Thread by @asymmetricinfo

Well, this seems like a good time to draw your attention to my new column, on diversity initiatives in media, entertainment, etc, and how a statistical misunderstanding may be setting them up for frustration, or lawsuits. washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/…

https://twitter.com/SCOTUSblog/status/1485621994691383302

Basically, people target a workforce that "looks like America", but forget the corollary of their frequent invocations of "younger, more diverse generations": older generations, are whiter. Like, really, really white--America was almost 90% white as late as 1960.

As late as 1999, two thirds of the children in America were non-Hispanic whites. They, and the even whiter generations before them, represent almost the entire current workforce.

Immigration can move those numbers somewhat, but only somewhat, because about 20 percent of US immigration comes from Europe or elsewhere in the Anglosphere; most of those folks are white.

The problem is even tougher in professional jobs that require a very high degree of English fluency--which is most jobs in US media academia (STEM aside), or entertainment

Immigrants are also disproportionately barred from such jobs for another reason: low educational attainment

Because demographic change is driven by immigration--often by immigrants who didn't go beyond high school (if they got that far)--or their minor children, it's hard for a professional-class business to statistically "look like America", and even harder for an industry to do so.

An individual firm can get there by creative recruiting. At the industry level the law of large numbers kicks in, and you have to either fire older workers, who are whitening your stats--or else hire fewer new white workers than their population share would indicate.

Either move strikes a lot of people (not just conservatives) as unfair--and it may be illegal, to boot, depending on how aggressive your targets are. But some of the targets are pretty aggressive.

CBS wants half its writer's rooms to be non-White by next season, which is less white than America, much less its adult workforce, much less its educated, English-speaking adult workforce.

latimes.com/entertainment-…

If those kinds of super-aggressive targets proliferate, I would eventually expect to see lawsuits. There will also be weird secondary effects, as white men very sensibly cling to their jobs like rabid barnacles, complicating the drive to diversify through hiring.

(Not particularly an issue for writer's rooms, since studios are always closing up old shows and beginning new ones, creating a whole new writer's room from scratch. But for more normal jobs, a lack of churn becomes an issue in a bunch of ways.)

None of this is to argue that discrimination and structural disadvantage don't play a role in the lack of minority representation in media and elsewhere. That would be ridiculous. But it does mean you have to account for generational effects when addressing those other factors.

Otherwise sectors that are racing to diversify--like mine--may end up setting un-meetable goals, and setting themselves up not just for failure, but potential legal issues.

Thanks for sticking with me, column is here

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/…