quote:
'll give you a real life example.

About 6-7 years ago my wife was up for a promotion. She works for one of the public school districts here in Los Angeles. The job was to replace her direct superior, who was retiring. My wife was next in line in terms of seniority and was the understudy so-to-speak for this position, so it was assumed in her office that she would get the job, but it's not that easy. The job was posted, she applied, she tested and ranked #1 in the testing. The district superintendent recommended her for the job, based on her test scores, her job performance, and her seniority. The recommendation of the superintendent was taken before the five member school board, which has total sovereignty over this decision. My wife is white. All five school board members are Hispanic. They voted not to accept the superintendent's recommendation and instead gave the job to a Hispanic woman who had less seniority, scored lower on the testing, and did not have the superintendent's recommendation. My wife asked the school board for an explanation and they simply said they were not required to give one. End of story, unless you want to file a lawsuit. So we moved on. Was it fair? Of course not. Was it right? Of course not. But it was what it was. We/she moved on. We made the best of our situation and moved on.

I hear you, but do you really think there aren't similar stories out there where being black ended up being a detriment to a particular applicant? The story you mentioned ended with 5 hispanics picking a hispanic over, in your opinion, a more qualified white person. You don't think there are times when an all white person committee feels more comfortable choosing a white person?

quote:
I agree with the poster to whom you responded. These days, when it comes to hiring, admissions, etc. being white and being male are distinct disadvantages. I

I think this is overstated on this board. When a white person gets a job, or accepted to a school, etc no one ever considers the possibility that his whiteness could have helped him. I'm not saying thats often the case or even remotely common, but I do think it probably still happens every once in a while. But when the same happens to a minority, ppl are more likely to question the hire.

For example, in the anecdote you provided, did you actually interview the hispanic candidate yourself? Did you actually see her resume? What is the actual correlation between test scores and job performance in this field? Maybe this particular committee didn't put too much stock in that because in the past they came to discover higher score =/= better job performance. I mean, have you ever asked your doctor what he got on his MCAT or boards, or ask your lawyer his BAR score? If he gets below some cutoff, do you ask to switch to another physician? Or do you decide whether you have a good doctor or not based on much different, more likely subjective, criteria?

My point is, unless you knew both candidates equally and interviewed them yourself, its easy to look at this situation and assume it was all about race. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn't. But if you have some preconceived notion about how things are, you are going to be more likely to see things that way.

quote:
These days, when it comes to hiring, admissions, etc. being white and being male are distinct disadvantages.

I would saying being Asian (at least for fields I am familiar with) is worse. So if anything, you can argue that whites are about in the middle, in between blacks/hispanics and Asians. Doesn't seem to disadvantageous to me.

This post was edited on 4/18/14 at 11:43 pm