"Twice As Good To Get Half As Much"

[sfy]

Tell me what I know. I would love to lay out some examples, but let me wait until I'm really ready to quit lol. I just know where I work, mediocrity is a lifestyle, if not a hobby, for some, and for others, would never fly.

[gazpacho]

Yep, this is ALL day, everyday--in my professional setting. My African American colleagues and I often talk about non-Black colleagues engaging in professional foolery. Much of the time, it isn't even addressed (or explained away). The stories that I could tell!

[soxin2]

I am ashamed to admit I had never even heard this expression until Scandal and then came here to see it as a "well duh" statement.

I'm not saying I wasn't aware the sentiment was experienced and felt, just that I didn't know there was such a succinct description of it.

I always felt that I had to prove myself due to my socioeconomic status, but I did also experience some white presumption that "of course" I would have access to a car once I turned 16 and got my license. Nope. Anyways, only tangentially related.

Hopefully people become more aware of their own bias.

(Unfortunately tho, not holding my breath)

[downtoearth]

Oct 14, 2015 7:40:06 GMT -5 1234FIF! said:

Black Workers Really Do Need to Be Twice as Good

www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/why-black-workers-really-do-need-to-be-twice-as-good/409276/?utm_source=SFTwitter

...

The researchers constructed an economic model based on labor market outcomes for unemployed workers. They build on existing data about job duration, unemployment duration, and lifetime earnings, and then simulate how companies determine whether or not new hires are a good fit.

...

I am not questioning the results or the fact that it's true for so many, but what exactly did the researchers do? They made an algorithm/computer model to simulate how companies review, hire, and fire based on real-life data or they used actual data to study this? This part is confusing.

[omgzombies]

Oct 14, 2015 10:44:10 GMT -5 soxin2 said:

I am ashamed to admit I had never even heard this expression until Scandal and then came here to see it as a "well duh" statement.

I'm not saying I wasn't aware the sentiment was experienced and felt, just that I didn't know there was such a succinct description of it.

I always felt that I had to prove myself due to my socioeconomic status, but I did also experience some white presumption that "of course" I would have access to a car once I turned 16 and got my license. Nope. Anyways, only tangentially related.

Hopefully people become more aware of their own bias.

(Unfortunately tho, not holding my breath)

I was given this speech about being a woman, it wasn't until middle school that I realized that it was usually used in the context of race.  It's horrible that parents feel the need to have this discussion with their kids either way.

[downtoearth]

Oct 14, 2015 11:31:11 GMT -5 omgzombies said:

Oct 14, 2015 10:44:10 GMT -5 soxin2 said:

I am ashamed to admit I had never even heard this expression until Scandal and then came here to see it as a "well duh" statement.

I'm not saying I wasn't aware the sentiment was experienced and felt, just that I didn't know there was such a succinct description of it.

I always felt that I had to prove myself due to my socioeconomic status, but I did also experience some white presumption that "of course" I would have access to a car once I turned 16 and got my license. Nope. Anyways, only tangentially related.

Hopefully people become more aware of their own bias.

(Unfortunately tho, not holding my breath)

I was given this speech about being a woman, it wasn't until middle school that I realized that it was usually used in the context of race.  It's horrible that parents feel the need to have this discussion with their kids either way.

Me too.  I heard it growing up in middle school from my parents about being a girl, but we're all white. I didn't realize until college and moving out of state that it was probably from a racial origin. 

[josieposy]

Don't read the comments. Eeek.

[skwcm80]

Oct 14, 2015 17:56:09 GMT -5 pennypenny said:

I feel like I need to send this to upper management here. Oh the stories I could tell. Some of you have heard them.

I could tell some stories if this was a safe place. 

[ESF]

Years ago, I worked on a report that got a lot of media attention. The report was about black men in a very particular high profile job. There were only like 6 or 7 black men who had ever gotten one of these jobs (at any given time, maybe 30 or so people have this job), and the report basically was about how they had to be twice as good to get the job, and they were fired way before the white men who had the jobs (there were no women in this field).

Anyway, after spending a couple months with this data and helping on that report, it's really not surprising to me at all that this is the case everywhere.

[ESF]

FWIW, I would say that even Obama is not immune to this, and I'm not even talking about the criticism that the wing nuts give him.

I think if a white man had reformed health care and killed Obama Bin Laden, they could just retire and be seen as the liberal Ronald Reagan. Obama has had to convince even his biggest supporters that he's an amazing president.

[cville]

Although I don't experience it personally (obviously), I can absolutely recall anecdotes that bear out what the data shows.

Example: At my former firm we hired summer associates from law school X on occasion. School X is a good regional school, but it's second tier and the firm typically doesn't hire second tier school candidates (exceptions made for outstanding candidates from schools with strong local ties, like school X).

We had an incredibly strong candidate (tippy top grades, good work experience, personable) from school X who is a black man and the debate about extending him an offer was ridiculous (I was involved with hiring). All of a sudden there were these deep, concerning questions (from two white men, natch) about whether we really wanted to be farming candidates from that school blah blah we should focus on T14 schools maybe we need to get a second writing sample, etc. My colleague started listing all of our coworkers who'd come from school X, including three of our most recently promoted partners. Then she just stared them down. Now, we hired him (and he kicked ass), but that the same school was a concern where it hadn't been before (and that someone had the audacity to suggest getting a second fucking writing sample from him) can't be explained by anything other than race, imo.

[pixy0stix]

Dammit. I keep coming in here to read, but haven't said anything. I don't really have anything to add, I'm just absorbing.

[penguingrrl]

I find this so disturbing and wonder how as a society we can fix this. So many people don't realize they are racist and won't look introspectively at themselves to realize their unconscious bias. It's so hard to correct something Hong people deny is there. To many it's like not wearing a white robe and burning crosses means that clearly they aren't racist and all is hunky dory.

[emilyj]

We talked about this briefly in my grad class last week. I want to have them read this article now, because I think it will be really eye opening for most of my students.

I have heard comments from my coworkers that reinforce these ideas. It's frustrating.

[fortnightlily]

I haven't witnessed this, but only for the related reason that I've never had a lot of black coworkers on my team, much less black women (software development)

[zelda25]

Oct 15, 2015 9:20:21 GMT -5 ESF said:

FWIW, I would say that even Obama is not immune to this, and I'm not even talking about the criticism that the wing nuts give him.

I think if a white man had reformed health care and killed Obama Bin Laden, they could just retire and be seen as the liberal Ronald Reagan. Obama has had to convince even his biggest supporters that he's an amazing president.

YEEESSS. Every time I hear some yahoo nattering on about how awful Obama is--"the worse president ever!!" "Destroying our country!!"--I just know it's a lot of code for "he shouldn't be there because he's black." They never offer specifics for how he's the worst president ever or how he's destroying the country. I think it's supposed to be understood that it must be true because he's gotten above himself.

[downtoearth]

Oct 15, 2015 10:39:37 GMT -5 @246baje said:

Oct 15, 2015 10:23:53 GMT -5 @littlemoxie said:

I can't imagine how tiring it would be to constantly have to fight this battle. It pisses me off that anyone should have to.

And then convincing people that it is real. I work with someone right now who thinks that white guys are disproportionately getting cut in this downturn in the oil industry. Since white guys are a disproportionate portion of our technical staff it kinda makes sense.

This same person is very friendly and supportive of me to my face but then when I got an informal leadership position (which indicates formal leadership might be in the cards) he was talking shot about me and my ability to do the job behind my back.

All my girlfriends (only 5 or so) in oil and gas got out after about a decade on the job for this reason - moving up meant becoming the enemy to a lot of males. Sorry you are living this.

[wawa]

I've always totally believed that the "be twice as good" thing was real, but how it's framed in this article is interesting specifically because it speaks to the implicit biases of those who are all, "but I'm not racist, so how could I be part of the problem"

A hiring manager who hesitates over somebody with a spottier employement record isn't (necessarily) thinking, "well...but black guy. eh." If you ask them to talk out their thought process it'd all be totally logical stuff. But then they'd watch that person closer, and then catch the mistakes, and then thanks to confirmation bias not allowing them to recognize that they're only seeing what they expect and not looking at everybody equally - they think they were right to hesitate in the first place. And then when that "bad" employee is a black person enough times you start equating the two and then you tip over from implicit bias from outside factors to the full out racist "I'm not racist, but..." where they start to think that the pattern they've noticed really is because black people suck and not because there are confounding factors and their own biases skewing their data.

It's a shitty cycle.

[cville]

Oct 15, 2015 11:12:54 GMT -5 1234FIF! said:

Are you mad at me or with me?

(I'm home sick so I'm a little slow on comprehension today).

[cville]

Oct 15, 2015 11:19:03 GMT -5 1234FIF! said:

Oct 15, 2015 11:17:48 GMT -5 cville said:

Are you mad at me or with me?

(I'm home sick so I'm a little slow on comprehension today).

WITH you! LOL 

Phew!

That gif is how I felt, except I'm shorter and a woman. The two men, were you to ask them would swear they were thinking only about school ranking. On stacks and stacks of bibles. And, leaving aside their extreme hypocrisy, they wouldn't give a second thought to all of the stuff that affect things like opportunities for people of color to get access to "top tier" law schools.

Fortunately, my colleague shut them down with her hard evidence. She was an ice queen in that meeting, I was impressed.

[LadySusan]

I come bearing data.  As much as we complain, white women don't have it that bad:




And the other thing, perhaps more troubling thing is that white women have made tremendous progress over the decades but other groups have been left out in the cold:



(Is this a good place to vent that these models don't seem to include Asian men and women?)

[shauni27]

None of this surprises me. It makes me sad, and I don't experience it on a daily level as I live in a rural, white area, but in no way am I shocked.

Angered? Sad? Frustrated? Yes.

Shocked? No.

[shauni27]

Oct 15, 2015 11:31:00 GMT -5 LadySusan said:

I come bearing data.  As much as we complain, white women don't have it that bad:




And the other thing, perhaps more troubling thing is that white women have made tremendous progress over the decades but other groups have been left out in the cold:



(Is this a good place to vent that these models don't seem to include Asian men and women?)

When you SHOW the disparity in charts like this, it is even more upsetting and so, so obvious. 

[chedifuen]

Those statistics are frightening and shocking. Obviously, I was a aware of the disparity in wages but I can truly say I didn't realize it was this much of a difference. I'm horrified!

[ttt]

Oct 15, 2015 11:31:00 GMT -5 LadySusan said:

I come bearing data.  As much as we complain, white women don't have it that bad:




And the other thing, perhaps more troubling thing is that white women have made tremendous progress over the decades but other groups have been left out in the cold:



(Is this a good place to vent that these models don't seem to include Asian men and women?)

I've read elsewhere that Asian men and women actually make more than white men and that the disparity between Asian men and women is much smaller (possibly reversed?).

ETA I remembered it wrong - Asian women make much less than Asian men but both make more than their counterparts of all other races:

www.aauw.org/research/the-simple-truth-about-the-gender-pay-gap/

[goldiehaze]

Oct 15, 2015 11:08:57 GMT -5 pennypenny said:

Oct 15, 2015 10:51:50 GMT -5 @246baje said:

They can suck it. I have one black female role model in upper management. I know one black supervisor. They've said they think I can get to the level of management one up from supervisor in my career. Watch me prove them wrong. I'm going to rock this shit and then I am going to encourage the black women behind me.

At least you have one. There are 2, maybe 3, black females who seem to be moving up, but 2 of them have no respect from their subordinates (mostly justified). So I don't even want them to be a mentor because I don't want to be like them. And I can only think of 1 female of any race who moved up and still had the respect of her subordinates, peers, and higher ups. ONE. And that is not an exaggeration. And she is about to retire.

In my field, I tend to be the only black person. In the 15 years in this field (fundraising in the arts), I may have only met 2 or 3 black women in management positions. My colleagues look at me like some kind of unicorn. And donors say the most fucked up shit.

[pixy0stix]

Oct 15, 2015 12:02:18 GMT -5 @koko said:

Oct 15, 2015 9:10:34 GMT -5 1234FIF! said:

For once, I didn't. I'm learning. LOL

Are you reading and absorbing too?  Because I've heard that's the most important part.

Is this a dig at me, @koko?

I'm going to tag whoever it was in the other thread that said she wanted to see this happening, cause really no one can win. I read the article, I didn't have anything to say. I've seen those charts before. I KNOW THIS. Yet I had nothing constructive to add.

Yes, I'm defensive.

[Michelle]

Two contributions:

It's my job to look for disparate impact in our company. (All of HR looks for disparate treatment, I look at the impact of decisions people don't realize have bias in them that result in biases against minorities). BECAUSE of systemic discrimination and retaliation in our society (and perhaps in our company although I hope not), many employees are uncomfortable self-identifying as a minority race.

When I look at employee engagement data, on the surface there is nothing statistically significant about Black employee responses vs. White (responses trend lower but not at a statistically significant level). BUT those who refused to self-identify have statistically lower scores on almost all of the engagement questions, particularly those that seek to address inclusion, career progression, and respectful treatment. But since they refuse to self-identify one can't draw conclusions, right?

Well sure, if you want the easy way out. I decided to test my hypothesis that it was likely the number of those who declined to self-identify were actually non-whites. Since we had >90% participation rate I filtered white responses and non-white responses and compared that to our general population of white vs. non white employees and found that most whites were accounted for in the white responses at a 90% participation rate. Simple math shows that the "decline to self-identify" group are likely non-white, but there IS the 10% lack of participation that could throw in an error calculation there. Breaking that distribution down further couldn't be back calculated without violating our anonymity commitment (we only look at racial demographics in aggregate, not by departments).

But now I have some reasonable suspicion (beyond my biased hypothesis) that there are statistically lower scores for those groups on certain items (and higher on others) but I can't pinpoint the areas where we can investigate further because *if* the "decline to self-identify" groups had self-identified I could more easily drill down to certain service lines or job categories (because their numbers would stay visible in our tool as long as we had a minimum level of "aggregate" responses). Once a minimum number is no longer visible our tool refuses to provide data back, which ensures our commitment to anonymity to prevent retaliation (a great thing, but a limiting factor for my efforts).

At least I know it is still there so I can target some programming and outreach. But I'd have more support for things like affinity group funding and such if the "decline to self identify" folks self-identified to help make the statistics more powerful (if the suspicion is correct).

Conclusion: It's a vicious cycle - "you" (you=this group of folks) don't want to self-identify and face retaliation, but I can't help unless you take that risk. :\ And no one believes that management aren't able to filter by demographics like race, sex, etc. They can't, but employees don't believe it.

Second contribution:
I think that for-profit schools are exacerbating this problem, and I wish I could start a foundation that educates first generation college students on not only choosing schools but choosing financing methods. I want to assist them with seeing exactly how long it will take to pay off their loans based on the combination of those two choices, and how that will impact their future economic viability in society.

In our applicant pool, the students who have degrees from non-accredited for-profit schools are disproportionately Blacks and Hispanics with addresses in poor neighborhoods. Some for-profit schools are ok. But many are shams and they target communities where few people have a college education so they don't know what to ask to help guide their kids in their choices. They don't know that a for-profit school that is not accredited will not provide an education that is taken seriously by employers, so you might pay twice as much to get that piece of paper and you will spend half your adult life paying for it without actually getting the job you thought you were getting an education to qualify for, thus you aren't earning much extra on top of what you'd earn if you didn't have it.

I see students not realizing that the school they went to either didn't prepare them well as shown by their performance, OR they realize that bachelor's degree doesn't count enough so they decide the solution is to invest even more loan money into master's degrees because they think they have to have a Master's degree - because you have to be twice as good to get ahead.

Overcoming prejudice that people don't want to admit is there is enough of a battle that I know I'm lucky I don't face. Adding to it the challenge of navigating the world of for-profit vs. non-profit higher education makes for a double/triple/quadruple whammy against blacks and hispanics that I see in our applicant pool. And it's heartbreaking.

It's not something you understand until you have to tell a single mom who just quit a job to come work for your company that the offer is rescinded because she was taken for a ride by the online school that took her money and gave her worthless piece of paper, making her no longer qualified for the job she was offered after all.
The sobs will haunt me forever.

[downtoearth]

Oct 15, 2015 11:31:00 GMT -5 LadySusan said:

I come bearing data.  As much as we complain, white women don't have it that bad:


...chart

And the other thing, perhaps more troubling thing is that white women have made tremendous progress over the decades but other groups have been left out in the cold:

...chart

(Is this a good place to vent that these models don't seem to include Asian men and women?)

We talked about this a month or so ago.  The chart from another article had through 2013 and showed that white women are back to 78% now and black women back to like 64% (so lost some ground following recession issues).  But based on your data, in 40 years white women have gained 21.8% increase in salary and black women only 21.4%?  But black men have only increased 5.5% in the same time.  Why is that? It seems like if women can make up 20% of their deficiency that black men should be much closer to 100% by now, but this shows that race is a harder salary hurdle than gender IMO. 

[downtoearth]

Oct 15, 2015 12:31:28 GMT -5 ttt said:

Oct 15, 2015 11:31:00 GMT -5 LadySusan said:

I come bearing data.  As much as we complain, white women don't have it that bad:


...chart

And the other thing, perhaps more troubling thing is that white women have made tremendous progress over the decades but other groups have been left out in the cold:

...chart

(Is this a good place to vent that these models don't seem to include Asian men and women?)

I've read elsewhere that Asian men and women actually make more than white men and that the disparity between Asian men and women is much smaller (possibly reversed?).

ETA I remembered it wrong - Asian women make much less than Asian men but both make more than their counterparts of all other races:

www.aauw.org/research/the-simple-truth-about-the-gender-pay-gap/

Yup, this is the same info I was looking at from AAUW, but a different article:

ETA: Link to article from AAUW - www.aauw.org/2014/09/18/gender-pay-gap/