On 4/12/13 1:26 PM, Lou Berger wrote: > No argument from me, I'm just asking that a comment/position/question > that I don't understand be substantiated. And I'm telling you that I think the numbers are highly suggestive of bias. We can take a swing at getting a very rough handle on that but I'm actually not sure that we should because it appears to be the case that the cost of any remediation that some of us might want to undertake would be higher than the cost of living with bias in the system (this would be the considerable downside to consensus decision-making processes with a very large participant base). >> And I don't know if you intended to or not, but what you >> communicated is "The best candidates are nearly always >> western white guys," since that's who's being selected. >> That's a problematic suggestion. > > I certainly, in no way, shape, or form intended such an implication. I > have not idea how one could read it that way, [ ... ] A (male) friend once said that men are no more likely to notice sexism than fish are to notice water. I think that was far too broad but generally true. If I think that white western men are being selected in disproportion to their presence in the candidate pool, and I do, then telling me that "we only choose the best" is telling me that white, western men tend to be the best. Pretty much every organization that applauds itself for its meritocratic reward structure (to the extent that an I* gig is a "reward") and yet only advances white guys says the same thing. It is a trope, and a familiar one. Melinda