I think that affirmative action hurts both ways. And it also keeps the feeling of resentment alive, which again hurts people.
As a simple example, in my country most people in IT are male. So on one hand you have the “prejudice” that women in general are not good with computers, but on the other hand, if you meet a female programmer, you know that she specifically is good enough. She passed the filter.
I imagine that in an alternative reality where IT companies would be legally required to have 50% female programmers, the “prejudice” would expand, and it would say that women programmers are not good with computers. A female programmer would have to work harder to pass the filter. Even participating in a successful project would not be enough, because others would think that the males in her team did most of the work, and she was there mostly for political reasons. To prove herself, she would have to win some programming competition (and tell everyone about it). But those who can do it, they have no problem finding a programming job in our world, too.
Affirmative action would work best if you could legislate it and make everyone forget that it exists. Perhaps legislating it and making taboo of discussing it openly, is a step in this direction. Still, if the differences in abilities are real, people will notice the result, even if they are not informed about the causes.
In the alternative reality where IT companies are legally required to have 50% women programmers, and the law is successfully kept secret from everyone except the HR departments, programmers would still notice the differences in their colleagues’ skills. Although… this knowledge would exist only among the programmers, because only they see it firsthand. You could still convince the public that what the programmers see is not real, that it is merely their sexism.
So now I think that social enginnerings of this kind are successful only if people are prevented from discussing them openly. Even a lie told with good intentions makes the truth forever your enemy. Of course that makes it difficult to evaluate whether the policy really helps or not.
I’d have expected affirmative action to have substantial ill effects, but no one seems to be saying that the quality of American goods has dropped noticeably since the late sixties.
My tentative explanation is that hiring and promotion are much more random than people want to think.
Really? I’d estimate more like 120%.
Edit: especially consider affirmative action and the desperate impact doctrine.
I think that affirmative action hurts both ways. And it also keeps the feeling of resentment alive, which again hurts people.
As a simple example, in my country most people in IT are male. So on one hand you have the “prejudice” that women in general are not good with computers, but on the other hand, if you meet a female programmer, you know that she specifically is good enough. She passed the filter.
I imagine that in an alternative reality where IT companies would be legally required to have 50% female programmers, the “prejudice” would expand, and it would say that women programmers are not good with computers. A female programmer would have to work harder to pass the filter. Even participating in a successful project would not be enough, because others would think that the males in her team did most of the work, and she was there mostly for political reasons. To prove herself, she would have to win some programming competition (and tell everyone about it). But those who can do it, they have no problem finding a programming job in our world, too.
Affirmative action would work best if you could legislate it and make everyone forget that it exists. Perhaps legislating it and making taboo of discussing it openly, is a step in this direction. Still, if the differences in abilities are real, people will notice the result, even if they are not informed about the causes.
In the alternative reality where IT companies are legally required to have 50% women programmers, and the law is successfully kept secret from everyone except the HR departments, programmers would still notice the differences in their colleagues’ skills. Although… this knowledge would exist only among the programmers, because only they see it firsthand. You could still convince the public that what the programmers see is not real, that it is merely their sexism.
So now I think that social enginnerings of this kind are successful only if people are prevented from discussing them openly. Even a lie told with good intentions makes the truth forever your enemy. Of course that makes it difficult to evaluate whether the policy really helps or not.
I’d have expected affirmative action to have substantial ill effects, but no one seems to be saying that the quality of American goods has dropped noticeably since the late sixties.
My tentative explanation is that hiring and promotion are much more random than people want to think.
Well two points:
1) There is a huge confounding factor, namely technological progress.
2) In general, labor intensive goods aren’t even produced in America anymore.