It’s not always about racism. I preferred hiring people that I knew were good workers or were referred to me by people I trusted to have good judgement over someone who was maybe better on paper. An unfortunate side effect of that is my social circle early in my career was mostly other white people but I never rejected or thought less of someone because of their race. It was just that the places I worked always made it a pain in the ass to reopen a position when someone quit or was fired and I couldn’t afford to gamble on an unknown. If no one was referred to me then whoever I hired was based off qualifications and how they interviewed. As I got older and met more people of different backgrounds those recommendations became more diverse.
All that being said DEI policies do solve the problem (other than the having to hire an unknown that would be hard to replace if they don’t work out). It would be better for people to expand their social circle and meet more people on their own but I don’t know how you would enforce that.
I preferred hiring people that I knew were good workers or were referred to me by people I trusted to have good judgement over someone who was maybe better on paper.
An unfortunate side effect of that is my social circle early in my career was mostly other white people.
Right, and your statement proves that individual racism isn’t required for oppresion to exist, cuz you’re pretty much defining systemic racism. Many white people don’t know many POC because of deliberate, decades-long systemic segregation practices (e.g red-lining) that push us towards race-defined classes.
Yeah, agreed. That’s what I was trying to get at with the last part of my comment. As time went on my circle widened and I got to know more diverse people the candidates getting recommended to me became more diverse. DEI, even the boogeyman version people like to complain about makes that happen much faster rather than organically.
It’s not always about racism. I preferred hiring people that I knew were good workers or were referred to me by people I trusted to have good judgement over someone who was maybe better on paper. An unfortunate side effect of that is my social circle early in my career was mostly other white people but I never rejected or thought less of someone because of their race. It was just that the places I worked always made it a pain in the ass to reopen a position when someone quit or was fired and I couldn’t afford to gamble on an unknown. If no one was referred to me then whoever I hired was based off qualifications and how they interviewed. As I got older and met more people of different backgrounds those recommendations became more diverse.
All that being said DEI policies do solve the problem (other than the having to hire an unknown that would be hard to replace if they don’t work out). It would be better for people to expand their social circle and meet more people on their own but I don’t know how you would enforce that.
Right, and your statement proves that individual racism isn’t required for oppresion to exist, cuz you’re pretty much defining systemic racism. Many white people don’t know many POC because of deliberate, decades-long systemic segregation practices (e.g red-lining) that push us towards race-defined classes.
Yeah, agreed. That’s what I was trying to get at with the last part of my comment. As time went on my circle widened and I got to know more diverse people the candidates getting recommended to me became more diverse. DEI, even the boogeyman version people like to complain about makes that happen much faster rather than organically.