For those that don’t like the term colorblind:
If I were the boss of a company looking to hire an accountant, what would be wrong in being colorblind in my choice?
Nothing, it would be great. But how exactly are you going to achieve that?
By not being racist? Deciding to analyze them based upon their merit?
And this is verified how?
what do you mean?
I said I’d bail out of this discussion, but I’ll reiterate my point just this one time…
The whole “I’m color-blind” thing is supposedly an answer to charges of racism. But it’s circular logic. Being “not racist” and being “color-blind” is the same thing. I can say that I’m not racist, or I can say that I’m color-blind, but why should someone who has been oppressed believe me – just because I say so? I might not even know, because a lot of such things are subconscious. Do you think the Google guy who wrote the manifesto is color-blind? I bet he thinks he is.
Also, if I’m the CEO of some giant company, I may have to delegate the hiring process to senior employees below me. Even if I honestly want the hiring process to be “color-blind”, how am I going to guarantee that happens? How can I verify that my employees acted in a color-blind way? By accepting that it’s true if they say so? There generally need to be processes in place to ensure it is systemic and verifiable. Otherwise nobody would have any reason to believe it - it’s just words. It also wouldn’t hold up in court.
Being color-blind is an awesome goal, but again, just claiming that it’s so, isn’t compelling at all.
The claim of being color-blind is nearly always paired with the reality of being bias-blind.
you mean being blind to your own bias? Well, again I ask what the heck should you do? The best I can do is try to ignore skin color as much as possible and hire based on merit, and skills and qualifications. The best accountant gets the job.
Well, the first step is to be as aware as possible of all of your biases. Including the ones you didn’t think you had at first. The very first baby-step is to stop pretending you’re color-blind. Then there’s a matter of engaging with people who specialize in this sort of thing, attend training seminars, talk to people, listen to people, and so on. Yes, sensitivity training may often be an overscripted feel-good exercise even most of the time, but there’s often some nuggets of useful information if you pay attention. Such is any corporate seminar.
The next thing is to do what you can to counteract your biases. Have your hiring decisions done by a team that might be able to balance out each others’ biases. The team’s only consideration is to choose the best accountant – skills merit, qualifications – just like you said, but you may be surprised how often you disagree on such a straightforward thing. Also, teams are helpful in interviews, such as if there’s the bias I’ve seen a million times where every woman is asked to back up her claims of technical expertise, while men are assumed to have been honest on their resumes. All it takes is one interviewer who asks the right questions when the others forget to, and the whole team hears the answer. On top of that, use tiebreakers that counterbalance your acknowledged biases, that sort of thing.
Admitting you’ve been touched by racism is basically admitting you’re an American. People have survived worse.