flight From Death” has a lot of interesting stuff to say on that matter.
Government or institution enabled “affirmative action” creates a lot of problems for me, it is racism (by definition), even though it’s trying to remedy something, when do we stop those types of initiatives?
Instead of “affirmative action” I prefer personal responsibility and articles like this pointing out deficiencies. Protests, outcry and law suits for discrimination, also good.
*** As for saying colored (this is in case anyone is offended), I don’t like to beat around the bush. Talking about “non-whites” is kind of silly, as silly as the word “colored”, for example. Somewhere along the line there have been terms made for “everything” that isn’t “specific thing”, which is damn ridiculous.
I’ma make a word for everything that isn’t blue, I’m calling those things “nurbledoo”.
Pass it on.
I find it even more ridiculous that “colored” used to be PC no more than 40 years ago! … also kind of funny.
Using the word “colored” seems to be more honest, and to me, funny. No matter how we paint it, putting all white people in one bucket and everyone else in another is absurd, but remarkably (and unfortunately), still useful and valid (i.e. when pointing out biases in hiring practices).***
