So my brother works for a fairly big company in a fairly high up position. His company just started really hammering "diversity." Instituting the Rooney rule where at least 2 candidates for every positions interviewed have to be "minority" (whatever that means) I would say he feels about this about the same way you do Jeff. It's important but it's also, a lot of times, statistical noise.
So he went through his companies hired and, well... His company is already around 15-16% black. and the US population is 14.2%. They're already doing better than the demographics. But it is all about appearances. But if his company says "Hey we already do better" then they will still get raked over the coals for not doing "enough." Except "enough" is never clearly defined.
The problem is it's also patronizing to just interview people based on the color of their skin. Their hiring process was ALREADY working.
What I really think the issue is in this country with all the super progressives is this; There aren't enough black people to go around and they can't make up 14% of EVERY job. This isn't a racism problem it's a physics problem.
There literally aren't enough black people for every one of these industries and colleges to hit their perceived "quota." Also, for a multitude of reasons. Black people like diverse and different things. I think you talked about it with improv. You can't just make black people like improv.
Though I concede that diversity in government appointments is probably a good thing. The theater surrounding it is the patronizing part. PLUS it just makes people wonder. They don't want to wonder, but they do. This has always been the problem with quota hiring. It causes distrust and suspicion and in the end just leads to more racism. Basically people start getting suspect if the person you're hiring or interviewing is actually qualified or just black. Which is a terrible position to both be in and to put someone in (The NFL actually has this problem with token interviews) . I grew up in an area, sadly, where it was commonly accepted that being white made it HARDER to get a job. (which was nonsense that I grew out of quickly thank goodness). But that attitude comes from somewhere. Mostly it comes from under-educated working class whites paying 5% attention to the news and seeing very, very bad messaging.
The only solution I really see as a real SOLUTION -- something that would really work long-term that isn't just a stopgap or something that allows us to muddle through -- is to, you know...completely fix society. Should be easy, right! Still: The more we can reduce discriminatory attitudes and remove barriers to advancement (like economic barriers), the more diversity will simply happen without any kind of organization-wide engineering being necessary.
That’s the thing though. Progressives have never been interested in that. This is why my favorite racism is progressive racism. Which doesn’t seem to have changed in 100 years going back to the eugenics movement within progressives way back.
They’ve always been simple mindedly interested in fixing race with the cunning use of numbers.
The question I always want to ask about quota programs is "what are your criteria for not needing this any more".
Like, my political party put in a gender quota program for selecting candidates to elected office, with a rule that once there were 40% women, we'd stop using it. The best bit is that we hit 40%, dropped the quota, and (against a lot of predictions) the number of women didn't drop back under, but kept going up. There are now 70% women and there's no quota rule at all.
We're about to try a quota rule for non-white people (BAME is the British equivalent to BIPOC) and that will be automatically dropped when we reach 15%.
> So he went through his companies hired and, well... His company is already around 15-16% black. and the US population is 14.2%. They're already doing better than the demographics. But it is all about appearances. But if his company says "Hey we already do better" then they will still get raked over the coals for not doing "enough." Except "enough" is never clearly defined.
This strikes me as a point in favor of explicit quotas. If the relevant rule were direct and specific, like "the target minimum percentage of black employees is the black share of the US population from the latest available Census" then 15% > 14.2% would be the end of the discussion. Easy.
Small tangent to backtrack to “abolish the police” for a sec.
I work a blue collar job in Los Angeles. Given its nature, its location, its pay, and its place at the entry level of the organization, it is overwhelmingly black and Hispanic; I’m literally the only white guy on the crew. I’d guesstimate about 1/4th are recently released convicts and this is the only job that would hire them in spite of their record.
The conversation weeks ago swung around to “defund the police” somehow. The consensus was interesting. They universally hated the LAPD and considered them roughly equivalent to a gang with a badge- casually violent, bullies, pricks, trigger happy, no oversight. But they also thought “defund the police” was the stupidest thing in the world.
The contradiction was resolved thusly: “Police will brutalize a [person of color] over nothing, but the thing is, there’s some [people of color] who *need* to get brutalized. Problem is these police don’t fuck up the right people.”
I suspect very few progressive activists live in neighborhoods where people do gangsta shit right outside your door.
That is exactly the thing. Very few progressive activists did grow up in areas like that.
They think inner cities aren’t full of crime but just a bunch of people being framed.
It’s also funny that these same people don’t realize that it’s mostly over progressive policies that these cops get to have the excuse to go “bust some skulls”. Eric garner was killed over selling cigarettes without paying a market distorting ridiculously high tax New York put on cigarettes.
Progressives can say that they don’t think he should have been “killed” over it. But they obviously think he should have at least went to jail over it since they wrote it into law in the first place.
An online friend of mine, who’s a classic “God, guns, and Murica” red stater but who is exceedingly philosophical and intellectual about it, has previously contended that the further one gets from rough-and-tumble hood rat working class culture, the less willing one is to contemplate law breaking as an option.
I suspect that the progressive attempts at curbing smoking through taxation were formulated with the assumption that people would either pay through the nose for their nicotine fix, or rationally decide to quit smoking; the idea of actually getting cigarettes in bulk elsewhereand selling them on the grey market to willing buyers trying to circumvent the tax never really clicked as a solution that people would hit upon.
Well that's the thing. They do these "things" Like high cigarette taxes in a place like NYC.. Which has not wall around it and new jersey with lower taxes is not that far. So it's easy enough to get get half price cigarettes. They do these things thinking that once it's law it will just work. Except all the laws and taxes and regulations have to be enforced at some point by someone if you want them to actually work! The problem I have is a lot of people warn of this. They're called economists. Or I guess historians in this context. You can't just fuck with supply and demand and not expect a black market response. And it makes me wonder how many kids, especially black kids, get their record started with little things like selling loosies which causes a downward spiral once they're in the system.
I've been watching police brutality for decades and it is a PROBLEM! For everyone. The problem is always weirdly framed to me by progressives. Follow me if this makes sense.
-They always say more black people are in prison for the same crimes than white people (true)
-So they say we need to stop police from profiling minorities. (true)
-So the solution to most progressives is just to get the number right.
If we could just get the black prison population down to that 14.2% number then voila! Equality. What a bizarre way to view the world.
Except I'm over here saying "Yeah but what if no one, white or black, or brown or whatever was in prison AT ALL for half of these things we're talking about?" It's not about getting the number balanced it should be about getting those numbers to 0.
Like you could just stop sending the cops after people for things like selling loosies, unpaid parking tickets, junk in the yard, expired registration, selling weed (we're getting better at least), and a myriad of other things.
There's a great book about this called "Punishment without crime" About the broken system of misdemeanors and warrants and how you can end up in prison for basically being bad at filling things out and responding to mail in essence.
Like, no, you won't go to jail for an unpaid ticket. But you will go to jail two years later after you ignored a summons, drove with a suspended license, then ignored that summons and fine.
Like, I have a strong distaste for "law and order" republicans. But at least I know where they stand! Progressives are wishy washy. They want so many laws, so many regulations and statutes. So many local ordinances. Then they turn around and are like "wait why are the police hassling all these people that we gave them the power to hassle?" It boggles the mind sometimes. It would be like taking an 18 year old dude, giving him a fog horn, dropping him off at a golf course and saying "Now no matter what you do don't you dare use that fog-horn to fuck with golfers. You won't get in trouble but just don't anyway" 7 times out of 10 that kid is going to fuck with those golfers!
I hadn't realised that loosies were cigarettes that were cheaper because of tax evasion.
Here (England), they do sell loosies - but to people who can't afford a full pack (or people who can't buy a pack because they're underage). Lots of people started smoking by buying loosies when they were in high school.
We do get tax evasion where cigarettes are brought from places with lower taxes, but those are usually 200s (ie boxes with ten packs of 20), not broken down; presumably because they have to be brought from Europe (usually just France, but sometimes people go further because they are even cheaper in Greece or Italy).
I mean they are just slang for loose cigarettes too. But, and I might be wrong, I don't think it's legal to sell individual cigarettes in many places in the USA, or if it is not many places do it. So mostly the slang has become associated with the black market.
> So it's easy enough to get get half price cigarettes. They do these things thinking that once it's law it will just work. Except all the laws and taxes and regulations have to be enforced at some point by someone if you want them to actually work! The problem I have is a lot of people warn of this. They're called economists. Or I guess historians in this context.
As far as I can tell, historians and economists broadly agree that cigarette taxes and restrictions work, even with the impact of black markets. The historian I know of who's reviewed the issue most closely is Robert Proctor; his book Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition calls for an outright ban on the sale of cigarettes (the title kinda gives it away). Economists consistently find that taxes cut smoking, as in the studies I link in another comment (https://imightbewrong.substack.com/p/devils-advocate-are-people-demanding/comment/4628466) or other studies you can find in a minute or two on Google Scholar (e.g. https://www.nber.org/papers/w29145).
> Like you could just stop sending the cops after people for things like selling loosies, unpaid parking tickets, junk in the yard, expired registration, selling weed (we're getting better at least), and a myriad of other things.
The only one of these I think you could level against progressives is selling loosies (and if your strongest argument against cigarette taxes and restrictions is Eric Garner, I can just point to improved health on the benefits side of the ledger). Stereotypical progressives actively want selling weed legalized!
I'm sorry I didn't think I needed a stronger argument than the police strangling someone to death for avoiding a stupid tax. I will try not to let things like that affect me so much in the future!
As for weed legalization. Progressives don't care. Not truly. Or it wouldn't be a bureaucratic mess in most states that have legalized it with ridiculously high taxes, a stupidly high barrier to entry into the actual market. A stiff refusal to allow more of a market into the industry. Not to mention the years it takes to set up the infrastructure in order to sell something "safely" I guess that we figured out how to grow and sell 90 years ago pretty easily. Not to mention. Welcome to the party progressives! Nice of them to FINALLY come around, like when they finally came around on gay marriage.
Edit. Also hilarious to me that all of the anti science HYSTERIA when it comes to vaping comes almost directly from the hardcore progressives with their conspiracy theory nonsense. Vaping has helped more people curb smoking than helped. They don't care about people they care about being right, and being righteous.
> I'm sorry I didn't think I needed a stronger argument than the police strangling someone to death for avoiding a stupid tax. I will try not to let things like that affect me so much in the future!
You've needn't apologize; it's legitimate to count the police murder of Eric Garner as a cost of cigarette regulation. I just simultaneously think that cigarette regulations have improved, and saved, many other lives.
> As for weed legalization. Progressives don't care. Not truly. Or it wouldn't be a bureaucratic mess in most states that have legalized it with ridiculously high taxes, a stupidly high barrier to entry into the actual market. A stiff refusal to allow more of a market into the industry. Not to mention the years it takes to set up the infrastructure in order to sell something "safely" I guess that we figured out how to grow and sell 90 years ago pretty easily.
As for vaping, that's obviously a lot newer and I haven't seen nearly as much research about it. If you can point me to systematic reviews or meta-analyses confirming that it gets more people out of smoking than into it, I'd love to take a look!
Of course Cigarette taxes curb smoking. In fact you'd be hard pressed to find out where I said that so it's an interesting inference. and no they are not "ahead" of me whatever that means. OF course Demand goes down. I'm not saying they are wrong logically. I am saying they are wrong morally. IS there ANY doubt that prohibition curbed drinking? Of course it did! It would be absurd to say it didn't. If we banned cars automobile deaths would go down drastically.
You can make anyone stop doing anything if you point enough guns at them.
My guess is you haven't smoked. I might be wrong, maybe you did and you know how nefarious the addiction can be how you will spend whatever it takes to get that FIX. Especially if you are in a lower education bracket.
It is good to know that Eric Garners brutal death was numerically worth it though. Which I guess is always my point with progressives. They are SLAVISHLY utilitarian.
> Of course Cigarette taxes curb smoking. In fact you'd be hard pressed to find out where I said that so it's an interesting inference.
My comment there was a response to McJunker, not you, but I understand the confusion. I think Substack sometimes notifies people of replies even when they're replies to someone else.
> OF course Demand goes down. I'm not saying they are wrong logically. I am saying they are wrong morally. [...] It is good to know that Eric Garners brutal death was numerically worth it though. Which I guess is always my point with progressives. They are SLAVISHLY utilitarian.
I don't think it's "SLAVISHLY utilitarian" to think that saving thousands of lives with cigarette restrictions counts for more than one person's murder by police. Do you take the SLAVISHLY anti-utilitarian view that one murder outweighs thousands of other lives? Would you abolish the police because cops killed Eric Garner?
> My guess is you haven't smoked. I might be wrong, maybe you did and you know how nefarious the addiction can be how you will spend whatever it takes to get that FIX.
That's a reason to use cigarette taxes to discourage addiction in the first place! If you can put a teenager off smoking by hitting them in the wallet as they start, they're less likely to get hooked and become a lifelong smoker (which has about a 50/50 chance of killing them).
> Me personally? I would be one of those that Walk Away from Omelas.
I know the story and never found it convincing. Omelas would be a great improvement on our world; it makes only one child suffer. We do so much worse.
For me, in these sorts of positions - powerful and important, but not likely to inspire many 12 year olds - diversity of experience is useful. Someone who grew up poor (really poor, like "missed meals occasionally" poor) is likely to have a different perspective on how much harm unemployment does than someone who has never had to worry about money. And both of those are useful perspectives and both should be included on the Board. Motherhood will affect the view of those who have experienced it; the experience of being on the rough end of racism the same.
Even if the absolute best candidates are all white men, you probably still want some diversity, because you're less likely to get groupthink - but also it solves the problem of them all having the same blindspots.
But they're not role models, and people need to stop using role-model language when talking about positions that aren't role models. It's not about fairness to black people (the only black people that are affected by the colour of appointments to the Fed are black elite economists). It's about the fact that a diverse Board will be a better board because they will help cover each other's blind spots.
One day, I'll write a column about what a system that supports actual diversity would look like, because I agree: It's valuable when a team has diversity of experiences and skill sets (after all, you don't build a basketball team made entirely of power forwards). But that's rarely how we approach these things; more typically, we look at ascriptive traits and check boxes based on which traits we assume people have.
The other thing about this is the tendency to look at the appointments in isolation - "who is the best person for this job?" rather than as part of a team "who brings the most things that the team doesn't already have?"
To me this is why I appreciate a lot of the diversity that Biden is actually contributing to the courts, the Fed, etc. I think you are probably correct that the celebratory rhetoric that seems to confirm the idea of a strict racial quota is overwrought and unnecessary. But I’m not persuaded that even at this high of a level with small sample sizes, the being proactive about adding diversity isn’t a good thing. I think the more apt conversation here is about federal judges (frankly even more so state and county level judges but those are out of Biden’s control). Biden has nominated now 85 people to the Federal Courts as of today. A supermajority are women and a majority are people of color. Great. But let’s ignore the strictly demographic info for a minute and move to the professional experience. Nearly 25% of his nominees had long tenures as public defenders, something that is very underrepresented on the courts. Jennifer Sung is now the third Asian American woman on the 9th circuit. Cool, that circuit covers California so it makes sense. But she’s also a former union attorney. Labor side legal experience is sorely lacking in the federal courts. That kind of experience is worth highlighting and promoting. So I agree that the rhetoric of who is in these positions based on their demographics is a little overblown (though I do think a majority women Fed will have some substantive effect), but I think both the progressive activists who supposedly promote diversity and the critics of that approach can miss the picture of why diversity is important and what kinds of diversity matter. It can’t be about optics.
Yeah, high levels of government are absolutely the place where I think this type of thing makes the most sense, because: 1) As stated in the article, I think demographics do matter at top levels of government to give people faith that the government really does represent them; 2) There are vanishingly few of these top, top-level jobs and you get to hire basically anyone you want, so in almost all cases you should be able to find someone who is extremely good and arguably the best candidate regardless of race; 3) Most people are not in the running to be on the Fed Board, or the Supreme Court, or to be Vice President, so to the extent that it's a violation of the principle that you shouldn't discriminate based on race, it's a violation that only affects .00001% of the population (all of whom are phenomenally successful in their careers anyway).
The other thought I had that this comment focuses for me is that diversity measured in pure quantity is probably counterproductive tokenism. So economically at the firm level assigning quotas is probably the wrong approach. But in aggregate it’s probably instructive to look at a field, industry, type of position and analyze across the whole sector the demographics for said domain and ask the question why does this field vary from a random sample of the prime age population within our geography. I would guess a majority of the time the answer is banal and not actionable but sometimes it can lead to a system change that is good. But like you say there are literally only 7 Fed Governors, 9 Supreme Court Justices, and 1 VP. They are the sector.
Reading the comments and responses further down, I see several people have made my same point through different lenses. I guess I agree with your thesis but I’m confused by your choice of the Fed or more broadly Biden’s administrative appointments as the frame for said thesis because I think the purpose and strategy of Biden’s appointments are more in line with what you describe as successful diversification rather than paternalism for the sake of optics. If anything I think perhaps the most apt example of the latter was the choice of Vice President Harris to be on the ticket.
I chose this example simply because it was in the news this week, and because some of the rhetoric around it was overheated enough that it provided a stark example. Plus: Herman Cain. When I realized I'd get to write about Herman Cain again, my decision was made.
While I completely agree on the importance for such positions as the Federal Reserve Board members of resume over diversity, why must this be an either or choice? Can we not find any qualified candidates for such jobs who also send a message to young Americans that meritocracy does not mean the exclusion of some based on their heritage?
For top-level jobs, yes; it should be possible. It will be tougher for the entire organization, and at the organizational level you'd basically be implementing a policy of institutional discrimination, so there's a cost.
Also, there's a difference between "qualified" and "best person for the job." Typically, when hiring, we try to hire the best person, not just anyone who crosses a certain threshold.
I understand your point. However, there are numerous quality studies showing diversity in many organizations has proven to be a significant strength by bringing a wider variety of perspectives to both challenges and opportunities. I remain unwilling to surrender a need to consider the value of diversity as a factor along with every potential candidate’s qualifications for the job. Too often organizations choose, often for rather poor reasons, not to make the little extra effort it might require to consider the value of diversity.
I would be more comfortable if diversity meant actual diversity, i.e. getting to know the top candidates and figuring out which perspectives and experiences they might have (though there are limits to that -- some of my most formative experiences are things I'm not going to talk about in a job interview). But far more commonly, it's just box-checking; all candidates who have certain traits are assumed to have a diverse perspective, and all candidates who don't have those traits are assumed to not offer any diversity of perspective.
> However, there are numerous quality studies showing diversity in many organizations has proven to be a significant strength by bringing a wider variety of perspectives to both challenges and opportunities
Isn't this the point of Jeff's column, though, that the assumption that someone's gender or race automatically gives them a different perspective is inherently sexist/racist?
Gosh, Jeff, for someone who authors a Substack blog entitled “I Might Be Wrong,” can we at least get consideration that it is possible to have organizations in the real world who can take the time and trouble to manage workforce diversity well at every level in an organization. I am not suggesting it is easy only that it is possible and perhaps worth the effort it takes to do it well.
But then again … I might be wrong? At least I am willing to consider that possibility.
Well, it's called "I Might Be Wrong", not "I Am Definitely Wrong", and I haven't been persuaded (and I'm factoring in your comments farther down this thread).
But, look: We have a major point of agreement here. We agree that having a team with a different perspectives and experiences is desirable. We also seem to agree that "different perspectives and experiences" has to actually be real -- it can't be a crass euphemism for "just go hire a Black woman". I'm sure that some organizations do this in a real way, and it sounds like you run one of them. That's great; if I ever run an organization, I'll do things the same way.
But I feel that it's important that we cut the bullshit here: That is very often not how these things work in the real world. Frequently, it's "go hire _______ so that Twitter doesn't give us shit." That's the ugly reality. And we KNOW that that was the reality in this case: Activists didn't ask for a diversity of viewpoints on inflation, or a diversity of work experience (everyone's an academic!), or for someone who grew up working class. They asked for more Black people on the Board, and that's what they got. And we know this because their priorities were stated in public letters.
Yes, but not always. There are many businesses in the real world here on earth one that understand what real diversity means. I know, I founded and ran one of them.
Why do so many assume diversity is limited only to race (which is incidentally a societal construct not based on any genetic distinction, particularly in a society where “multi-racial” backgrounds are increasingly common) or gender. Diversity has a much broader definition than merely race and gender. I stand by my essential point that quality studies have shown repeatedly that many organizations with greater degrees of diversity have shown superior performance on many objective measures to less diverse organizations. This is a fact not merely an opinion. This has been ascribed by the researchers involved, as stated previously, to the broader perspectives to both challenges and opportunities contributed by more diverse organizations.
My point is not to elevate consideration of diversity over qualifications and merit. The point is why can a better answer be to consider both? Organizations who make a considered effort to do so seem to have no problem doing this. From personal experience founding and running a global technology business with over 1500 employees I can state confidently it is both possible and produces good results.
I am going to take one more attempt at this as I feel it is important. The real meaning of diversity is people thinking differently about lots of things, primarily in the way they approach problems and challenges in any particular field or endeavor. Those different perspectives are most often the product of diverse life experiences. Some of that diversity of life experiences may be related to race or gender but that is such a limited spectrum of all that makes up anyone’s life experiences.
Now to be specific to thinking differently within a group of Federal Reserve Board members … would it be best if all the Board members agreed that their most important responsibility was managing the rate of inflation? Therefore their entire field of study and work to date had been concentrated in how monetary and Federal Reserve Policy impacted the rate of inflation. In fact, all of them had an extensive history of well respected articles and studies on that topic. Or alternatively, would it be better to have a diversity of views and experience amongst the Board members about the importance for the Federal Reserve in managing not just inflation, but also unemployment, and economic growth as well. It seems perhaps a diversity of experience, expertise, and views might be a good thing. And incidentally, but not coincidently, a diversity of life experiences preceding their Federal Reserve Board appointments might help contribute to those differing views and perspectives. Although all of them might be top notch economists, and economic policy experts.
I believe that those who understand that the real meaning of diversity is not about checking boxes but about bringing together people who “do not all think alike” and instead bring a diversity of thought and life experiences.
Just to cite another example, in reading Doris Kearns Godwin’s book on Lincoln, “A Team of Rivals,” a diverse team of people who thought differently and contributed different perspectives seemed to work well for him.
And yes, before anyone contributes the witty but dark observation that it also resulted in him getting shot, I know that. But he is still recognized by most historians as among if not the best President of the U.S. So he must have gotten some things right.
"I believe that those who understand that the real meaning of diversity is not about checking boxes but about bringing together people who “do not all think alike” and instead bring a diversity of thought and life experiences." -This. This is a beautiful sentiment, really! and I agree. The problem is those people are so few and far between that they do not even make up a vocal minority of people who preach diversity.
Like I am a proud atheist (a word I don't like but use for simplicity). Can I get a proud, outspoken atheist on the fed?
A lot of these people aren't in it for the hard work because, well hard work is hard, they're in it for the ride. They're in it to dunk on racists (which, checking, yeah to this day has yet to make anyone not racist).
I guess I'm a die-hard progressive, and I guess I was quite shocked by the Pew poll's numbers. At this point a stock talking point against affirmative action is that it's anti-Asian, so it was a surprise to see (English-speaking) Asians being far MORE supportive than whites of race in deciding college admissions. More supportive than blacks, even, if I lump the "Major factor" and "Minor factor" percentages together.
I have seen articles lamenting the lack of diversity in the economics profession - not enough women, pifflingly small numbers of African-Americans and other minorities, etc. I don't think it's unimportant that the field of Economics be diverse, since it is not truly a science - it merely tries to be one, and often ties itself up in knots trying to do so.
Having diverse viewpoints being brought to bear on interpreting economic data, and even knowing WHAT data to collect that would be relevant and insightful, could be influenced by the experiences of the people doing the research.
Fed Governors, senior Fed staffers, Treasury types and members of the CEA are seen by the Economics community as the most visible practitioners of their profession. So, having both qualified and diverse wonks on the Fed could be an inspiration to young economists/economist-wannabes who might otherwise feel like they don't quite fit the stereotype of those who rise to the top of the profession. I'm sure seeing Janet Yellen as the Fed Chair (under Obama) and Laura D'Andrea Tyson as CEA (under Clinton) was inspirational to some female geeks. Similarly, having Roger Ferguson as Fed Vice Chair under Clinton could have had the same effect on African American geeks weighing a choice between economics or some other field.
So, yeah, while this WH sometimes makes a fetish of nominating candidates from minority backgrounds to senior roles, I don't think diversity is as irrelevant for Fed appointments as you make it out to be.
These are all solid points, and I basically agree (I think I basically agreed with them in the article). Though I think we underestimate the costs of prioritizing diversity, and the costs are: 1) The more aggressively we pursue it, the more we're implementing a policy of discrimination, and 2) There will be instances in which the policy prevents you from hiring the best person for the job. To wit: I work in comedy, and if you implemented a "no Jews" policy (which you should absolutely not!), some would say "big deal -- just find someone from the remaining 98% of the population", but let me tell you: Shows will get a lot less funny if you can't hire Jewish writers.
I agree that if you fetishize appointing minorities to key jobs, you will likely wind up passing over very high-quality candidates AND settle for less well-qualified candidates. Bush Sr.'s pick of Clarence Thomas is a case in point - about as clumsy an effort at "doing" affirmative action exactly the wrong way, i.e., by putting in place a token mediocrity simply because he was one African-American replacing another.
But, as another poster pointed out, it is often the case that, for the top jobs, you have plenty of high-quality candidates to choose from, and you can easily pick a minority candidate without sacrificing quality and get a twofer for both quality and diversity. I believe that that is the case here with the Fed appointments.
It is harder to pull the same stunt in the rank-and-file - there just aren't enough minority economics Ph.D.s, though maybe that's a problem that having these candidates as Fed Governors will partially help solve by attracting more minority geeks into economics (though, tbh, I'd prefer they became coders and chip designers).
I'm glad you brought up the difference in difficulty between hiring for a few top-level jobs (should be plenty of good candidates available) and hiring for many mid-level jobs (you're more at the mercy of the demographics of your applicant pool). Because I think this is a real and important distinction. And I'm also glad you brought up Clarence Thomas, because yes: That should absolutely be a moment that makes everyone think "whose interests are being served here?"
Given that leadership positions are in fact overwhelmingly white and male and all the candidates are qualified, this seems like a win win. I agree with you on stupid white wokeness being bent on losing in general but not sure this is an example
Yes, it's easier when you're talking about a small handful of top-level jobs, but when you try to do it agency-wide, you have to basically implement a policy of race-based discrimination that will sometimes keep you from hiring the best candidate.
Possibly, but I haven’t seen it work out that way. There are usually multiple qualified candidates with different sets of strengths and weaknesses. I have never seen a less qualified candidate picked based on race, but there is definitely a sense of satisfaction when the top candidate also would broaden diversity. Not saying it never happens, just that I have seen it. Where it really has an impact on making sure recruiting efforts include HBCUs
I have seen it work out that way many times and so has everyone who works in entertainment (https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/hollywoods-new-rules). If there wasn't actually a conflict sometimes, then you wouldn't need the "prioritize diversity" rule; you could just go by the "hire the best person for the job" rule and it would all work out.
I tend to the view that people are not very good at determining the best person for the job - there's a lot of fuzziness in our evaluations of people. So, mostly, we'd be better off if we allowed a lot more ties, and then use diversity as the tiebreaker.
So instead of "these are both As, now I need to pick one to give an A+", you go "these are both As, let's give it to the one who is least similar to the existing team".
So my brother works for a fairly big company in a fairly high up position. His company just started really hammering "diversity." Instituting the Rooney rule where at least 2 candidates for every positions interviewed have to be "minority" (whatever that means) I would say he feels about this about the same way you do Jeff. It's important but it's also, a lot of times, statistical noise.
So he went through his companies hired and, well... His company is already around 15-16% black. and the US population is 14.2%. They're already doing better than the demographics. But it is all about appearances. But if his company says "Hey we already do better" then they will still get raked over the coals for not doing "enough." Except "enough" is never clearly defined.
The problem is it's also patronizing to just interview people based on the color of their skin. Their hiring process was ALREADY working.
What I really think the issue is in this country with all the super progressives is this; There aren't enough black people to go around and they can't make up 14% of EVERY job. This isn't a racism problem it's a physics problem.
There literally aren't enough black people for every one of these industries and colleges to hit their perceived "quota." Also, for a multitude of reasons. Black people like diverse and different things. I think you talked about it with improv. You can't just make black people like improv.
Though I concede that diversity in government appointments is probably a good thing. The theater surrounding it is the patronizing part. PLUS it just makes people wonder. They don't want to wonder, but they do. This has always been the problem with quota hiring. It causes distrust and suspicion and in the end just leads to more racism. Basically people start getting suspect if the person you're hiring or interviewing is actually qualified or just black. Which is a terrible position to both be in and to put someone in (The NFL actually has this problem with token interviews) . I grew up in an area, sadly, where it was commonly accepted that being white made it HARDER to get a job. (which was nonsense that I grew out of quickly thank goodness). But that attitude comes from somewhere. Mostly it comes from under-educated working class whites paying 5% attention to the news and seeing very, very bad messaging.
The only solution I really see as a real SOLUTION -- something that would really work long-term that isn't just a stopgap or something that allows us to muddle through -- is to, you know...completely fix society. Should be easy, right! Still: The more we can reduce discriminatory attitudes and remove barriers to advancement (like economic barriers), the more diversity will simply happen without any kind of organization-wide engineering being necessary.
That’s the thing though. Progressives have never been interested in that. This is why my favorite racism is progressive racism. Which doesn’t seem to have changed in 100 years going back to the eugenics movement within progressives way back.
They’ve always been simple mindedly interested in fixing race with the cunning use of numbers.
The question I always want to ask about quota programs is "what are your criteria for not needing this any more".
Like, my political party put in a gender quota program for selecting candidates to elected office, with a rule that once there were 40% women, we'd stop using it. The best bit is that we hit 40%, dropped the quota, and (against a lot of predictions) the number of women didn't drop back under, but kept going up. There are now 70% women and there's no quota rule at all.
We're about to try a quota rule for non-white people (BAME is the British equivalent to BIPOC) and that will be automatically dropped when we reach 15%.
> So he went through his companies hired and, well... His company is already around 15-16% black. and the US population is 14.2%. They're already doing better than the demographics. But it is all about appearances. But if his company says "Hey we already do better" then they will still get raked over the coals for not doing "enough." Except "enough" is never clearly defined.
This strikes me as a point in favor of explicit quotas. If the relevant rule were direct and specific, like "the target minimum percentage of black employees is the black share of the US population from the latest available Census" then 15% > 14.2% would be the end of the discussion. Easy.
Small tangent to backtrack to “abolish the police” for a sec.
I work a blue collar job in Los Angeles. Given its nature, its location, its pay, and its place at the entry level of the organization, it is overwhelmingly black and Hispanic; I’m literally the only white guy on the crew. I’d guesstimate about 1/4th are recently released convicts and this is the only job that would hire them in spite of their record.
The conversation weeks ago swung around to “defund the police” somehow. The consensus was interesting. They universally hated the LAPD and considered them roughly equivalent to a gang with a badge- casually violent, bullies, pricks, trigger happy, no oversight. But they also thought “defund the police” was the stupidest thing in the world.
The contradiction was resolved thusly: “Police will brutalize a [person of color] over nothing, but the thing is, there’s some [people of color] who *need* to get brutalized. Problem is these police don’t fuck up the right people.”
I suspect very few progressive activists live in neighborhoods where people do gangsta shit right outside your door.
That is exactly the thing. Very few progressive activists did grow up in areas like that.
They think inner cities aren’t full of crime but just a bunch of people being framed.
It’s also funny that these same people don’t realize that it’s mostly over progressive policies that these cops get to have the excuse to go “bust some skulls”. Eric garner was killed over selling cigarettes without paying a market distorting ridiculously high tax New York put on cigarettes.
Progressives can say that they don’t think he should have been “killed” over it. But they obviously think he should have at least went to jail over it since they wrote it into law in the first place.
An online friend of mine, who’s a classic “God, guns, and Murica” red stater but who is exceedingly philosophical and intellectual about it, has previously contended that the further one gets from rough-and-tumble hood rat working class culture, the less willing one is to contemplate law breaking as an option.
I suspect that the progressive attempts at curbing smoking through taxation were formulated with the assumption that people would either pay through the nose for their nicotine fix, or rationally decide to quit smoking; the idea of actually getting cigarettes in bulk elsewhereand selling them on the grey market to willing buyers trying to circumvent the tax never really clicked as a solution that people would hit upon.
Well that's the thing. They do these "things" Like high cigarette taxes in a place like NYC.. Which has not wall around it and new jersey with lower taxes is not that far. So it's easy enough to get get half price cigarettes. They do these things thinking that once it's law it will just work. Except all the laws and taxes and regulations have to be enforced at some point by someone if you want them to actually work! The problem I have is a lot of people warn of this. They're called economists. Or I guess historians in this context. You can't just fuck with supply and demand and not expect a black market response. And it makes me wonder how many kids, especially black kids, get their record started with little things like selling loosies which causes a downward spiral once they're in the system.
I've been watching police brutality for decades and it is a PROBLEM! For everyone. The problem is always weirdly framed to me by progressives. Follow me if this makes sense.
-They always say more black people are in prison for the same crimes than white people (true)
-So they say we need to stop police from profiling minorities. (true)
-So the solution to most progressives is just to get the number right.
If we could just get the black prison population down to that 14.2% number then voila! Equality. What a bizarre way to view the world.
Except I'm over here saying "Yeah but what if no one, white or black, or brown or whatever was in prison AT ALL for half of these things we're talking about?" It's not about getting the number balanced it should be about getting those numbers to 0.
Like you could just stop sending the cops after people for things like selling loosies, unpaid parking tickets, junk in the yard, expired registration, selling weed (we're getting better at least), and a myriad of other things.
There's a great book about this called "Punishment without crime" About the broken system of misdemeanors and warrants and how you can end up in prison for basically being bad at filling things out and responding to mail in essence.
Like, no, you won't go to jail for an unpaid ticket. But you will go to jail two years later after you ignored a summons, drove with a suspended license, then ignored that summons and fine.
Like, I have a strong distaste for "law and order" republicans. But at least I know where they stand! Progressives are wishy washy. They want so many laws, so many regulations and statutes. So many local ordinances. Then they turn around and are like "wait why are the police hassling all these people that we gave them the power to hassle?" It boggles the mind sometimes. It would be like taking an 18 year old dude, giving him a fog horn, dropping him off at a golf course and saying "Now no matter what you do don't you dare use that fog-horn to fuck with golfers. You won't get in trouble but just don't anyway" 7 times out of 10 that kid is going to fuck with those golfers!
I hadn't realised that loosies were cigarettes that were cheaper because of tax evasion.
Here (England), they do sell loosies - but to people who can't afford a full pack (or people who can't buy a pack because they're underage). Lots of people started smoking by buying loosies when they were in high school.
We do get tax evasion where cigarettes are brought from places with lower taxes, but those are usually 200s (ie boxes with ten packs of 20), not broken down; presumably because they have to be brought from Europe (usually just France, but sometimes people go further because they are even cheaper in Greece or Italy).
I mean they are just slang for loose cigarettes too. But, and I might be wrong, I don't think it's legal to sell individual cigarettes in many places in the USA, or if it is not many places do it. So mostly the slang has become associated with the black market.
No, they're illegal here too. But they are mostly sold to people who can't legally buy cigarettes at all (ie under age).
So the association is not just black market, but selling to kids, which makes the criminalisation seem more acceptable.
Black market cigs here tend to be 200s, usually labelled in a foreign language, and smuggled in by the vanload.
> So it's easy enough to get get half price cigarettes. They do these things thinking that once it's law it will just work. Except all the laws and taxes and regulations have to be enforced at some point by someone if you want them to actually work! The problem I have is a lot of people warn of this. They're called economists. Or I guess historians in this context.
As far as I can tell, historians and economists broadly agree that cigarette taxes and restrictions work, even with the impact of black markets. The historian I know of who's reviewed the issue most closely is Robert Proctor; his book Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition calls for an outright ban on the sale of cigarettes (the title kinda gives it away). Economists consistently find that taxes cut smoking, as in the studies I link in another comment (https://imightbewrong.substack.com/p/devils-advocate-are-people-demanding/comment/4628466) or other studies you can find in a minute or two on Google Scholar (e.g. https://www.nber.org/papers/w29145).
> Like you could just stop sending the cops after people for things like selling loosies, unpaid parking tickets, junk in the yard, expired registration, selling weed (we're getting better at least), and a myriad of other things.
The only one of these I think you could level against progressives is selling loosies (and if your strongest argument against cigarette taxes and restrictions is Eric Garner, I can just point to improved health on the benefits side of the ledger). Stereotypical progressives actively want selling weed legalized!
I'm sorry I didn't think I needed a stronger argument than the police strangling someone to death for avoiding a stupid tax. I will try not to let things like that affect me so much in the future!
As for weed legalization. Progressives don't care. Not truly. Or it wouldn't be a bureaucratic mess in most states that have legalized it with ridiculously high taxes, a stupidly high barrier to entry into the actual market. A stiff refusal to allow more of a market into the industry. Not to mention the years it takes to set up the infrastructure in order to sell something "safely" I guess that we figured out how to grow and sell 90 years ago pretty easily. Not to mention. Welcome to the party progressives! Nice of them to FINALLY come around, like when they finally came around on gay marriage.
Edit. Also hilarious to me that all of the anti science HYSTERIA when it comes to vaping comes almost directly from the hardcore progressives with their conspiracy theory nonsense. Vaping has helped more people curb smoking than helped. They don't care about people they care about being right, and being righteous.
> I'm sorry I didn't think I needed a stronger argument than the police strangling someone to death for avoiding a stupid tax. I will try not to let things like that affect me so much in the future!
You've needn't apologize; it's legitimate to count the police murder of Eric Garner as a cost of cigarette regulation. I just simultaneously think that cigarette regulations have improved, and saved, many other lives.
> As for weed legalization. Progressives don't care. Not truly. Or it wouldn't be a bureaucratic mess in most states that have legalized it with ridiculously high taxes, a stupidly high barrier to entry into the actual market. A stiff refusal to allow more of a market into the industry. Not to mention the years it takes to set up the infrastructure in order to sell something "safely" I guess that we figured out how to grow and sell 90 years ago pretty easily.
I'll cop to not knowing the details of how every legal-weed state's regulated weed, but I don't see that the taxes or bureaucracy are ridiculously onerous or anti-market. $17.5 billion of legal weed was bought in the US in 2020 (https://www.forbes.com/sites/willyakowicz/2021/03/03/us-cannabis-sales-hit-record-175-billion-as-americans-consume-more-marijuana-than-ever-before/), more than, say, chewing gum!
> Welcome to the party progressives! Nice of them to FINALLY come around, like when they finally came around on gay marriage.
I agree that progressives should've come round on weed sooner than the 1970s ("most liberals thought that the Government should not ban marijuana or adult access to pornography" says a 1970s NYT article; https://www.nytimes.com/1978/01/22/archives/more-conservatives-share-liberal-view-poll-shows-many-on-right-are.html), but I was responding to your comment about the present.
As for vaping, that's obviously a lot newer and I haven't seen nearly as much research about it. If you can point me to systematic reviews or meta-analyses confirming that it gets more people out of smoking than into it, I'd love to take a look!
And yet cigarette taxes do, in fact, curb smoking.
As early as the 1960s studies consistently reported that when cigarettes became more expensive, demand went down (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.2307/1237626). At least one paper (from 1986!) explicitly addresses the "'bootlegging' effect": https://www.jstor.org/stable/1924938. Or if you want new work, there's a cute paper (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0376871621003021) that exploited the compulsory movement of troops among military bases to see how different taxes changed troops' smoking behavior: troops sent to bases in higher-tax jurisdictions were more likely to quit.
Kinda suggests progressives might be ahead of you on whether this policy does what it's meant to!
Of course Cigarette taxes curb smoking. In fact you'd be hard pressed to find out where I said that so it's an interesting inference. and no they are not "ahead" of me whatever that means. OF course Demand goes down. I'm not saying they are wrong logically. I am saying they are wrong morally. IS there ANY doubt that prohibition curbed drinking? Of course it did! It would be absurd to say it didn't. If we banned cars automobile deaths would go down drastically.
You can make anyone stop doing anything if you point enough guns at them.
My guess is you haven't smoked. I might be wrong, maybe you did and you know how nefarious the addiction can be how you will spend whatever it takes to get that FIX. Especially if you are in a lower education bracket.
It is good to know that Eric Garners brutal death was numerically worth it though. Which I guess is always my point with progressives. They are SLAVISHLY utilitarian.
https://learning.hccs.edu/faculty/emily.klotz/engl1302-6/readings/the-ones-who-walk-away-from-omelas-ursula-le-guin/view
Me personally? I would be one of those that Walk Away from Omelas.
> Of course Cigarette taxes curb smoking. In fact you'd be hard pressed to find out where I said that so it's an interesting inference.
My comment there was a response to McJunker, not you, but I understand the confusion. I think Substack sometimes notifies people of replies even when they're replies to someone else.
> OF course Demand goes down. I'm not saying they are wrong logically. I am saying they are wrong morally. [...] It is good to know that Eric Garners brutal death was numerically worth it though. Which I guess is always my point with progressives. They are SLAVISHLY utilitarian.
I don't think it's "SLAVISHLY utilitarian" to think that saving thousands of lives with cigarette restrictions counts for more than one person's murder by police. Do you take the SLAVISHLY anti-utilitarian view that one murder outweighs thousands of other lives? Would you abolish the police because cops killed Eric Garner?
> My guess is you haven't smoked. I might be wrong, maybe you did and you know how nefarious the addiction can be how you will spend whatever it takes to get that FIX.
That's a reason to use cigarette taxes to discourage addiction in the first place! If you can put a teenager off smoking by hitting them in the wallet as they start, they're less likely to get hooked and become a lifelong smoker (which has about a 50/50 chance of killing them).
> Me personally? I would be one of those that Walk Away from Omelas.
I know the story and never found it convincing. Omelas would be a great improvement on our world; it makes only one child suffer. We do so much worse.
For me, in these sorts of positions - powerful and important, but not likely to inspire many 12 year olds - diversity of experience is useful. Someone who grew up poor (really poor, like "missed meals occasionally" poor) is likely to have a different perspective on how much harm unemployment does than someone who has never had to worry about money. And both of those are useful perspectives and both should be included on the Board. Motherhood will affect the view of those who have experienced it; the experience of being on the rough end of racism the same.
Even if the absolute best candidates are all white men, you probably still want some diversity, because you're less likely to get groupthink - but also it solves the problem of them all having the same blindspots.
But they're not role models, and people need to stop using role-model language when talking about positions that aren't role models. It's not about fairness to black people (the only black people that are affected by the colour of appointments to the Fed are black elite economists). It's about the fact that a diverse Board will be a better board because they will help cover each other's blind spots.
One day, I'll write a column about what a system that supports actual diversity would look like, because I agree: It's valuable when a team has diversity of experiences and skill sets (after all, you don't build a basketball team made entirely of power forwards). But that's rarely how we approach these things; more typically, we look at ascriptive traits and check boxes based on which traits we assume people have.
The other thing about this is the tendency to look at the appointments in isolation - "who is the best person for this job?" rather than as part of a team "who brings the most things that the team doesn't already have?"
To me this is why I appreciate a lot of the diversity that Biden is actually contributing to the courts, the Fed, etc. I think you are probably correct that the celebratory rhetoric that seems to confirm the idea of a strict racial quota is overwrought and unnecessary. But I’m not persuaded that even at this high of a level with small sample sizes, the being proactive about adding diversity isn’t a good thing. I think the more apt conversation here is about federal judges (frankly even more so state and county level judges but those are out of Biden’s control). Biden has nominated now 85 people to the Federal Courts as of today. A supermajority are women and a majority are people of color. Great. But let’s ignore the strictly demographic info for a minute and move to the professional experience. Nearly 25% of his nominees had long tenures as public defenders, something that is very underrepresented on the courts. Jennifer Sung is now the third Asian American woman on the 9th circuit. Cool, that circuit covers California so it makes sense. But she’s also a former union attorney. Labor side legal experience is sorely lacking in the federal courts. That kind of experience is worth highlighting and promoting. So I agree that the rhetoric of who is in these positions based on their demographics is a little overblown (though I do think a majority women Fed will have some substantive effect), but I think both the progressive activists who supposedly promote diversity and the critics of that approach can miss the picture of why diversity is important and what kinds of diversity matter. It can’t be about optics.
Yeah, high levels of government are absolutely the place where I think this type of thing makes the most sense, because: 1) As stated in the article, I think demographics do matter at top levels of government to give people faith that the government really does represent them; 2) There are vanishingly few of these top, top-level jobs and you get to hire basically anyone you want, so in almost all cases you should be able to find someone who is extremely good and arguably the best candidate regardless of race; 3) Most people are not in the running to be on the Fed Board, or the Supreme Court, or to be Vice President, so to the extent that it's a violation of the principle that you shouldn't discriminate based on race, it's a violation that only affects .00001% of the population (all of whom are phenomenally successful in their careers anyway).
The other thought I had that this comment focuses for me is that diversity measured in pure quantity is probably counterproductive tokenism. So economically at the firm level assigning quotas is probably the wrong approach. But in aggregate it’s probably instructive to look at a field, industry, type of position and analyze across the whole sector the demographics for said domain and ask the question why does this field vary from a random sample of the prime age population within our geography. I would guess a majority of the time the answer is banal and not actionable but sometimes it can lead to a system change that is good. But like you say there are literally only 7 Fed Governors, 9 Supreme Court Justices, and 1 VP. They are the sector.
Reading the comments and responses further down, I see several people have made my same point through different lenses. I guess I agree with your thesis but I’m confused by your choice of the Fed or more broadly Biden’s administrative appointments as the frame for said thesis because I think the purpose and strategy of Biden’s appointments are more in line with what you describe as successful diversification rather than paternalism for the sake of optics. If anything I think perhaps the most apt example of the latter was the choice of Vice President Harris to be on the ticket.
I chose this example simply because it was in the news this week, and because some of the rhetoric around it was overheated enough that it provided a stark example. Plus: Herman Cain. When I realized I'd get to write about Herman Cain again, my decision was made.
While I completely agree on the importance for such positions as the Federal Reserve Board members of resume over diversity, why must this be an either or choice? Can we not find any qualified candidates for such jobs who also send a message to young Americans that meritocracy does not mean the exclusion of some based on their heritage?
For top-level jobs, yes; it should be possible. It will be tougher for the entire organization, and at the organizational level you'd basically be implementing a policy of institutional discrimination, so there's a cost.
Also, there's a difference between "qualified" and "best person for the job." Typically, when hiring, we try to hire the best person, not just anyone who crosses a certain threshold.
I understand your point. However, there are numerous quality studies showing diversity in many organizations has proven to be a significant strength by bringing a wider variety of perspectives to both challenges and opportunities. I remain unwilling to surrender a need to consider the value of diversity as a factor along with every potential candidate’s qualifications for the job. Too often organizations choose, often for rather poor reasons, not to make the little extra effort it might require to consider the value of diversity.
I would be more comfortable if diversity meant actual diversity, i.e. getting to know the top candidates and figuring out which perspectives and experiences they might have (though there are limits to that -- some of my most formative experiences are things I'm not going to talk about in a job interview). But far more commonly, it's just box-checking; all candidates who have certain traits are assumed to have a diverse perspective, and all candidates who don't have those traits are assumed to not offer any diversity of perspective.
> However, there are numerous quality studies showing diversity in many organizations has proven to be a significant strength by bringing a wider variety of perspectives to both challenges and opportunities
Isn't this the point of Jeff's column, though, that the assumption that someone's gender or race automatically gives them a different perspective is inherently sexist/racist?
Yes -- it needs to be actual diversity of experience/viewpoint! But frequently, it's just box-checking.
Gosh, Jeff, for someone who authors a Substack blog entitled “I Might Be Wrong,” can we at least get consideration that it is possible to have organizations in the real world who can take the time and trouble to manage workforce diversity well at every level in an organization. I am not suggesting it is easy only that it is possible and perhaps worth the effort it takes to do it well.
But then again … I might be wrong? At least I am willing to consider that possibility.
Well, it's called "I Might Be Wrong", not "I Am Definitely Wrong", and I haven't been persuaded (and I'm factoring in your comments farther down this thread).
But, look: We have a major point of agreement here. We agree that having a team with a different perspectives and experiences is desirable. We also seem to agree that "different perspectives and experiences" has to actually be real -- it can't be a crass euphemism for "just go hire a Black woman". I'm sure that some organizations do this in a real way, and it sounds like you run one of them. That's great; if I ever run an organization, I'll do things the same way.
But I feel that it's important that we cut the bullshit here: That is very often not how these things work in the real world. Frequently, it's "go hire _______ so that Twitter doesn't give us shit." That's the ugly reality. And we KNOW that that was the reality in this case: Activists didn't ask for a diversity of viewpoints on inflation, or a diversity of work experience (everyone's an academic!), or for someone who grew up working class. They asked for more Black people on the Board, and that's what they got. And we know this because their priorities were stated in public letters.
Yes, but not always. There are many businesses in the real world here on earth one that understand what real diversity means. I know, I founded and ran one of them.
Why do so many assume diversity is limited only to race (which is incidentally a societal construct not based on any genetic distinction, particularly in a society where “multi-racial” backgrounds are increasingly common) or gender. Diversity has a much broader definition than merely race and gender. I stand by my essential point that quality studies have shown repeatedly that many organizations with greater degrees of diversity have shown superior performance on many objective measures to less diverse organizations. This is a fact not merely an opinion. This has been ascribed by the researchers involved, as stated previously, to the broader perspectives to both challenges and opportunities contributed by more diverse organizations.
My point is not to elevate consideration of diversity over qualifications and merit. The point is why can a better answer be to consider both? Organizations who make a considered effort to do so seem to have no problem doing this. From personal experience founding and running a global technology business with over 1500 employees I can state confidently it is both possible and produces good results.
I am going to take one more attempt at this as I feel it is important. The real meaning of diversity is people thinking differently about lots of things, primarily in the way they approach problems and challenges in any particular field or endeavor. Those different perspectives are most often the product of diverse life experiences. Some of that diversity of life experiences may be related to race or gender but that is such a limited spectrum of all that makes up anyone’s life experiences.
Now to be specific to thinking differently within a group of Federal Reserve Board members … would it be best if all the Board members agreed that their most important responsibility was managing the rate of inflation? Therefore their entire field of study and work to date had been concentrated in how monetary and Federal Reserve Policy impacted the rate of inflation. In fact, all of them had an extensive history of well respected articles and studies on that topic. Or alternatively, would it be better to have a diversity of views and experience amongst the Board members about the importance for the Federal Reserve in managing not just inflation, but also unemployment, and economic growth as well. It seems perhaps a diversity of experience, expertise, and views might be a good thing. And incidentally, but not coincidently, a diversity of life experiences preceding their Federal Reserve Board appointments might help contribute to those differing views and perspectives. Although all of them might be top notch economists, and economic policy experts.
I believe that those who understand that the real meaning of diversity is not about checking boxes but about bringing together people who “do not all think alike” and instead bring a diversity of thought and life experiences.
Just to cite another example, in reading Doris Kearns Godwin’s book on Lincoln, “A Team of Rivals,” a diverse team of people who thought differently and contributed different perspectives seemed to work well for him.
And yes, before anyone contributes the witty but dark observation that it also resulted in him getting shot, I know that. But he is still recognized by most historians as among if not the best President of the U.S. So he must have gotten some things right.
"I believe that those who understand that the real meaning of diversity is not about checking boxes but about bringing together people who “do not all think alike” and instead bring a diversity of thought and life experiences." -This. This is a beautiful sentiment, really! and I agree. The problem is those people are so few and far between that they do not even make up a vocal minority of people who preach diversity.
Like I am a proud atheist (a word I don't like but use for simplicity). Can I get a proud, outspoken atheist on the fed?
A lot of these people aren't in it for the hard work because, well hard work is hard, they're in it for the ride. They're in it to dunk on racists (which, checking, yeah to this day has yet to make anyone not racist).
I want the best possible people building my bridges, running my nuclear reactors, and running the Fed.
"That's the slippery slope to meritocracy."
I guess I'm a die-hard progressive, and I guess I was quite shocked by the Pew poll's numbers. At this point a stock talking point against affirmative action is that it's anti-Asian, so it was a surprise to see (English-speaking) Asians being far MORE supportive than whites of race in deciding college admissions. More supportive than blacks, even, if I lump the "Major factor" and "Minor factor" percentages together.
I always liked this perspective on the inspiration for the 9/9/9 plan: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/herman-cain-999-sim-city_n_1008952?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003
I have seen articles lamenting the lack of diversity in the economics profession - not enough women, pifflingly small numbers of African-Americans and other minorities, etc. I don't think it's unimportant that the field of Economics be diverse, since it is not truly a science - it merely tries to be one, and often ties itself up in knots trying to do so.
Having diverse viewpoints being brought to bear on interpreting economic data, and even knowing WHAT data to collect that would be relevant and insightful, could be influenced by the experiences of the people doing the research.
Fed Governors, senior Fed staffers, Treasury types and members of the CEA are seen by the Economics community as the most visible practitioners of their profession. So, having both qualified and diverse wonks on the Fed could be an inspiration to young economists/economist-wannabes who might otherwise feel like they don't quite fit the stereotype of those who rise to the top of the profession. I'm sure seeing Janet Yellen as the Fed Chair (under Obama) and Laura D'Andrea Tyson as CEA (under Clinton) was inspirational to some female geeks. Similarly, having Roger Ferguson as Fed Vice Chair under Clinton could have had the same effect on African American geeks weighing a choice between economics or some other field.
So, yeah, while this WH sometimes makes a fetish of nominating candidates from minority backgrounds to senior roles, I don't think diversity is as irrelevant for Fed appointments as you make it out to be.
These are all solid points, and I basically agree (I think I basically agreed with them in the article). Though I think we underestimate the costs of prioritizing diversity, and the costs are: 1) The more aggressively we pursue it, the more we're implementing a policy of discrimination, and 2) There will be instances in which the policy prevents you from hiring the best person for the job. To wit: I work in comedy, and if you implemented a "no Jews" policy (which you should absolutely not!), some would say "big deal -- just find someone from the remaining 98% of the population", but let me tell you: Shows will get a lot less funny if you can't hire Jewish writers.
Aren't ivy league schools dealing with this exact issue vis a vis Asian admissions?
I agree that if you fetishize appointing minorities to key jobs, you will likely wind up passing over very high-quality candidates AND settle for less well-qualified candidates. Bush Sr.'s pick of Clarence Thomas is a case in point - about as clumsy an effort at "doing" affirmative action exactly the wrong way, i.e., by putting in place a token mediocrity simply because he was one African-American replacing another.
But, as another poster pointed out, it is often the case that, for the top jobs, you have plenty of high-quality candidates to choose from, and you can easily pick a minority candidate without sacrificing quality and get a twofer for both quality and diversity. I believe that that is the case here with the Fed appointments.
It is harder to pull the same stunt in the rank-and-file - there just aren't enough minority economics Ph.D.s, though maybe that's a problem that having these candidates as Fed Governors will partially help solve by attracting more minority geeks into economics (though, tbh, I'd prefer they became coders and chip designers).
I'm glad you brought up the difference in difficulty between hiring for a few top-level jobs (should be plenty of good candidates available) and hiring for many mid-level jobs (you're more at the mercy of the demographics of your applicant pool). Because I think this is a real and important distinction. And I'm also glad you brought up Clarence Thomas, because yes: That should absolutely be a moment that makes everyone think "whose interests are being served here?"
I doubt that most voters even know what the Fed is or does. So, you’re probably debating amongst a very small group.
Given that leadership positions are in fact overwhelmingly white and male and all the candidates are qualified, this seems like a win win. I agree with you on stupid white wokeness being bent on losing in general but not sure this is an example
Yes, it's easier when you're talking about a small handful of top-level jobs, but when you try to do it agency-wide, you have to basically implement a policy of race-based discrimination that will sometimes keep you from hiring the best candidate.
Possibly, but I haven’t seen it work out that way. There are usually multiple qualified candidates with different sets of strengths and weaknesses. I have never seen a less qualified candidate picked based on race, but there is definitely a sense of satisfaction when the top candidate also would broaden diversity. Not saying it never happens, just that I have seen it. Where it really has an impact on making sure recruiting efforts include HBCUs
I feel like my tone in my comment below was too curt; I apologize. I like having these back-and-forths!
I have seen it work out that way many times and so has everyone who works in entertainment (https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/hollywoods-new-rules). If there wasn't actually a conflict sometimes, then you wouldn't need the "prioritize diversity" rule; you could just go by the "hire the best person for the job" rule and it would all work out.
I tend to the view that people are not very good at determining the best person for the job - there's a lot of fuzziness in our evaluations of people. So, mostly, we'd be better off if we allowed a lot more ties, and then use diversity as the tiebreaker.
So instead of "these are both As, now I need to pick one to give an A+", you go "these are both As, let's give it to the one who is least similar to the existing team".
You were talking specifically about govt where I work. I can’t speak to entertainment