From: solman@athena.mit.edu (Jason W Solinsky)
Subject: Re: Institutional racism in education
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 02:47:50 GMT

In article <1992Dec9.005725.25398@tse.uucp>, wayne@tse.uucp (Wayne Hines) writes:

|> Very interesting. *On the surface* it *looks* like two studies were done. You
|> liked the results of one of them so that study tried to be accurate. You 
|> disliked the results of the other so it was "trying to make a social 
|> statement". Notice I said "on the surface", and "looks". Please post your
|> reasonings for discounting the original survey. Please also post the source
|> of the later survey. (I hadn't heard of it).

The source, I don't know. I saw it in the Globe. The first study was very
limited and did not consider many factors related to financial stability.
As was latter verified by the second study, Blacks with identical data
on the initial study as Whites, turned out to be less financially stable.
(This makes sense considering that blacks start out with less money on the
whole.) The second study included a large number of additional factors which
the banks claimed skewed the original data. They did, but not enough to create
discrimination where there wasn't any. The second study also showed that
blacks were clearly getting the short end of the stick.

|> >I personally do not discriminate in these little ways and I am often quick
|> >to bring that up in arguments like this, but I would like to defend those
|> >actions.
|> >
|> >As we go through life we observe things. Because Blacks presently grow up
|> >in a different culture, with less money and a worse education, the things
|> >that people are likely to see blacks doing are related to lower incomes.
|> >The crimes people see committed are most likely to be committed by blacks
|> >for the same reasons listed above. It is only natural for any human being
|> >to associate these things together. This is, after all, how we think.
|> >
|> >Now we get to the interview. It can be for a job, or a loan, it doesn't
|> >really matter. There is an interviewer, and an interviewee. Both have
|> >done and seen trillions of things during their lifetimes, so many that
|> >nobody could possibly record all of it. If the interviewer could examine
|> >all of this information and had the time do perform some detailed analysis,
|> >he/she could probably make a ninety-nine percent accurate prediction of
|> >whether or not the person in question would default on the loan in question.
|> >
|> >But that is not what he is given. The interviewer is given a small glimpse
|> >of the interviewee. The interviewer's, any interviewer's, job is to match
|> >that small glimpse of the interviewee against his own personal experience.
|> >Thus, despite having very little information, a much more accurate
|> >determination is made of the potential for the loan candidate or job
|> >candidate to succeed.
|> >
|> >This is the basis for hiring the interviewer in the first place. If he/she
|> >could only make a decision based on facts that can be obtained by asking
|> >questions, his/her services would be worthless. But this is not the case.
|> >
|> 
|> No! This is not what the interviewer is hired for. Have you ever done 
|> interviewing before ?  Unfortunately your apologetic scenario only justifies
|> the actions of too many interviewers. The interviewer should not be matching
|> anything against his own personal experiences, but against established 
|> standards.

Tell me what those established standards are then. There aren't any. The
interviewer is only useful for pattern matching his perceptions of the
interviewee against a lifetime of experience and knowledge of the task at
hand.

Jason W. Solinsky
Newsgroups: alt.discrimination,soc.culture.african.american,misc.education