How to Establish Proof of Bias in Hiring POC
It’s the second week of protests after the killing of George Floyd. Huge strides have been made in awareness about systemic racism, and the lens has been turned to brands and their hiring practices.
Nike was the first company to publish an ad in favor of the protests: “Just Don’t [deny systemic racism exists].” The ad was highly aligned with Nike’s values. Nike had taken a huge chance signing (then and still) controversial athlete Colin Kaepernick in 2018. Yet critics, many of them in the ad industry, jumped on Nike, seemingly finding hypocrisy:
“Nike, which has said that only 8% of its 353 vice presidents as of 2017 were black…” (New York Times).
African Americans are 13.6% of the US population, so the gap of representation is 5.6%. It’s definitely a gap, especially for a brand whose customer base has more people of color than average. Yet it’s not a huge gap. Wanting to find more qualified VPs can be different from finding them, and the difference in numbers doesn’t, in and of itself, signify bias. Peter Henry, on the board of directors at Nike, and an African American, confirmed that this is a priority for the company: “The numbers come up in every meeting, how are we doing on the [representation] numbers.”
Jonathan Haidt makes a useful distinction among the types of social justice we should be seeking. Clearly systemic racism exists. Clearly there is subconscious bias. Clearly people are prone to hire people who look like themselves. It’s natural to like people who have as much in common with you as possible. Yet companies are making great strides in overcoming these biases. Here is the breakdown, summarized from Haidt’s book The Coddling of the American Mind:
Equal-outcomes justice is concerned with numerically equal representation. Women should be 50% of a company, even in a field that interests relatively few women. Equal-outcomes justice looks at the fact that tech companies have roughly 80% male employees and sees proof of sexism.
Procedural justice is concerned with a fair process. Resentment can occur when a team feels someone was a diversity hire, when that person is seen as lacking the skills to hold the job. These are natural instincts we all feel, the need to “earn” something and to be paid and valued according to our contribution.
Proportional-procedural justice is the most balanced kind. It corrects for previous lack of access for underrepresented or oppressed groups. At the same time it factors in procedural justice, seeking candidates with skills and experience, not just because they are of a certain background.
From the lens of proportional-procedural justice, 8% black VPs is not, in and of itself, proof of bias at Nike. We can all agree these numbers can be better. We need to invest many more resources in training women and people of color so they can bring much-needed diversity at work and at all areas of life.
The gotchas, the finger-pointing, and the knee-jerk accusations of racism are easy to throw out. But in fact the process of hiring and retaining employees is much harder than the end-numbers make known.
