Oh I see. So no ugly or short people? That is what society should do? Better. How frightful.
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No of course not, but maybe find ways to erase the advantages of our biases. When orchestras instituted blind auditions where the player was hidden behind a screen, suddenly all the women sounded better. Imagine that!
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If shorter people are being disadvantaged then find ways to take that out of contention. Maybe candidates are already seated when interviewers come into the room, or the initial interviews are held virtually so that people have no sense of anyone’s height. With respect to attractiveness, perhaps the first interview is a phone interview or a discussion of a candidate’s task for the application, and the candidate is sharing their screen explaining why they responded to the task the way they did.
Additionally, bringing awareness to hiring teams of biases towards taller or more attractive people can help those individuals to check their own thinking to see if their preference for one candidate over another is because of factors that are going to affect the job performance or if it’s because they think the person will make an attractive addition to the team.
There are definitely solutions to problems that don’t mean the extermination of categories of people.
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Eliminate the unearned advantages, not eliminate the people. Is that really how you interpreted that?
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I don’t think I’ve seen the term unconscious/implicit bias used on this thread. Isn’t that a part of what we are talking about with privilege or unearned advantage?
When we interview someone, humans tend to have unconscious bias. Many are more likely to consider tall/attractive/male/white/light-skinned/younger candidates somehow better qualified (like the airline pilot example upthread.)
We need to educate people to be aware of these implicit biases so the biases are as neutralized as possible. That “levels the playing field” and takes away the unearned advantage for the tall/attractive/male/white/younger folks.
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Hi,
So I have not read the thread just bits and pieces. Yikes.
So I read this as " Does male privilege exists" . Of course it does and anyone saying it doesn’t is well…denying it.
My mother as a single parent with 4 small kids running around (6 years apart) had to drop her dream of college and make a life for her family. She had to make a career for herself so she went to work in a furniture store in the 70s-90s. These were all male dominant and very talking down to women. One thing they all didn’t know if my mother could sell rings around them. They looked down and talked down to her but she was strong and just gave it back to them. Within months she was the lead salesperson. She took a warehouse and groups the furniture together like you see in stores today. It wasn’t always that way. She become the manager and then their boss at some point. All school of hard knock types. It wasn’t easy. She passed at 92 3 years ago.
So fast forward to my wife during medical residency interview. It’s all a big men’s club. The crap she endured and during her residency training was unreal but she showed them up since she’s talented. Again giving the crap right back. She climbed her way to become the President of our medical society taking crap in the all men dominated boards. It’s an old men’s club.
I can give examples but just making a point.
I was bascially raised to some point by my 3 older sisters since my mother worked like 13-15 hours/day including Sunday’s . Each experienced it . My one sister was a Postal route worker. The postal service is very male dominate and yes she took crap all the way to the top and being a union rep and then lead it for her division . Fighting all the way up. Privileges given to male counterparts not given to the women.
Most industries are male dominated and women do pay the price for that. Not understanding that or denying to see the reality of this is bewildering to me. 10.4% of women are Fortune 500 Ceo’s. This is the high number in it’s 68 year history. That should speak to this.
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No. I understand that the “them” in the original post refers to disadvantages, not the people themselves. But what is the conclusion? The unearned disadvantages are shortness, ugliness, slowness etc. for example, and society “eliminates” the disavantages. If society is working to remove those disadvantages would it reason that eventually we won’t have people with those qualities. The definition of the purpose of society is scary to me.
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So you believe the outcome of greater social equity and a more robust meritocracy to be…the elimination of tall people? Not sure I buy that argument. Tall people will still be able to reach the high shelves. They just won’t be professionally promoted over their shorter colleagues.
So will tall people stop having tall babies? Are tall people currently specifically trying to produce tall babies? And they will make the decision to stop doing that because their offspring will not longer be promoted at higher rates?
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I would add “simply because of their height.”
If they are the best qualified for their demonstrated skills for the job at hand, and all candidates have been fairly assessed that way, then hire the tall guy.
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Yes, thank you, this is exactly what I meant but did not express clearly.
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? The original poster wrote:
I don’t agree with this. I don’t believe the goal of society should be to “eliminate” the disadvantages. Again, the “them” in the quote is the disadvantages not the people.
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I read this as eliminating things like unconscious/implicit bias.
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But you seem to believe that the elimination of the previously advantaged people would be the inevitable byproduct of the elimination of the advantage. At least that is how I understood this statement (as well as previous statements).
If you cure blindess, you eliminate a disadvantage. And you no longer have blind people. You didn’t eliminate the blind people, you eliminated the disadvantage.
I am not following your logic with regards to eliminating discrimination (which is what we are talking about here), at all.
If we eliminate bias for white folks=bias against POC, it does not follow that minorities cease to exist.
If we eliminate bias in favor of males=bias against women, it does not mean women cease to exist.
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Well obviously you wouldn’t want to eliminate the bias in favor of tall people if you are managing a basketball team.
Eliminating the bias in favor of attractive people strikes me as a more difficult situation. That sort of discrimination seems reasonable for say news anchors or actors. But in many other situations, customers may react more positively to an attractive salesperson or bartender and so buy more. Does it then make sense to eliminate a hiring bias in favor of attractive people even if we disapprove of those customers’ implicit bias?
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I could write a book on this, but I won’t. And even worse than the passengers are the other pilots, until they get to know you. The questions about your background, trying to figure out if you’re actually qualified….until they realize you’re more qualified than they are. What is really nice is that the younger generations, the millennials, don’t do this. They’re open minded and smart, and they don’t make the assumptions the older guys do. Things are clearly getting better.
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I was on a flight 6 months ago and both the pilot and the copilot were women!
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Just to play the devil’s advocate here, how should we approach sales type jobs? For better or worse, appearances do matter.
I would suggest that there are unearned privileges that are related to job performance and that is just the facts of life. If I am 5’ 8", I am not going to be in the NBA unless the NBA sets a quota that every team must have X players under 6’. I don’t think it is in societal interest to put its thumbs on the scale in those situations. On the other hand, there are unjust prejudices, like unequal pay for the same work based on gender and the excellent example of the musician audition. I acknowledge that there is a whole gray area related to opportunity determined by unearned privilege (wealth) that affect the ability to gain earned privilege (education/skills). That is the hard nut to crack.
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Oh, there are absolutely unearned advantages that can relate to job performance. Shaquille O’Neal’s kids will probably never make it to the Olympic stage as gymnasts, and even though she’s married to a big football player, the odds of Simone Biles’ kids becoming NBA players is also not that great.
With respect to sales…yeah, it’s not perfect. But think about @momofboiler1’s experience at the car dealership. If she was ready to buy and Brad Pitt was being a chauvinistic jerk, Brad Pitt wouldn’t close the sale. But if the hunchback of Notre Dame was being polite and considerate and treating her respectfully and answering all her questions appropriately, the hunchback would have gotten the sale.
If Brad Pitt and the hunchback were equally good at their job, then I acknowledge that Brad Pitt would likely make more sales. But I wonder how often the Brad Pitt gets the job offer when the hunchback would have been the better selection because of better skills of making the customer feel comfortable and at ease.
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