> That is to say that a white man will be openly discarded in favor of a minority/woman with a similar background when applying for the same job.
You just described affirmative action there. Your previous sentence doesn’t follow from this though:
> The performance required from a white man in an interview for the same job is higher.
This is true if and only if there are other applicants who are not white or male. Imagine that two white dudes with similar qualifications apply for the same job. How do you decide which one gets hired? The answer is often something like “A is a better cultural fit” or “B has a more likable personality” or, though this one won’t be spoken aloud, “C is more physically attractive.” And that’s that, the only person who minds in this case is the one passed over.
The problem is that “cultural fit” and “personality” and “attractiveness” are judgments that we tend to apply differently to people who don’t look like ourselves. There’s a lot more baggage around race and sex in America that influences these decisions, and the result has been the systemic disenfranchisement of women and people of color, especially black people. Affirmative action policies—preferring to hire from historically disadvantaged groups when all else is equal—are intended to counteract that tendency.
That’s what these companies are doing. People disagree on whether or not it’s a good idea. I personally think it is, until the industry (or perhaps the workforce as a whole) gets a lot closer to matching the demographics of the population.
(Edit: subject-verb agreement in a windy sentence)
You just described affirmative action there. Your previous sentence doesn’t follow from this though:
> The performance required from a white man in an interview for the same job is higher.
This is true if and only if there are other applicants who are not white or male. Imagine that two white dudes with similar qualifications apply for the same job. How do you decide which one gets hired? The answer is often something like “A is a better cultural fit” or “B has a more likable personality” or, though this one won’t be spoken aloud, “C is more physically attractive.” And that’s that, the only person who minds in this case is the one passed over.
The problem is that “cultural fit” and “personality” and “attractiveness” are judgments that we tend to apply differently to people who don’t look like ourselves. There’s a lot more baggage around race and sex in America that influences these decisions, and the result has been the systemic disenfranchisement of women and people of color, especially black people. Affirmative action policies—preferring to hire from historically disadvantaged groups when all else is equal—are intended to counteract that tendency.
That’s what these companies are doing. People disagree on whether or not it’s a good idea. I personally think it is, until the industry (or perhaps the workforce as a whole) gets a lot closer to matching the demographics of the population.
(Edit: subject-verb agreement in a windy sentence)